A Glimpse Inside the Warehouse
Go behind the scenes with Trademark Global, the cover subject of MMG's January/February 2018 issue, to see what a day in the warehouse looks like.
Take a behind-the-scenes look inside Trademark Global’s Lorain, Ohio, warehouse and its processes for packaging and shipping. Trademark Global was profiled in the January/February 2018 issue of Middle Market Growth.
Receiving
On a typical day, between five and 10 trucks deliver products to Trademark Global’s Lorain, Ohio, facility. The company works with more than 100 factories, and more than 70 percent of items come from China. (Other source countries include Turkey, Malaysia, India and Pakistan.)
Picking
Order pickers, who select materials needed for delivery, and the rest of the warehouse workers are especially busy during the end-of-year holiday season. When Trademark Global works on projections to add seasonal workers, “we cross our fingers and hope we are right,” says Dan Sustar, the company’s CEO.
“In the years we’re wrong, the office clears out and we’re working in the warehouse. Two years ago, I think I worked 17 hours a day for about three weeks straight. So did everybody else,” he says.
Orders also spike between Memorial Day and Father’s Day—and in July, when Amazon has Prime Day and other retailers like Walmart and Target run competing promotions, says Jim Sustar, Trademark Global’s president.
“Essentially Amazon has created another Black Friday, but in July,” he says.
Packaging
“Because we are in 28 different categories with thousands of different products, packaging has always been a challenge,” says Jim Sustar. “As we have grown, our category managers are making every effort to bring our products in pre-packaged for parcel shipping.”
Read more about how Trademark Global is upping the ante in e-commerce.
The company’s 40-inch licensed billiard lamps create some of the biggest headaches. “It took several tries to produce a box and packing content that would reduce our damages when drop-shipping these lamps,” he says.
Shipping
During the 2016 holiday season, about 40,000 to 50,000 packages were shipped daily—about five times typical volume. The company usually has two UPS and two FedEx trucks stationed at the facility around the clock, and it switches them out up to 12 times a day.
