Get Inspired Doubles Growth with AutoStore

Get Inspired, an online retailer of women’s sportswear with a warehouse situated in Trondheim, Norway, greatly benefited from installing the AutoStore system.

Silje Landsberg originally started the company on the kitchen counter of a small Oslo apartment in 2009. Since then, the retailer has grown in leaps and bounds and still sells fashionable brands for women who enjoy hiking, training, or just an everyday sporty look.

Get Inspired has gone from a one-person start-up to a $50 million online retailer within a decade. It’s a brand without any physical stores and is now one of the top e-commerce sites in Norway.

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Currently, there are 161 companies in the Get Inspired AS corporate family, and the company prides itself on top-class customer service and logistics that ensure fast delivery.

But getting the orders out fast enough to the customers was, for many years, a challenge, Get Inspired Warehouse and Logistics Manager, Vegard Tvervåg, recalls. “We used to do manual picking with carts between the shelves. But that was no longer sufficient.”

The challenge

With the growth they experienced, things got to a point where the Get Inspired team had to choose between moving their warehouse to another country or investing locally in a warehouse automation system.

They chose the AutoStore system, powered by Element Logic, after visiting other warehouses. Seeing the robotic solutions at Stormberg, another outdoor retailer, and Thanke AS, a bookstore distributor, convinced them to go this route.

“The AutoStore system revolutionized the entire warehouse system for our company,” Tvervåg says. He jokes that, pretty soon, customers will receive their products even before they’ve placed their orders online.

Get Inspired had twice won an award for being the best online shop – in 2016 and 2020 when there were 1,400 competitors for the prize.

Benefits of the AutoStore system

Tvervåg lists the many benefits they’ve reaped from installing AutoStore:

• The company has experienced a 100% increase in the production of the number of product lines per day.
• The flow of goods has been significantly improved and delivery time to customers has been reduced by 50%.
• Employees can now achieve much more during work hours.
• The automated system is much more ergonomic, making the work easier for Get Inspired’s warehouse team.
• The system can accommodate massive growth, whether permanent or during peak times (e.g. for orders placed around Black Friday).
• During the pandemic, it’s easy to maintain a social distance between employees in the warehouse. The Robots can work closely together while the natural placement of picking ports allows employees to social distance and focus their attention on measures to prevent the spread of COVID-19.

How the system works

The AutoStore system in the Get Inspired Trondheim warehouse consists of 34 R5 Robots, 54,000 Bins, and 10 CaourselPorts. The warehouse covers 3,300 sqm (35,520 sqf) of space and is manned by 35 employees.

As the company grows, there have been several expansions to the system, without any operational interruptions.

AutoStore works in much the same way in warehouses across the globe. At the Get Inspired warehouse, the Robots move over an aluminum Grid at a rate of about 3 m/s (9.8 ft/s).

They use long grippers to pull up Bins containing goods from below and deliver them to the ports. Each Robot places Bins not required for a particular order in any surrounding space available at that time. Once the Robot has retrieved the right Bin, another moves the displaced Bins back to their original location in the grid.

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Project Specifications

Installation type: Brownfield (Existing site)
Floor space: 3,300 sqm (35,520 sqf)
Robots: 34 R5 Robots
Ports: 10 CarouselPorts
Bins: 54,000
Partner: Element Logic