Success Story Euro Style

Albrecht Solutions Streamlines Global Supply Chain for Eurø Style Inc.

About Eurø Style Inc.

For 30 years, Euro Style Inc. has been offering ready-to-assemble (RTA) furniture to customers across North America. Euro Style offers a complete design approach with contemporary furniture for the living room, bar, dining room, and office. Euro Style works also with more than 20 factories in five countries to offer innovative and stylish furniture with superior craftsmanship. With headquarters in San Rafael, California, the company maintains a permanent showroom in High Point, North Carolina, and Las Vegas, Nevada, and ships all its furnishings from their warehouse in California, or drop-ships directly to retailers from the factory.

The Challenge

Euro Style has been providing stylish home furnishings to retailers and consumers for three decades. Most of its sales are either through established retailers or online. Since all of Euro Style’s furniture is shipped from manufacturers in Italy and East Asia to warehouses in the United States, the company has to keep close track of shipments, including what is in the warehouse, what goods are on order, and what goods are in transit.

As Euro Style sales continued to climb, tracking goods and container shipments became more complex. None of the product tracking systems had been integrated and the company used different software systems to track shipments and payments. It became increasingly difficult to track container shipments, especially when goods were being drop-shipped to retailers. The company knew they needed an integrated approach that could leverage electronic data interchange (EDI), but they weren’t sure how to migrate from their existing wholesale management software and QuickBooks accounting system to an integrated solution.

The Solution

After interviewing a number of enterprise resource planning (ERP) providers, Euro Style decided to work with Albrecht Solutions because of their proficiency in supply chain, warehouse, sales, distribution, and financial processes, and their expertise in deploying Microsoft Dynamics NAV. After initial conversations, it was clear the Albrecht team had the skills to integrate their supply chain and provide the level of transparency and tracking Euro Style needed with their suppliers.

It also was clear that Euro Style’s immediate need was to deploy a wholesale logistics module

that could accurately track warehouse inventory and container shipments, including calculating landing costs. Planning purchases with a two to three month production cycles and a one- month shipping time could be tricky. The Albrecht solution had to accommodate shipments to the warehouse in California, as well as drop shipments from the factory to major retailers that demand 24-hour delivery.

Albrecht was able to develop a solution able to integrate with various commercial partners in less than four months. Using Microsoft Dynamics NAV, Albrecht created a system that could provide an accurate portrait of all relevant processes. Euro Style had tried to implement EDI in the past, but the solution was time consuming to manage. With the new Microsoft Dynamic NAV EDI module developed by Albrecht, the company could seamlessly manage order fulfilment, including wholesale and retail shipments, without adding staff.

The Results

In four months, Albrecht was able to redesign Euro Style’s logistics tracking system to integrate shipping and accounting systems so management had a real-time snapshot of the entire business. Overall, Albrecht was able to help Euro Style’s operations in a number of tangible ways:

Order fulfilment was much more efficient, including gaining an overview of current and future product availability, either by overall product line or by warehouse.
The new logistics module was able to track goods at all times, whether they were on order, on water in transit, being shipped between warehouses, or in stock.
Accurate calculation of landing costs, including material, shipping, customs, packaging – basically total cost of goods from factory to warehouse.
EDI integration with major partners, including Hayneedle, Overstock, Target and Wayfair, resulted in automated order processing between Euro Style and its customers.
EDI integration to an external 3PL (third-party logistics) warehouse enabled seamlessly integrated shipping.
Albrecht delivered a single enterprise solution that covers all processes and functions without third-party tools.Since the initial implementation of Albrecht’s global logistics and supply chain managementplatform Euro Style has seen an average annual growth in sales of 30 percent.

About Albrecht Solutions

Albrecht Solutions is your solution to business evolution. The Albrecht team are experts in deploying tailor-made software solutions to meet their clients’ unique business challenges. Albrecht consultants are expert, efficient, and international, working with clients around the globe to assess and streamline business operations to improve operations while reducing costs and increasing efficiency.

Albrecht Solutions is a certified Microsoft Dynamics NAV partner with extensive expertise in enterprise resource planning (ERP) technology. With offices and local experts in San Francisco, Lima, Milan, Lucerne and Mumbai, Albrecht’s network of global consultants have in-depth knowledge in several industries and multiple international markets.