Tea Forté Automates 3PL Processes to Improve Wholesale Business

About

Tea Forté Inc. is an American tea company based in Concord, Massachusetts. The company was founded in 2003 by Peter Hewitt, an American product designer and graduate from the Rhode Island School of Design. Tea Forte produces a highly stylized product line inspired by the traditional Japanese tea ceremony, intended to “elevate a cup of tea into an extraordinary experience for all of your senses”. The company was acquired by Sara Lee in 2011, and is available worldwide in 35 countries.

Background

Tea Forte had been working with an older ERP system and a different integrator solution, but it was unable to manage the intake of items with lot codes. This was an essential part of their wholesale business, hence why they made the switch to NetSuite as their new ERP system.

The challenge

When Tea Forte made the switch to NetSuite in 2017, they needed to integrate data interchange between their 3PLs or warehouses, and with NetSuite, with as few problems as possible.

The solution

“Our NetSuite professional consultants recommended you,” said Nancy Birchard, Tea Forte project manager who was involved in the project.
Being able to send orders over to their warehouses and 3PLs quickly and easily was integral to improving operational efficiency in Tea Forte’s business. It also helped to transfer orders between the main warehouse and some Amazon warehouses, and also smaller Tea Forté warehouses.

“Our customer experience team is in there doing the ship confirmations using those data flows every single day, and sometimes multiple times a day. So if there’s an error, they’re the ones who are taking a look and it usually has to do with our lot codes.”

Nancy also added that she worked with Celigo’s developers to create the custom program to do that. “The flows that were written and tested have been very, very solid.”

Bottom line

Despite Celigo’s expertise at working with more technical clients, name felt that the responsiveness and making sure that they understood Tea Forte’s needs was “excellent.” Looking ahead in the coming year, they plan to expand integrations with Amazon, and also integrate NetSuite with their website.