A record breaking Black Friday, without a hitch.

Muscle Nation hit a record 55,000 orders in one day during Black Friday 2020. All without missing a beat, thanks to some integration magic from Patchworks.

55,000

Orders a day during Black Friday

Industry

Fitness Apparel

Site

musclenation.org

We instantly connected with the approach from the Patchworks team – straight talking, get into the detail quickly and work smartly.

Nathaniel Anthony - CEO & Owner

The challenge

Muscle Nation is an ecommerce success story. They launched from a tiny bedroom in 2016, before quickly moving to a 1,700sqm warehouse. And now they’ve even outgrown this space - so they’re building a state-of-the-art 4,000sqm warehouse.

That’s a lot of growth in 5 years.

But behind the scenes, problems bubbled up. Their warehouse and storefronts weren’t talking to each other. Some products were oversold. Some items were mispicked. High traffic launches caused inventory syncing issues.

The growth was massive. But their IT systems hadn’t scaled with that growth.

Uncontrollable growth

This uncontrollable growth caused problems

Stock Issues
Customers were left unhappy when they received the, ‘we’re sorry, your order is now out of stock’ email.
Manual processes
Manual processes in the warehouse - from picking orders, to entering tracking information, were being overwhelmed by the rapid sales success.
Operational expenditure
Overtime and new staff were needed just to keep up. Costs mounted, and profits reduced, as the old ways of working didn’t scale well.
Exhausted staff
And while staff loved being part of an Australian success story, they were sometimes left stressed and exhausted by the sheer workload coming through.

The solution

Muscle Nation quickly realised they needed a more efficient backend to handle the outstanding volume of sales coming through. Enter Patchworks.

We put our integration expertise into practice, and hooked up their Warehouse Management System (Peoplevox) with their storefront (Shopify Plus).

But this was more than a simple plug and play integration. We collaborated with the client to resolve complex issues around bundles, courier challenges and sales order processing.

With Patchworks’ help, Muscle Nation untangled the chaos behind the scenes.

Yet the true test came during Black Friday 2020.

The results

Muscle Nations's sales soared during Black Friday, and the integrations held up.

A record-breaking 55,000 orders travelled through the integrations we built - all zinging along without a hitch.