Posted by Barney Beal, Content Director, NetSuite
When Kris Bryant fielded Michael Martinez’s short chopper down the third base line and threw it to first base, securing the first World Series championship for the Chicago Cubs in 108 years, Eric Castellucci, a lifelong fan, was at home trading texts, emails and group chats with coworkers.
Customers waiting in line outside Wrigleyville Sports to get their Cub's World Series merchandise
That’s because Castellucci, the online marketing manager for Wrigleyville Sports, a Chicago-centric sports memorabilia store located right in the neighborhood where the Cubs play their games, was busy preparing for an ordering rush the likes of which have never been seen.
Cubs fans have gone generations without seeing their hometown team win a championship, so when that final out was recorded, people began flocking to Wrigleyville’s retail store and website for commemorative hats, shirts and more.
“That Saturday night was huge,” Castellucci said. “We just wanted to make sure everything was ready to go. We knew it would be big, but it was hard to tell exactly what would happen.”
With the team working late into the night of Game 7, the last game of the championship, all products were up on the site within two to three minutes of the Cubs win.
“We had hundreds of boxes coming in every day and were trying to get thousands of packages out the door,” Castellucci said.
Normally, Wrigleyville operates its warehouse with a staff of five. For the World Series, they brought in staff from the Philadelphia and Pittsburgh stores, rented a temporary warehouse down the street and ultimately had a staff of 50 managing orders and inventory.
One reason Wrigleyville was able to adapt so quickly was it could take advantage of the flexibility and agility of NetSuite, which was running its inventory management, order management, financials and ecommerce software.
“We had the temporary warehouse arranged after Game 5, by the next day it was up in NetSuite,” Castellucci said. “We were able to easily transfer and receive inventory between the warehouses and the store.”
It was a significant amount of inventory as well. Castellucci estimates the business had about 600,000 pieces of inventory come through. Wrigleyville was able fulfill current day orders by the end of the week.
Wrigleyville was able to meet customer expectations with all of the customer support staff able to see order info within NetSuite.
And while Castellucci still hasn’t run the final numbers with a busy holiday season sure to bring in more business, the Cubs win was historic for Wrigleyville as well.
“What we did in the last month probably matched what we did the rest of the baseball season combined,” he said. “I don’t know how we would have gotten through it without NetSuite and without this inventory visibility.”
Learn More: NetSuite for Retailers
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