Roberta's Unique Gardens, specializes in unique, hard-to find yet easy-to-grow plants. They directly involve themselves in their customers needs and their goal is to simply have customers grow the gardens of their dreams.

Roberta's began working with Wagner in 2001, with Wagner handling the packaging and shipping of their temperature-sensitive bulbs. Through Wagner's special Underground Warehouse in the Kansas City area, the bulbs were able to thrive in an environment of 65 degrees regardless of the weather, which guaranteed that their quality and freshness would be intact when they reached the customer. Some bulbs even needed to subsist at 30 degrees; for these Wagner utilized refrigerated box cars so that the flowers would arrive healthy and fresh every time.

Annually from February through May, Wagner loads, packages, and ships approximately 8,000 orders through QVC and utilizes around 30 full-time employees. The bulbs usually arrive sorted by color and pre-packaged from Roberta's, others arrive in Gaylord containers and require sorting and individual packaging. Wagner's pick lines mix and match the different bulbs as needed; creating a custom kit for Roberta's which includes the bulbs and growing instructions for each type of flower.

Roberta's was approached by the QVC network to see if they were interested in selling their popular tropical bulbs through one of QVC's "Today's Special Value" (TSV) promotions. TSV promotions typically generate massive customer response and, based upon Roberta's proven track record, QVC knew the bulbs would sell well.  The TSV promotion was scheduled for a Sunday, with an estimate of 70,000 orders to be expected in a 24-hour period, exponentially increasing Roberta's normal output volume.

Roberta's wanted to know if it were possible to receive the orders and ship them out on the same day on such a massive scale. To accomplish this, Wagner recommended pre-packaging all 70,000 orders, processing the orders as they arrived electronically from QVC, printing and affixing labels on each package, and then shipping all the orders out by end-of-business on Monday.

Wagner received the OK and allocated over 450,000 square feet of warehouse space and more than 100 full-time associates to handle the packaging and light manufacturing activities. The production teams were built and the necessary warehouse space customized within just three days. When the bulbs arrived in large Gaylord containers, they were quickly sorted and packed into individual kits using KD corrugate, and all 70,000 kits were ready to go in preparation for the TSV promotion.

During the pre-packaging process, Wagner's IT team worked directly with QVC to insure that the computer systems would work together seamlessly, and that network bandwidth was available to handle all 70,000 orders in a single day. Through established quality control procedures, the team determined that an additional sourcing of high-speed printers would be necessary to handle the large order.

A number of professional printers were interviewed and one was quickly chosen with the necessary overflow capacity. Like most printers, however, they lacked EDI capabilities to exchange the necessary data, so Wagner received the orders over their WAN, batched the orders into CDs, and then ferried the CDs to the printer throughout the 24-hour promotion.

At the conclusion of the project, Wagner achieved a 99.9% success rate with QVC, proudly representing Roberta's as a third-party vendor. Every single one of the 70,000 orders shipped on time, dramatically improving Roberta's sales for the quarter.

Wagner rapidly develops, deploys and manages the packaging solutions which give businesses a competitive edge. We work with vendors, retailers and club store owners across the nation to build perfectly tailored solutions which keep supply chains flowing smoothly.

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