Cadet Direct Simplifies Complex Retail Operations with Brightpearl 

When you’re shipping hundreds of orders a day across six websites running on a mix of Magento and Shopify, four eBay stores, Amazon and a trade counter, your operating system must stand up to the pressure.  

For Cadet Direct, the UK’s leading cadet and military clothing and footwear specialist, that stopped being the case. 

The business had outgrown an accounting platform it was using to manage orders. The team was spending more time on workarounds and repairs than actually getting value from it. 

The brand’s Technical Lead, Daniel Baldock, was already convinced that Brightpearl was the solution the company needed and was trying to persuade the company’s directors to take the plunge. 

Then there was a data corruption incident with the old system that cost the company three days of work. It sealed the deal.  

Daniel says:

“We were running into daily issues with our previous setup. If accounts needed to reconcile the banks, everyone else had to drop out of the system, so the warehouse couldn’t pick and customer service couldn’t see what was going on.” 

“We’d known for a while we needed to move, but after the data corruption everyone agreed it was time.” 

 

“We’d seen NetSuite at an expo in London and had a recommendation from our longstanding Magento developer to use Brightpearl, so we were trying to decide between the two.”

“NetSuite was dismissed almost straight away once we discovered the price. Brightpearl being backed by Sage gave us real confidence, and we could clearly see that it was built for complex retail businesses like ours.”

A single system for everything 

As a leading retail operating system, Brightpearl is built for retailers running exactly the kind of multi-channel, multi-company operation as Cadet Direct.  

It brings orders, inventory, purchasing, fulfilment and accounting into one connected system, so teams aren’t moving between disconnected tools or manually plugging the gaps. 

For Cadet Direct, that meant every website, marketplace and the trade counter feeding into one place, with native integrations to its favourite tools, like Warewolf for warehouse management and Shiptheory for shipping, working seamlessly behind the scenes, keeping everything running smoothly.  

The switch was quicker than Daniel expected. Thanks to Brightpearl’s expert-led implementation, they went live in around 90 days. That’s the Brightpearl average, and it’s far faster than the lengthy timelines that come with traditional ERPs, with a much higher success rate, too.  

Daniel says:

“From getting the go-ahead to going live was about 90 days, and then we were up and running. The orders just drop straight in now, it’s amazing.” 

“There’s no logging out to let someone else do something, everyone can access what they need, whenever they need it.”

No more guesswork on stock 

One of the biggest benefits of the switch to Brightpearl has been gaining access to Inventory Planner by Sage. 

The built-in demand forecasting tool uses sales and inventory data to predict what the business will need and when, then turns that into clear buying recommendations. 

Before, planning stock was largely a manual job at Cadet Direct, based largely on guesswork. 

Now the forecasting does the heavy lifting, factoring in past sales and supplier lead times so the team can buy stock with more confidence. 

Daniel adds:

“Before Brightpearl, the purchasing team would have to generate a spreadsheet and make an educated guess. Now Inventory Planner looks at the data and says, this time last year you sold this many, make sure you’ve got this many on the shelf.” 

“It’s really helped with seasonal planning. Remembrance is a big one for us. Around the start of November we sell a lot of uniform and ceremonial kit to cadets and veterans”. 

“Inventory Planner factors in lead time and forecasts it three months in advance. It tells us the right moment to order so we won’t run out.”  

“It means cash flow is a lot smoother, and we’re not holding more stock than we need because Inventory Planner has helped us clear it.” 

 

Automating the everyday 

A lot of Cadet Direct’s day-to-day efficiency comes from Brightpearl’s Automation Engine. It lets retailers set up their own rules, so routine jobs run automatically in the background, with no coding needed. Cadet Direct has built around 60 of them, covering work the team used to do by hand. 

Some handle the back office, like routing orders to the right accounting codes across all channels, which keeps the books straight without anyone touching them. Others handle the customer-facing side, such as adding a free product to an order automatically when it contains a particular item. 

Daniel says:

“They’re all jobs we’d have done manually before, or that one of the bolted-on systems would have done. Now it just runs in the background without us even thinking about it.”

The warehouse has also run more smoothly since adopting Brightpearl. 

The team now picks in batches rather than one order at a time, so a team of six can process up to 350 orders a day.  

Brightpearl only releases orders once all the stock is in, so pickers aren’t stopping halfway through to chase missing items, and product images on their tablets help them confirm the right kit is picked, even with 13,000 SKUs. 

Shipping is joined up in the same way, so dispatch updates in real time and tracking goes out to customers automatically. 

Daniel says:

“The warehouse team are only ever dealing with orders where the stock’s there and good to go, so they’re much quicker.”  

“It’s brilliant to have automated tracking sent out, so we’re not doing dispatch emails every evening or fielding nearly as many ‘where’s my order’ messages.” 

 

Faster answers, happier customers 

With Brightpearl at its core, there’s been a direct impact on customer service.  

Because every order moves through Brightpearl in real time, the team can see exactly where each one is and give customers a straight answer on the spot.   

The team also has a shared real-time view of customer conversations, rather than emails sitting in one person’s Outlook to be forwarded to whoever picks up next. 

Daniel says:

“Now when a customer rings up asking about their order, I can see it straight away and I can say ‘it’s printed, the warehouse is picking it, you’ll get your tracking soon’.” 

“Before, we’d have no idea where it was. It makes a huge difference to our level of service.” 

 

Marching on 

Daniel’s measure of success is simple, and it all comes down to growth, which Brightpearl is helping to deliver. 

Faster, smoother processing means the business can take on more orders without adding staff to match.  

As Cadet Direct has taken on new companies and moved into new product lines, Brightpearl has absorbed the extra channels, stock and locations without skipping a beat. 

Daniel says:

“We’ve been growing consistently every year, and a lot of that is down to Brightpearl.” 

“A Monday backlog of several hundred orders that once may have taken a week to clear is now dealt with in a couple of days, so customers get their kit sooner.”   

“It’s sped up so much of what we do day to day, and freed people up to focus on the things that actually move the business forward.” 

Find out how Brightpearl can help your business grow fearlessly with a free demo.