WATCH | Online fashion warehouse where the fur comes on staff pets

27 July 2019 - 10:53 By Khanyisa Tyelela and Nabeelah Osman
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Fifteen seconds to pick each order, peeing in bottles to save time and 60-hour working weeks are all part of the popular view of online retail warehouses, thanks to years of reports about practices at Amazon.

It’s all a bit different at Runway Sale in Woodstock, Cape Town, where hours are flexible and staff can even bring their pets to work.

The seven-year-old company has become one of the country’s top three fashion retailers at the same time as retaining a family feeling.

Runway Sale CEO Karl Hammerschmidt at the company's warehouse in Woodstock, Cape Town.
Runway Sale CEO Karl Hammerschmidt at the company's warehouse in Woodstock, Cape Town.
Image: Khanyisa Tyelela

Not that it’s a mom and pop operation. “We currently have over a million customers signed up. On average, at the Cape Town warehouse facility, 10,000 units are received or sent out daily,” said CEO Karl Hammerschmidt, who founded the company with his wife, Elmien.

Their business model means members get designer garments at affordable prices for limited periods, driving repeat visits to the website.

“Often the product that we have won’t be available anywhere else, for various reasons, and the products on our site are at the price for a limited time,” said Hammerschmidt.

Up to 80% of customers are female, and 60% repeat purchasers. Some members have shopped more than 300 times, choosing from around 500 designer brands. Around 60% of orders originate on mobile devices.

Picking and packing of orders is done by employees using lots of technology. Every day, each member of the picking team is issued with a tablet that has been loaded with a pre-determined, and optimised picking path.

Every garment is digitally tracked from the moment it enters the warehouse until it is in a customer’s hands. “Our competitive advantage lies 100% in our tech, and our people,” said Hammerschmidt.


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