For the complete documentation index, see llms.txt.
Scaling globally usually means adding more people to the warehouse.
Hello Molly did the opposite.
As order volumes grew and the brand expanded into the US, the fast-growing fashion retailer reduced warehouse headcount by 20% through fulfilment workflow optimisation and automation.
In this on-demand webinar, experts from Hello Molly, Starshipit, SEKO Logistics, and PeopleVox broke down the operational changes behind the results.
In this session, you'll learn how to:
Partnership and Sales Manager
Hawk is Starshipit's Partnership Manager and has over 11 years of experience in logistics, working with hundreds of retail businesses including Showpo, Meshki, Lorna Jane and Billabong, to streamline their shipping and fulfilment operations as they scale. Hawk thrives on delivering innovative solutions that propel business success.
Managing Director for Australia and New Zealand
Matthew Musumeci is the Managing Director for Australia and New Zealand at SEKO Logistics, bringing deep leadership experience across eCommerce, last‑mile delivery, and international supply‑chain operations. Known for driving operational excellence and scaling digital‑first logistics solutions, he offers practical, future‑focused insights to audiences across the Asia‑Pacific region.
Senior Account Executive
Kat Sare Senior Account Executive at Peoplevox brings over a decade of experience in the high‑end fashion industry across Sydney, and New York, working with leading brands including Sass & Bide, Bassike, and Scanlan Theodore. Transitioning into Retail, eCommerce, and Inventory Management solutions, Kat has spent another 10+ years helping D2C and omnichannel brands optimise operations and scale.
Operations Director
Ena Eaton has been part of Hello Molly since its inception, helping guide the brand's evolution from a fast-growing start-up to a global fashion business. As Operations Director, she has played a key role in building and scaling the company's operational infrastructure, supporting areas including supply chain, logistics and international fulfillment. Today, Hello Molly operates three fulfilment centres across Australia, the United States and the United Kingdom, supporting customers around the world.
Supply Chain Director
Mario Eisa has been a part of Hello Molly for the past four years. He is a global supply chain executive with deep expertise in building and scaling end-to-end operations
Hello Molly reduced warehouse headcount by 20% by redesigning its fulfilment workflows, improving warehouse layout, connecting Peoplevox with Starshipit, and automating manual dispatch decisions. The team built more picking capacity without adding headcount and lifted pick KPI performance from about 80% to 130% to 140%.
The webinar points to picking accuracy, pick rate, fulfilment throughput, customer service tickets, inventory accuracy and labour cost to serve as useful warning signs. For Hello Molly, manual picking slips, invoice and label matching, high error rates and extra shifts showed the operation was relying too heavily on people instead of process.
Connecting a warehouse management system (WMS) with shipping automation software reduces manual re-entry, wasted labour and avoidable fulfilment errors. In the webinar, Peoplevox and Starshipit support a more connected pick, pack and dispatch workflow so teams do not need to jump between systems as order volume grows.
Packaging automation helps teams choose the right box size using product weights and dimensions from Shopify, a product catalogue or measurement tools. That reduces oversized cartons, wasted air and manual guesswork at the pack bench, which matters as carriers increasingly charge based on cubic measurement as well as weight.
The speakers recommend avoiding old operational habits, designing the warehouse around proven systems from the start, testing workflows before launch and preparing accurate product data. For US imports, retailers need clear product descriptions, HS codes and awareness of category-specific requirements such as FDA clearances.
The webinar highlights durable warehouse scanners, desk-mounted dispatch scanners, barcode-labelled locations, lean pack bench layouts and pigeon-hole trolleys with validation. Hello Molly also described moving from picking up to 55 orders to handling 250 to 300 orders in one trolley using a sort-to-trolley workflow.
Hakan Steele, Starshipit: We are very excited to be joined by Hello Molly, one of Australia's fashion powerhouses and an amazing eCommerce success story. Today we'll be looking under the bonnet at some of their big wins and lessons throughout the operational journey.
We're joined by some really exciting global solution providers and Starshipit partners in Descartes Peoplevox, who provide warehouse management systems, and SEKO Logistics, who are a global eCommerce delivery and supply chain logistics specialist.
Today's webinar is all about how Hello Molly were able to reduce warehouse headcount by 20% while continuing to maintain global throughput. We'll look at what wasn't scaling, what the team removed, what they automated, and how they expanded into the US without rebuilding their fulfilment workflows from scratch.
We will also cover how automation, carrier optimisation and warehouse integration can reduce complexity, control headcount and protect margins as you scale.
Matthew Musumeci, SEKO Logistics: I'm Matthew Musumeci, Managing Director for SEKO Logistics across Australia and New Zealand. I've been with SEKO for almost five years and I've worked in the industry for almost 15 years across several sectors.
Kat Sare, Descartes Peoplevox: I'm Kat from Descartes Peoplevox. I've worked in inventory management and eCommerce for more than 10 years now, after hands-on experience in fashion with brands including Sass & Bide, Scanlan Theodore, Bassike and Too Choosy in Sydney and New York.
