Lounge Underwear
Supporting Fast Growth in a 60,000-Square-Foot Warehouse
Lounge Underwear has grown into a major ecommerce brand with high-volume warehouse operations to match. What started as a fast-growing apparel business has become a multimillion-pound company, supported by a 60,000-square-foot warehouse.
Andrew Bennett, Team Leader at Lounge, has seen warehouse volumes double as the business has continued to grow.
“When I first started working at Lounge, I was mainly picking orders, so I was picking maybe a thousand orders a day, that was our target. And our target now is 2,000 items a day. So that shows you how much the company has grown in the past 3 or 4 years.”
That growth has brought more orders, more stock locations, more team members, and more pressure during busy sale periods. At the start of a typical week, the warehouse handles around 2,500 orders. During peak periods, order volumes can rise to thousands upon thousands per day. On major sale days, Lounge can see around 10,000 orders on the first day alone.
To keep up, the team needed warehouse workflows that could support speed, accuracy, and control at scale.
Moving Away from Manual Picking
Before using Descartes Peoplevox, Andrew had experience with paper-based picking, where teams printed orders and moved through the warehouse without a clear, optimized route: “I’ve worked with paper-based picking before, where you’re relying on printed orders and moving all over the warehouse to find items. The process takes a lot longer.”
In a large warehouse, those manual processes can quickly slow teams down. Pickers spend more time walking, order accuracy depends heavily on visual checks, and finding specific stock or urgent orders becomes more difficult as order volumes increase.
With Descartes Peoplevox, Lounge can guide pickers through optimized routes and barcode-driven workflows that help reduce mistakes. As Andrew explains: “Whereas now we’ve got Peoplevox, it takes you on the perfect route and makes the process much faster.”
With Peoplevox, it’s impossible to pick the wrong item. You scan the location first, then the item barcode. If the barcode doesn’t match, you can’t complete the pick. It’s a simple process that helps eliminate picking errors.
Faster Picking with Guided Workflows
For pickers, that means less guesswork and a simpler process to follow. The handheld shows the location, the item, and where it needs to go next. This helps experienced team members move faster and maintain accuracy throughout the picking process.
According to Andrew, the simplicity is one of the biggest advantages of the system: “With the handheld, it’s easy. It shows you where you need to go, what item you need to get, and where you need to put the item. It just simplifies everything.”
Training New Team Members Quickly During Peak
During busy sale periods, Lounge needs to increase warehouse capacity fast. According to Andrew, peak events such as the brand’s birthday sale can bring a significant surge in order volumes, requiring additional temporary staff to help manage demand:
“During peak periods, such as our birthday sale, we can bring in around 30 temporary workers to support the team. On the first day alone, we might process as many as 10,000 orders, so it can get pretty hectic.”
In those moments, speed of training becomes critical. Descartes Peoplevox helps simplify warehouse processes, allowing new team members to become productive quickly. As Andrew explains, new starters can often become comfortable with the picking process in a relatively short amount of time.
“When training new team members, I’ll usually spend about an hour with them. I’ll walk them through a pick, then hand over the device and let them complete picks on their own. Within that first hour, most people have a good understanding of how the warehouse works and where everything is located.”
Andrew also credits the simplicity of the Peoplevox interface with helping team members get up to speed quickly: “The Peoplevox interface is easy to learn and straightforward to use. There aren’t many functions I need day to day, and it’s easy to find the information I’m looking for.”
Finding Orders and Stock Faster
As order volumes increase, quickly locating priority orders and available stock becomes increasingly important. With Descartes Peoplevox, Andrew can search for specific orders, prioritize urgent requests, and direct work to the right team members without wasting time searching manually.
As Andrew explains: “If an order has been missed, I can find it straight away. I can see our priority orders, assign them to my handheld or a team leader’s device, and get them picked, packed, and dispatched within minutes.”
The same applies to stock management. In a 60,000-square-foot warehouse with thousands of storage locations, manually finding available space can be challenging. According to Andrew, Peoplevox makes the process much simpler: “Instead of walking around trying to find the next available location, you can simply apply a filter, run a search, and find exactly what you need.”
Yes, I would recommend Descartes Peoplevox to other brands. It’s made my life a lot simpler.
Real-Time Reporting at the Team’s Fingertips
For Andrew and the Lounge warehouse team, Peoplevox simplifies reporting and performance tracking. Saved reports provide instant access to key operational data, helping the team monitor picking, packing, returns, and overall performance.
As Andrew explains: “I’ve got a few reports saved on my laptop. All I’ve got to do is open them and press go. Within seconds, I’ve got the numbers I need.”
Peoplevox also supports daily stock replenishment by helping the team quickly identify what stock is needed and where it needs to go. As Andrew puts it: “Every morning, I check what stock I need, print a report for the stock team, and it tells them how much is needed, where it is, and where it needs to go.”
Supporting Growth Across Multiple Brands
Lounge also fulfills orders for Indigo Lune, a jewelry brand that has experienced significant growth in recent years. According to Andrew, daily order volumes have increased from around 30 orders per day to as many as 1,000 to 2,000: “When Indigo Lune first started, they were doing maybe 30 orders a day. Now they’re hitting 1,000 or even 2,000 orders a day.”
As the brand expanded, the team moved away from manual processes and relied more heavily on Peoplevox to manage growing order volumes. For Andrew, the platform has played a key role in supporting that growth. As he explains: “Everything used to be done manually. Now Peoplevox streamlines the process and makes it much easier to manage incoming and outgoing orders.”
Andrew believes that visibility has been essential to Indigo Lune’s growth: “Without Peoplevox, I don’t think Indigo Lune would be where it is today. Keeping track of everything would be impossible.”
Vertical
Apparel & Fashion
Software Integrated
Descartes Peoplevox™
Region
UK & Ireland
Company Size
Scale Up
