Sweet Squared

Sweet Squared is a professional beauty distributor supplying products to salons and consumers. The business began in garages and has since grown to more than 100 employees, with a full warehouse team and a purpose-built facility in Leeds.

Before Descartes Peoplevox™, Sweet Squared managed fulfilment manually. Warehouse workers walked the facility with clipboards and printed order sheets, making the process slow, labor-intensive, and more prone to errors.

When the company moved into its purpose-built warehouse around eight years ago, the team decided it was time to introduce a warehouse management system. Peoplevox stood out because it was straightforward to use. Shaun McCollum, Head of Operations, recalls: “Peoplevox was very user-friendly. It was easy to train new people and get them up to speed.”

Sweet Squared now runs picking, dispatch, returns, replenishment, stock adjustments, and cycle counting through the same platform.

Removing paper from the picking process had an immediate impact. Peoplevox guides operatives along more efficient routes and uses barcode scanning to confirm that the right products are being picked. Shaun puts the result plainly: “By replacing our paper-based picking methods with Peoplevox, we increased efficiency by at least 50%.”

The warehouse has 18 operatives and handles around 1,000 orders on a typical day. During Black Friday, Christmas, and other busy periods, that volume can double or even triple.

In recent years, Sweet Squared has expanded beyond its traditional B2B model into the consumer market, bringing new sales channels and a more complex mix of orders into the warehouse.

Martin Rogers, Director of IT, explains the impact: “Peoplevox has allowed us to grow into new markets and channels. Since expanding into the consumer market, order volumes have risen from around 300 to as many as 1,000 a day.”

With every sales channel connected through one centralised WMS, the team can schedule work as orders arrive and shift resources in line with demand.

Demand in the professional beauty industry can change quickly. Real-time workload data helps Sweet Squared adjust its capacity and workforce when volumes rise. As Martin describes it: “Peoplevox allows us to accommodate seasonal peaks and manage our capacity and workforce while maintaining service delivery.”

Speed is particularly important for salon customers. “Salons often need products for the following day, so they do not have to cancel treatments,” Shaun explains. “Being able to ship next day for orders placed up until 7:30pm gives us the flexibility we need.”

Every warehouse transaction can be tracked in Peoplevox. Sweet Squared uses that information to review performance at an operative level and make practical changes to the way stock is stored. Shaun shares an example: “We can track every transaction in the warehouse and report right down to operative level. We can also see which products are picked most often and move them to better locations.”

Peoplevox also integrates with the company’s ERP, dispatch software, and other applications. These connections give the team the reporting and analytics needed to monitor operations and investigate issues when they arise.

The simplicity that initially led Sweet Squared to choose Peoplevox still matters. Its workflows are intuitive, making it easier to train new warehouse operatives and manage staff turnover.

Sweet Squared also knows the system can support future expansion, whether that means increasing picking capacity or bringing more operatives into the warehouse.

Shaun summarises the experience: