Cultura: New containers for more culture and entertainment

The 66 Cultura stores, each located in a "Zone Commerciale", stock up to 1,000,000 different products on a sales area of between 1,500 and 6,000 m², depending on the location. The replenishment of books, CDs/DVDs, video and games consoles, instruments for amateur musicians, educational games, stationery, writing and painting materials as well as artistic and creative supplies has to be replenished and sorted on the shelves by hand every day. At peak times, such as the start of school or Christmas sales, there is a lot of activity, which can only run smoothly with optimal distribution logistics. In an interview with Aymeric Briest, head of the branches in France, materialfluss wanted to find out more about how this was achieved.

materialfluss: Mr. Briest, what were the biggest challenges for Cultura in the daily provision?

The combination of dolly and stackable plastic boxes creates mobility.

In short: simple and fast sorting into the shelves while complying with safety regulations for our employees and customers. Strategically, it was about availability and productivity. Previously, we had received the goods in boxes and on wooden pallets. These then had to be moved between the shelves in order to sort the items in the right place. Heavy loads, poorly stacked pallets, wood splinters, dust or sometimes even rusty nails posed a risk of accidents in the workplace that we wanted to drastically reduce or completely avoid. Items that are not needed should be stored temporarily. We wanted to make work easier and absolutely guarantee the safety of the people at the point of sale (employees and customers).

mfl: Ergonomics and safety are undoubtedly important factors. Were there any other requirements that you placed on the load carriers?Briest: Definitely. In order to guarantee the availability of the large product range, we needed flexibility in warehousing so that we could react more quickly and sort replenishments more easily and over shorter distances. At the same time, the storage space for unused items needed to be kept to a minimum. In addition, the format of the new containers needed to be compatible with the existing containers. The aim was to fully equip and supplement all stores with reusable plastic containers.

mfl: What was the solution and how did the decision-making process go?

Easy and space-saving (return) transportation of the easily foldable plastic containers.

Our logistics platform is centrally located near Paris. We have different flows of goods and therefore specific logistics and management requirements: there are the direct supplier flows of "live" products (music and videos), which are delivered directly from the producer to the store. Then there are the "click & collect" flows, i.e. online orders that are delivered to a specific store and collected there by the customer. There are also, of course, the flows of goods for "logistical distribution", i.e. the entire wide range of products, from books, magazines, paints, fabrics and paper to high-tech products such as tablets, headphones and musical instruments. This is available as a fixed offer at all stores at all times. The initiative came from the individual store managers, who also defined the catalog of requirements for the load carrier. We then looked at various suppliers of plastic containers and drew up a comparative study. We then decided relatively quickly on the solution from Gamma-Wopla: a combination of foldable and stackable containers with a matching dolly (trolley).

mfl: What were the decisive advantages in your decision and what is your balance sheet today?Briest: It was all about design and functionality. In terms of ergonomics, safety, foldability, reusability, stability, robustness and compatibility, this container most convincingly fulfilled our criteria mentioned above. Added to this was the extremely efficient and close coordination process with Gamma-Wopla, fast delivery within six weeks and, last but not least, the attractive price. We now handle all our cultura.com sales with the new collapsible containers and 29 branches with more than 600 employees use them on site for daily handling. We already have more than 15,000 plastic containers and dollies from Gamma-Wopla in circulation. Our stock overview has improved significantly, we save up to three hours in daily sorting and have more time for our customers. This gives us a return on investment. Quickly equipping the entire store network is strategically and operationally very important for us in terms of fully integrated flows of goods. Further orders are already being planned.

www.cultura.comwww.gamma-wopla.com