Mario Eisa, Hello Molly: I'm Mario Eisa, Supply Chain Director for Hello Molly. I've been with Hello Molly for more than four years, and I started my supply chain career in 2007. I've managed cross-border operations and expansions across multiple geographies.
Hello Molly is an online fashion brand specialising in women's event wear. Today we have three distribution centres across Australia, the US and the UK.
Hakan Steele, Starshipit: Mario, before automation, what did a busy day at Hello Molly look like? Where was the team spending the most time and effort?
Mario Eisa, Hello Molly: We were people heavy and incredibly manual. We were bulk printing invoices that acted as picking slips, matching invoices with labels, and spending a lot of labour on tasks that are now automated.
We were getting orders out the door, but looking back from where we are today, it was not a great experience. Customer experience was the main focus, and errors were one of the biggest signs that the operation was under pressure. Customer service tickets were high, order picking was a major challenge, and we needed more people to pick orders as we grew.
At one point we moved into a 24-hour operation with morning, afternoon and overnight shifts to fulfil orders. Once we implemented new systems and automation, we could see how much waste existed in the old process.
We looked at how orders were picked, how invoices and labels were prepared, and how the warehouse itself was laid out. We redesigned the layout and introduced processes that reduced waste and cost to serve. Peoplevox and Starshipit changed the way the warehouse was laid out, and the way orders were picked and packed. SEKO also helped us remove inefficiencies as a carrier partner.
Hakan Steele, Starshipit: Where do most warehouses lose time or labour without realising it?
Kat Sare, Descartes Peoplevox: The biggest area we see is unnecessary labour leading up to and during peak. Most companies add significant headcount for peak, but they often overlook the lead-up, where temporary staff may be added two, three or four weeks earlier.
Old systems and paper-based picking create friction because staff need time to learn the layout, bin locations and processes before they can fulfil orders accurately. With systems like Peoplevox and Starshipit, temporary staff can be ramped within hours or one to two days, confidently picking with 99.9% accuracy.
Peak also brings margin pressure. Retailers may be selling at or below cost, so if you overspend on wages just to get revenue through the door, that revenue goes straight back out through unnecessary labour spend.
Hakan Steele, Starshipit: From a warehouse perspective, what are the most common hidden inefficiencies you see for scaling brands?
Kat Sare, Descartes Peoplevox: Inventory accuracy is another hidden inefficiency. It affects returns, stock takes, oversells and missells. When we ask businesses how confident they are in their inventory accuracy, the answer is often either that they don't know, or about five out of 10.
Little-and-often cycle counting as part of daily processes helps catch discrepancies when they happen. That avoids large six-monthly stock takes, where businesses may need to stop trading for several days, create dispatch bottlenecks and sometimes pay external consultants. We have seen customers move from six-figure stocktake variances to under 1% to 2% by using frequent automated cycle counts.
Hakan Steele, Starshipit: What happens when your warehouse and shipping systems are disconnected?
Kat Sare, Descartes Peoplevox: Disconnected systems create chaos, wasted time, wasted labour and unnecessary risk because manual intervention creates human error. The most common result is mis-ships, including wrong items, wrong sizes, wrong colours or missing products.
Those issues become customer experience problems and can damage brand trust. Fulfilment is the brand's last chance to delight the customer, so brands should ask whether their fulfilment experience matches the promise they have made to the customer.
With the Starshipit and Peoplevox integration, the process is built into the system rather than requiring staff to jump between platforms. That supports the 99.9% accuracy retailers need when they are scaling.
Hakan Steele, Starshipit: Where does automation make the biggest difference within the dispatch area, particularly when it comes to training and packing decisions?
Hakan Steele, Starshipit: At the packing station, every order can require decisions: which carrier to use, which service to use, whether a signature or authority to leave is needed, the final packaging dimensions and weight, and which packaging is most efficient.
Packaging selection is a major opportunity. If a packer chooses a box that is too big, the business may pay to ship mostly fresh air. Automated packaging selection can choose the best package based on product dimensions, reducing wasted space and speeding up the packing bench.
Automation also reduces training effort. The more decisions a business automates, the easier it is to onboard temporary staff, family members or holiday staff without training them on every decision in the packing process.
Matthew Musumeci, SEKO Logistics: Choosing the right packaging makes a significant difference to air freight and final mile costs because the industry is shifting away from dead weight and towards cubic measurement. If you can reduce wasted air in the parcel, you can reduce cost.
Hakan Steele, Starshipit: Mario, when you expanded into the US, what systems and processes were non-negotiable?
Mario Eisa, Hello Molly: We entered the US in 2022, and the US is now our biggest market by far. The non-negotiable was not taking bad practices from Australia into the US. We designed the US warehouse in line with the Peoplevox WMS and Starshipit from the start.
The warehouse design minimised picker travel distance, positioned dispatch in line with the picker's finish point, and set up dispatch bays in a lean way so packers spent less time reaching for consumables.
