With its distribution center lease set to expire and facing rising West Coast leasing costs, women’s fashion brand Cabi Clothing (cabi) embarked on a DC relocation journey in early 2024 that yielded big results in short order. In just two years, the California-based fashion business has retooled its distribution and delivery processes and is now getting orders to customers nationwide and overseas faster and more efficiently than ever before.

Cabi did it by moving the company’s West Coast DC to the Midwest and adding automation that has helped streamline workflows, reduce associate training time, and ease staffing constraints.

The company partnered with supply chain consulting firm Alpine Supply Chain Solutions and systems integrator Systems in Motion to tackle the problem, completing a market assessment, DC relocation plan, automation analysis, and new facility opening in just 12 months, followed soon after by the implementation of automated warehouse equipment that now has the new DC—located in Indianapolis—humming along.

“We came to Alpine in January of 2024 saying our lease was expiring in a year and it was time for us to do a market assessment” to determine the next steps for upgrading the fulfillment network, explains Greg Abel, cabi’s chief operating officer. “Now we are fully operational [in Indianapolis], with a hum to it.

“Whether this had opened six months ago or six years ago, you wouldn’t know the difference.”

GROWING PAINS

Cabi does business through independent sellers, called stylists, who work with clients across a mix of in-home and online experiences—primarily via hosted gatherings called “shows.” The company was founded in 2001 in California and has grown steadily, now delivering to customers across the United States and Canada, and in the United Kingdom. Abel says the company’s logistics operations were experiencing growing pains as a result: Demand for fast delivery made it difficult, and costly, to serve that growing client base from a single West Coast DC; the seasonality of the business means that inventory changes quickly, further complicating fulfillment; and the rise of e-commerce has led to increasing pressure for on-demand orders—those placed after or outside of a hosted event.

After examining several options—including adopting a multifacility network and potentially working with third-party logistics service (3PL) providers—the partners decided that a single, centrally located DC was the best answer to those challenges. But company leaders would need to move fast to avoid any disruptions to cabi’s highly seasonal business.

MAKING THE SWITCH

Cabi launches two main collections per year, so the DC needs to be stocked and ready to ship well in advance of those introduction dates. Inventory must be in place by late November to meet the January launch date and by late May to be ready for the July launch. Cabi’s move to Indianapolis needed to be done by the fall of 2024 in order to meet the first collection launch date.

The partners did just that: They leased a 125,000-square-foot facility in central Indianapolis that was staffed and ready to receive inventory by the November 2024 deadline. Although the central location of the Indianapolis facility would do much to reduce fulfillment and delivery times, the partners also made process changes to boost productivity and efficiency. For example, picking and sorting were streamlined to reduce the multiple “touches” involved in filling orders. The California DC, for example, had used a discrete order-picking process, in which workers picked individual items—per show or host—from warehouse shelves into totes. The totes were then taken to a pack table, where the items were manually sorted to fill individual orders that would be delivered directly to each host’s show attendees.

In Indianapolis, cabi has spread out that work, treating picking, sorting, and packing as three distinct operations: Items are picked in batches according to stock-keeping unit (SKU); those items are then distributed to one side of a put-to-light wall and sorted into cubbies; and finally, workers on the other side of the wall pull items from the cubbies and place them in boxes for individual orders. Systems in Motion automated the process—designing and building the put wall; integrating a new warehouse execution system (WES) powered by its KOZ automation software; and adding a conveyor system to move completed packages from the pack station to the delivery docks.

Among the immediate benefits of the new system: Abel says cabi has increased its picking velocity and reduced the risk of human errors.

SETTLING IN

The facility and process changes have improved customer service and delivered savings for cabi—in leasing expenses, but also thanks to productivity and workflow improvements.

One of cabi’s biggest headaches prior to the move was the difficulty of flexing up and down to meet seasonal staffing requirements, which it did by hiring temporary warehouse help to manage peaks. The manual workflows in the West Coast facility made that difficult. Abel says the process changes and automation in Indianapolis have allowed cabi to maintain a more consistent headcount during both peak and nonpeak periods.

“[The new process] has done a couple of things for us: On the internal fulfillment side, we can maintain a much steadier headcount during peak and nonpeak, allowing us to execute a more consistent experience,” he explains. “And the sorting piece has allowed us to train and onboard team members [faster]. It’s allowed us to move with accuracy very quickly.”

As of November 2025, Abel said cabi was seeing double-digit improvements in productivity and reduced transit times. For example:

• The time from order receipt to delivery improved by 30%.
• Transit times improved by 40%.
• Pick line productivity was up by 50%.
• Demand for temporary staffing was down considerably: In California, the company typically flexed up by about 40% to meet peak demand; in Indianapolis, the company adds about 15% to its headcount to accommodate peak.

On top of all that, Abel says the changes allow cabi to respond faster to clients’ on-demand fashion needs—now and down the road.

“This facility change really served as a springboard for several growth initiatives we wanted to launch,” Abel says. “But we wanted to address the bones of our operation first.”

The new DC gives cabi the agility to do just that.