More and more e-commerce for Il Gigante, which chose Generix Group's SaaS WMS also for the brand new dark store serving the Milan hinterland

Launched last December 9th and located between Bresso and Sesto San Giovanni, in the Milan hinterland (Italy), this is the second dark store that Il Gigante opens in 4 years to manage orders of the e-commerce channel: after the first experience at Varallo Pombia and the significant increase in online sales, the new dark store was built at the gates of Milan specifically to ensure higher speed and extensiveness to consumers of Lombardy’s county seat, as well as to those living in the areas of Monza, Como, Lecco and Lodi. The location choice is a result of logistical opportunity also with regard to inbound supply flows, coming from the warehouses located at Basiano and Carpiano.

As in the case of the first one, this new dark store is in fact a warehouse fully devoted to serve online customers, who can enter orders on web portals www.cosicomodo.it and www.ilgigante.net not only for canned and pre-packaged fresh products, but also for food which gets cut, weighed and prepared on request, exactly as it is when buying meet and fish at brick-and-mortar stores: breadth of assortment and quality of fresh products particularly have always been Il Gigante’s pride. At the new dark store more than 1,000 grocery shoppings per day can be prepared whilst, as far as delivery, it is possible to choose either the click&collect mode, leveraging a 14-pick-up point network (on a total of 23 points covered by both dark stores), or home delivery.

As is already the case with all its warehouses and with its first dark store, Il Gigante chose the warehouse management software (WMS) of Generix Group also for the 4,000 square meters and 12,500 references of the Bresso facility, thus reconfirming its full confidence in the Group’s solution and in the know-how of Generix’ operations and support teams. Orders of the e-commerce channel are characterized by a considerable heterogeneity of composition, which can be kept fully under control with Generix WMS thanks to the possibility to analyze their contents, allocate them to different preparation methods and then assemble them in unique shipping units for customers.

The management of two dark stores for order preparation against a single front-end portal (SAP Hybris) was an interesting challenge that the project team solved with the adoption of Generix TradeXpress and the set-up of order routing logics.

TradeXpress implementation was also fundamental for interface management: it ensures integration with the e-commerce platform on the one hand and with the tools for preparation of variable weight products and goods collection on the other hand – a total of 20 different interfaces and 5 systems. All dark store operators use radiofrequency terminals with Android operating system for real-time exchange with the WMS of data relating to receiving, picking and inventory operations.

“It’s a great satisfaction for us to be able to support Il Gigante also in this further strengthening of its e-commerce channel, which stands out once again for a high level of innovation in terms of set-up and logistic management, as well as for the quality level of the service provided to consumers. In fact, this project shows well how we work and how we like to work: standing at our customers’ side, making their challenges be our own challenges and helping them preserve their competitive edge by being able to keep the promise that they make to their own customers, every day”, added Loretta Chiantaretto, General Manager at Generix Group Italia.