Helping to manage the gardening and building season

Since 2017, when the chain of home and garden stores in Slovakia started to operate its e-shop, the number of shipments from their customers has been steadily increasing. Lockdown also played a role in the shipment numbers as people started to use online shopping in a big way. As this industry is also highly dependent on the season, seasonality has a significant impact on customer orders and purchases. A large part of the 100,000 active items in Hornbach's portfolio are delivered to customers by Geis.

Hornbach uses mostly standard delivery services for its shipments. In some cases, however, Geis also sends a two-man crew on the road as part of its premium service to make the handling of goods at the delivery point hassle-free. The average weight of a single shipment that Geis transports for Hornbach is approximately 350 kg. Special equipment is therefore sometimes useful.

Marian Ďuriš, Fulfillment Manager E-business CZ/SK Hornbach says about the cooperation: "Geis has been a stable and important logistics partner for Hornbach in Slovakia since 2017, when we started our cooperation. We appreciate this cooperation and also the speed with which they respond to our and our customers' requirements."

In order to ensure fast and reliable delivery to end customers, the information systems of both partners must be seamlessly linked. Hornbach relies on Geis for flexible services, also in view of the ever-changing customer requirements. In view of these fluctuations in demand, Geis must react within a few hours and send out additional available vehicles so that the customer is satisfied and does not have to wait too long for the goods. Because Hornbach outsources the transport service, there are no problems in securing additional capacity - both personnel and technical. It normally happens that in addition to the pre-ordered delivery vehicles, several additional requests are made during the morning and Geis sends additional vehicles in the afternoon.

Hornbach's logistics provider also provides complete packaging material for the e-shop's shipments. A number of box types are usually made of 5-ply cardboard. For packaging non-standard products Geis also supplies so-called endless carton. Communication for maintaining a sufficient stock of packaging material is done via EDI - electronic data interchange. There are thus no classic paper orders or the need for manual data transcription. When the quantity of packaging drops below a certain level, a new order automatically arrives directly to Geis, which picks it up and sends it to one of Hornbach's warehouses. The do-it-yourself product chain therefore does not have to deal with the unavailability of packaging materials and the complexity of sourcing them in these challenging times; Geis takes care of these worries for it. And it is less administration and time-consuming processes that allow Hornbach to focus more on its core business.

The cooperation in Slovakia builds on the successful long-term cooperation between Hornbach and Geis in the Czech Republic. As in Slovakia, Geis transports orders from the e-shop to Czech customers and supplies the chain with packaging material.