We also used a small number of packaging types, such as small, medium and large, so packers could make fast decisions based on the number of items in each order. We avoided the bottlenecks we had experienced in Australia and thoroughly tested Peoplevox and Starshipit before moving into the US.
We were also able to continue our long-term relationship with SEKO in the US for last mile delivery. With inventory on the ground in the US, customer waiting times improved compared with shipping from Australia. Some deliveries can arrive the next day, while others arrive within two to three days.
Hakan Steele, Starshipit: Matt, from a carrier and logistics perspective, what changes operationally when brands enter the US?
Matthew Musumeci, SEKO Logistics: From a retailer's day-to-day operational perspective, nothing should really change if the setup is done properly. The main shift is compliance and data for anything being imported into the US.
Shipments that previously moved under T86 now require formal clearance, making the process longer. Retailers need agile providers with in-house brokers who can keep the process moving.
Correct documentation and data are crucial, including accurate product descriptions and HS codes. It can seem overwhelming, but if it is done right the first time, everything should move smoothly whether the brand ships cross-border or fulfils from within the US.
Hakan Steele, Starshipit: Where do brands usually add complexity when they move into the US?
Matthew Musumeci, SEKO Logistics: Complexity often comes from not understanding compliance requirements, which also creates additional cost. Incorrect HS codes or descriptions can stop freight on the way in and create delays while information is cleaned up, processed and handed over to gateways and carriers.
New product categories can also create unexpected compliance issues. Products related to the face, ingestible products and similar categories can fall under FDA requirements and need specific clearances. Retailers should do their own due diligence, have legal teams review solutions, and work with partners who can navigate changing US legislation and compliance requirements.
Hakan Steele, Starshipit: Mario, what did operating with a 20% leaner dispatch team mean for the business?
Mario Eisa, Hello Molly: The 20% reduction came from multiple areas of the warehouse and represented a lower cost to serve. We built picking capacity without adding headcount. We have hit 130% to 140% of pick KPI compared with about 80% in the past, by using the WMS, finding solutions that helped the team improve and investing in the right equipment.
Hakan Steele, Starshipit: Do you have visibility of where those gains were reinvested?
Mario Eisa, Hello Molly: The cost reduction was welcomed by the business because global supply chain costs continue to rise, and savings can be reinvested elsewhere to grow the business. We continue investing in quality equipment to improve operations, and those efficiency gains have supported global expansion, including expansion into the UK in October 2025.
Hakan Steele, Starshipit: One of the questions from the audience is about simplifying weights, measurements and packaging automation. Retailers can store product weights and dimensions in platforms such as Shopify, and set predefined boxes in Starshipit.
Using dimensions from Shopify or a Starshipit product catalogue, retailers can automatically assign orders to predefined box sizes and populate final weights and dimensions for the carrier. There are also integrations with cubing machines, where a package can be measured and the correct fields populated automatically.
Kat Sare, Descartes Peoplevox: The key is having dimensions pulled through the integration and into the shipping platform so there is automation rather than manual guesswork about packaging choice.
Investing in the right scanners is also one of the best places to start because Peoplevox is scanner-driven and can direct staff through efficient pick routes. Durable Android scanners are better suited to warehouse scanning than iPads or Apple devices.
The right trolley setup also matters. Pigeon-hole trolleys with barcodes mean each slot has validation, so staff do not create mis-ships or mis-picks before orders reach the pack bench.
Mario Eisa, Hello Molly: Desk-mounted scanners at dispatch can reduce wasted time. Compared with handheld scanners, they can read faded barcodes more reliably and avoid reprinting barcodes before dispatch.
We also did a lot of internal housekeeping before introducing the systems, to make sure the systems themselves would not become bottlenecks. The main upfront investment was labour-intensive preparation: ensuring stock was correct, barcoding every product, barcoding locations, and creating pick paths and sequences in the system.
Hakan Steele, Starshipit: The investment depends on where a business starts from. Barcoding and facility redesign are not always purely financial investments, but they pay dividends later.
Mario Eisa, Hello Molly: If I were rebuilding dispatch again, I would make the dispatch layout as lean as possible, with everything positioned around the packer to reduce wasted movement.
Trolley pigeon holes are now a must as a business grows. We previously picked up to 55 orders, but can now handle up to 250 to 300 orders in one trolley, with one pigeon hole representing one order.
A trolley may have 125 locations on one side and 125 on the other. Orders are batched into 250-order groups, ideally with orders of three to five items that fit comfortably into a pigeon hole. Peoplevox has a sort-to-trolley function that supports this workflow. Strict sorting KPIs are needed, but packing 250 orders can be done much more quickly.
Kat Sare, Descartes Peoplevox: Pick and sort-to-trolley rules can prioritise express orders, international orders, retail transfers or wholesale orders automatically. That means the team knows what to do first without relying on a manual paper-based task list.
Hakan Steele, Starshipit: Thank you, Mario and the Hello Molly team, for sharing your experience. Thank you also to Kat from Descartes Peoplevox and Matthew from SEKO Logistics.
