Gold City Strides Ahead with Manhattan Associates Omnichannel Fulfillment Platform

A pioneer in Thailand’s footwear industry since 1950, Cold City Footwear’s manufacturing expertise and specialization in production processes such as vulcanisation and cold-cementing have enabled it to enjoy continued success over the years.

Today, Gold City’s 2000+ employees produce high quality, comfortable, durable, value-for-money footwear products that cater to different segments of the market. Its vision is to become the number one footwear company in Thailand and across the ASEAN region, maximizing satisfaction for consumers and retail partners alike.

Gold City chooses Manhattan Associates

Following a sustained period of growth and to meet the expected future demand for its products and services across new markets and channels, Gold City decided to transform its order fulfillment approach to provide a foundation for its future omnichannel ambitions.

To achieve their goals, Gold City decided to invest in a proven Warehouse Management System (WMS) that would

• Integrate seamlessly with an existing ERP system
• Allow for easy scalability for additional warehouses and services in new geographical markets
• Deliver on supply chain goals and commitment to customers
• Manage current requirements for wave and batch picking for store orders
• Integrate with voice technology
• Process single picking or online orders

A detailed plan was developed and mapped out to understand current and future workflows before the solution was successfully implemented at the Group’s Samutsakorn (Bangkok) distribution centre (DC) which was an unmitigated success. The site houses around 5,000 SKUs, operates on a fastmoving first-in, first-out (FIFO) basis and fulfills store and e-commerce orders from across Thailand and overseas markets.

CEO of Gold City, Surasak Jinapun, explains: “Manhattan is ranked by industry analyst ARC Advisory Group as Asia-Pacific’s leading Warehouse Management Solutions vendor. It was this and the company’s retail and fashion domain expertise that made Manhattan such an obvious choice for us. Additionally, its high calibre customer testimonies gave us the proof we needed whilst the quality of the Manhattan consultants and those of its local Thai GeoPartner, Logiciel, gave us the confidence that we had trusted partners on the ground working alongside our own team, to ensure a smooth project implementation.”

Omnichannel enablement, improved productivity, and rapid return on investment 

Surasak Jinapun continues, “Manhattan’s solution deployment was completed within expected timelines and we’ve achieved a positive return on the investment in approximately one year. It has delivered tremendous benefits for Gold City and will serve as a powerful platform for our omnichannel growth ambitions.” Gold City’s operational teams found the system straightforward to use and within just a few weeks of the completion of on-site support and training provided by Manhattan and Logiciel, the Gold City team were running independently with the system and able to process orders in record time.

The Manhattan SCALE solution has delivered the following business benefits for Gold City:

• Provided optimized fulfillment capability for transition to omnichannel business model
• Delivered a greater level of flexibility in how customer orders are fulfilled
• Increased inventory accuracy
• Optimized warehouse layout for faster fulfillment and lower overhead cost
• Analyzed all aspects of order fulfillment to ensure quicker order processing and improved service levels
• Improvements in forecasted labour needs, reducing overtime hours
• Greater staff productivity and efficiency across all warehouse operations

Surasak Jinapun added, “Having become operationally more efficient and delivered service level improvements for customers across all channels, we’re delighted with the benefits already delivered by the Manhattan technology and even more pleased to have achieved a positive return on our investment in the Manhattan technology in twelve months.”

Next year, Gold City plans to open a new DC which will triple the existing network capacity and will allow the group to launch a new 3PL distribution service for retail partners and expand its online order fulfillment capability. The new facility will also be supported by the Manhattan SCALE technology.