Upright Lister is extremely simple to use and incredibly effective. - Kevin Martin, Director of E-Commerce Goodwill South Florida

Before Upright Lister:

• Goodwill of South Florida lacked an end-to-end inventory management system that provided visibility as products flowed from stores to the e-commerce facility.
• Consistency and quality of listings varied, contributing to customer support tickets about items and time spent both reviewing and editing listings.
• Goodwill of South Florida’s process and tool for listing items online was cumbersome, with multiple unnecessary clicks in a complicated user interface.
• Stores were left in the dark on where items were in the online sales process and would often reach out to the e-commerce facility for updates.

Impact From Upright Lister:

• Increase from 50 listings daily per employee to meet internal goal of 70+ listings daily per employee.
• Higher quality and consistent listings from templates led to decrease in customer support inquiries about items.
• Better support and buy-in for e-commerce from retail stores as they gained visibility of items and where they were in the online sales process.
• Increased insight for e-commerce of incoming inventory and feedback loop of items being accepted or rejected to stores.

Background

Goodwill of South Florida is a non-profit organization with 34 retail locations and employs over 3,000 members of the community.   In 2011, Goodwill of South Florida created their e-commerce operation by working with their retails stores to identify inventory best suited for online sales and then sending it to the e-commerce facility to list online to ShopGoodwill.Com. Stores would divert items and manually write a manifest to include with their shipment to the e-commerce facility. Stores lacked visibility of where items were in the process and when they could expect the revenue from the online sale.

With Lister, you’re benefitting from a turbo lister that’s getting you on multiple marketplaces and then above and beyond that, it becomes a dashboard for your main order management system.

Once an item arrived at the e-commerce facility, Goodwill of South Florida faced challenges simply getting an item listed online. “There were multiple unnecessary clicks to get an item listed” and the process to post an item “wasn’t simple” stated Kevin Martin, Director of E-commerce at Goodwill South Florida.  The interface that was being used was cumbersome in terms of adding/editing pictures, required extensive scrolling to fill out the various fields, and lacked templates to guide consistent listings.  Consequently, customer support hours were spent responding to inquiries for incomplete listings.

Upright Lister Overview

Goodwill of South Florida implemented Upright Lister and increased efficiency and consistency of online listings overnight, while also generating better buy in for e-commerce from their stores.  Upright Lister provided a user-friendly interface and flexible listing process to increase the speed, consistency and quality of items being listed online.  Martin added "With lister, you’re benefitting from a turbo lister that’s getting you on multiple marketplaces and then above and beyond that, it becomes a dashboard for your main order management system.  We’re talking about an invaluable tool.”

“The first thing we noticed was the photography” said Martin, who also added “Upright Lister is extremely simple to use and incredibly effective. The ability to customize templates for our staff based on categories has increased our listing efficiency.”

We’re talking about an invaluable tool.

Upright Lister simplified the complicated process to list an item online while empowering employees to increase the number of items listed per day with better quality listings to cut down on support time.  Additionally, the relationship between stores and the e-commerce department benefitted by enhanced visibility and inventory management as items flowed from stores to e-commerce and fulfillment.

Upright Lister “eliminated 99.99% of the where is my widget inquiries” from stores to the e-commerce department, said Martin. Stores saved time creating consistent, digital manifests of items and had a feedback loop of what items were accepted or rejected and why.  E-commerce now had insight into incoming inventory and could provide stores with better tracking of where items were in the online sales process.

Upright Lister eliminated 99.99% of the "where is my widget" inquiry from stores to the e-commerce department.

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About Goodwill of South Florida

Goodwill South Florida, serving Miami, Broward and Monroe counties, is a top 20 employer in South Florida. The nonprofit’s mission is training, employment and job placement for people with disabilities and other barriers to work, helping individuals increase productivity and achieve greater independence. The agency provides disability services to 6,400 South Floridians.

Goodwill engages in a unique social entrepreneurism model that funds mission services and employment for over 3,100 persons.  Although most known for its Goodwill donation centers and retail stores, the organization’s other entrepreneurial businesses include Apparel Manufacturing, Custodial Services and Laundry Services , which train and employ a large number of people, while providing mission funding. Goodwill South Florida is one of the most cost-effective non-profits in the U.S with 96 percent of its budget going directly to programs that are aimed at people with disabilities and other barriers to work.

For more information, please visit goodwillsouthflorida.org or visit us on Facebook/GoodwillSFL or Twitter at @goodwillSFL

About Upright Labs

Upright Labs (www.Uprightlabs.com), based in Washington DC, launched in 2017 with a mission to help Goodwills list more inventory online more efficiently.  Currently, Upright Labs supports Goodwill regions across the country, including many of the G11, with both professional services, Upright Services, and software solutions designed for Goodwills, Upright Lister and Upright Local.

Upright Lister, enables e-commerce divisions to track inventory from donation to fulfillment, while efficiently and consistently enabling inventory to list online to multiple platforms. To-date, over 400,000 items have been listed online to ship to an end consumer.

Upright Local drives traffic from the local community into retail stores with targeted marketing of large, pickup only inventory.  Using the Upright Local app, store employees walk around to photograph, describe and list inventory online to multiple marketplaces.  All transactions take place in the store, driving revenue on traditionally hard-to-sell products, in-store traffic, and donations.