Case Studies

How Amour Vert uses Pipe17 as their eCommerce command center

“The system was super easy to use and our team likes it better than what we had before.” — Leslie Street, CFO/COO at Amour Vert

Processing orders across multiple channels becomes more challenging when your inventory is located in multiple  locations. For Amour Vert, managing inbound orders across a warehouse and several store locations proved difficult, but to keep their carbon footprint low, they didn’t want to transport inventory around unnecessarily.

Today’s consumers are more conscious of their ecological impact and carbon footprint. As such, many are turning to green brands that reduce waste, emissions, and long-term impact on the planet. Amour Vert has been at the forefront of that movement in the fashion industry since 2010, with an ethos centered on zero waste, reducing emissions, and increasing the sustainability and reusability of fashion. 

To make that happen, Amour Vert creates small-batch products out of  only sustainable or  recycled materials and produces most of their product locally; the company sells every item, and then replaces it with another small batch. Everything is sustainable, made-right, and timeless. On top of that, Pipe 17 enables Amour Vert to use sustainable shipping practices, shipping any order from any location, and preventing the need to ship products back and forth. 

That commitment to sustainability paid off: Amour Vert has achieved a strong following online, busy foot traffic in its three physical retail stores, and  is partnering with successful retailers, like Stitch Fix.

Amour Vert uses Pipe17 to direct the fulfilment of its Shopify orders, so we spoke with their CFO and COO, Leslie Street to learn a little more about how they run their business and use Pipe17 in their order processing pipeline.

The problem: Order management and volume discrepancies

Amour Vert sells across multiple retail and wholesale channels. However, with production volume rarely exceeding 100 of any given item, it’s challenging to accurately share inventory among those channels. Instead, Amour Vert can sell inventory from any location in any channel.  If an order is placed online but not in the warehouse, it can ship immediately from a retail store that has the product.  If an order is not available in store, the store associate can place an order to ship immediately from the warehouse.  This allows Amour Vert to sell out to the last piece more quickly.

This approach allows Amour Vert to ensure its products are always available online and in store. Another benefit of Pipe 17, especially without an ERP in place, is that it allows Amour Vert to track all orders in one place. This allows appropriate monitoring of the 3PL and an instant picture at any time of what inventory is on hand, what inventory is committed to an order, and what is due to be received.  

Amour Vert replaced another inventory management system with Pipe17 in May 2021 to improve connectivity and simplify the user experience.  Given Pipe17’s connectivity-first approach, and their capabilities around order routing,  transfer orders, purchase orders, and more, they felt that it would work well for them. 

Automating import and export functionality with Pipe17

“As we got to know more it seemed like the software would fit our needs, and on top of that the team was so easy to work with and really interested in our feedback.” — Leslie Street, Amour Vert CFO and COO

We got to automating the export of Apparel Magic purchase orders with vendors using Pipe17’s smart connectors. Amour Vert was also able to use our smart connectors to import customer  orders from Shopify, and help them keep on top of moving inventory across their digital and store footprint.

Amour Vert has a complex inventory model. Since they start their production chain with raw materials – often  reclaimed or recycled ones – inventory is an asset that goes through many phases and has to be measured appropriately.  Amour Vert had to be able to see which warehouses and retail stores sold products, at what throughput rate, and product details at a size/color level – and with Pipe17, they could. 

Getting a clear view of accurate data all in one place

“Another benefit of Pipe17 is I use it to track how our warehouse is performing. How many orders from last week are pending at the warehouse? How many orders are at the store waiting to be sent out, are the store managers not getting the shipments out? I use it as a monitoring tool to ensure I’m able to elevate issues when they arise because I can see them as they arise. How many orders are waiting from last week? How about the week before? This is information we cannot access elsewhere…we could use the warehouse tool but it wouldn’t tell if there are any problems with orders reaching the warehouse.” — Leslie Street, Amour Vert CFO and COO

Eventually, Amour Vert was so happy with the purchase order import/export solution, they used Pipe17 for transfer order connectors as well. They now import and track shipments from their suppliers to view their full supply chain. 

That means they can track warehouse performance each week with Pipe17. Amour Vert’s team can log in to see how many orders are waiting to ship out at each location, note any issues, and view orders by location. Previously, they could only do that per warehouse using their management software, and without a bird’s-eye view of the full process, this was less than ideal. 

Most importantly, Amour Vert was able to achieve this with a solution that required no additional training, software, or changes to its business.  

Pipe17 connects eCommerce stores to the tools and platforms they need by helping those tools communicate with each other. If you need an eCommerce integration, connector, or import/export, get in touch with us. Or, if you’re looking for chic Parisian style made with sustainable materials in California, visit Amour Vert here.

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