Orion Fashions imports costume jewelry
from manufacturers around the world and sells it to retailers
throughout the United States. People buy Orion Fashions’ jewelry
because it makes them look good and because it is affordable.
“Ours is a high-volume, low-margin
business,” says Sue Glass, President and CEO of Orion, “so
we have a tremendous need to manage data efficiently.”
She adds, “There are literally thousands
of different items in our product line as well as different
variations on products. For example, one necklace that
comes from Seoul Korea may be manufactured in a dozen
different styles and packaged differently to meet the
needs of several different retail chains. Each one of
those styles will have its own stock number, specification
and cost that we must keep track of.”
But keeping track of incoming product
is just the first half of the inventory and accounting
nightmare for Orion Fashions. The other half comes from
the customer side as Orion deals with dozens of national
retail chains.
Glass says, “A large chain might have
900 retail stores. The national purchasing manager might
order thousands of pieces of jewelry from us and ask
us to drop ship different amounts and combinations of,
say, thirty different items to each store. That can mean
generating 900 individual invoices, 900 shipping labels,
and packing 900 cartons, to say nothing of sending confirming
information to the purchasing manager.”
She adds, “Before we installed the
EXEControl system
from Ebeling Associates, everything was done on paper
with manual systems. We never knew our true profitability;
we had losses, confusion, and the inventory constantly
had to be counted. It was an enormous amount of work
and tremendously inefficient.”
“The EXEControl system has been fabulous,” Glass
says. “We have been able to expand our business several
fold while actually reducing the number of people performing
accounting functions. The Ebeling system helps to pull
it all together so that everyone – from the warehouse
manager to the purchasing clerk to the product people
who have to research vendor information – have what they
need instantly.”
“Customers are becoming much more demanding,” she
adds. “They want information instantly – what was shipped,
when it was shipped, estimated arrival dates – and now
we can tell them with just the punch of a key. At our
end, it allows us to look at profitability by purchase
order or by product line, and we have enormously improved
control over inventory, over purchases, what we have
received, and what we have shipped.”
There are so many components to the
EXEControl system that it took several years for the
various departments of Orion Fashions to take advantage
of all it has to offer. Now, for example, the Orion system
is connected with UPS so the company can easily trace
shipments and confirm arrival if necessary.
In another development that promises
additional gains in efficiency, Orion has begun exchanging
purchase orders and invoices with some customers and
suppliers through Electronic Data Interchange.
“We’ve found the system to be very
flexible,” Glass says, “and Ebeling has been responsive
in reconfiguring the system as our needs have evolved
over the years. Our customers and suppliers are rapidly
updating their computer technology, and Ebeling makes
sure that the EXEControl system helps us keep up with
those changes.”
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