Vanderlande Industries Celebrates Urban Outfitters Grand Opening

Local dignitaries held a special grand opening for the new 463,000 square foot Urban Outfitters, Inc. West Coast Internet Fulfillment Center facility in Reno, Nevada.

Attendees of the event included Nevada Governor Brian Sandoval, US Senator Dean Heller, Reno Mayor Bob Cashell, Urban Outfitters CEO, President and Chairman of the Board, Richard A. Hayne. The Urban design/build project is the largest private building project completed in Nevada since 2009. The total investment in the region by Urban was approximately $55 million.

Urban Outfitters’ internet facility is LEED Silver Certified and has more than 450,000 square feet of warehouse space, over 10,000 square feet of office space, an automated state of the art Material Handling System (MHS) and a 24/7/365 data center. As the official supplier of the distribution center’s material handling system, Vanderlande Industries’ President, Ewout Cassee, was also in attendance to celebrate the completion and startup of URBAN’s new facility.

Vanderlande Industries was awarded the $13.7 million design/build contract for Urban Outfitters’ Material Handling System in October 2011. Vanderlande developed a distribution system which utilizes state-of-the-art picking and sortation technology specifically designed and optimized for the Direct-to-Consumer market. With the new system both single piece and multi piece orders can be sorted, consolidated, and shipped in the most cost effective, streamlined method possible. It is a tote based picking and transport system with a capacity of 9,000 individual items per hour to over 600 sort locations. Urban can dispatch up to 25,000 orders per shift with up to 4,300 orders per hour.

The material handling system is managed by Vanderlande’s VISION Warehouse Control System, which is integrated into Urban Outfitters’ Manhattan Associates WMS system. VISION dynamically assigns orders to chutes and directs orders to the appropriate areas for consolidation.

“We preferred Vanderlande because they demonstrated that they clearly understand complex logistics challenges and are able to design appropriate solutions through mixing and matching their proven sub-systems, and provide full scope integration,” says Ken McKinney, Executive Director of Logistics for Urban Outfitters, Inc. “Vanderlande used a very flexible approach and demonstrated a desire to understand our business needs and culture and to provide us with the appropriate end-to-end automated material handling solution that meets our needs. Their engineers took our preliminary conceptual design and substantially improved it, providing increased performance levels and aligning the different elements of the system with our strategic business objectives. ”

About Urban Outfitters, Inc. 
Urban Outfitters, Inc. is a specialty retail company operating under the brands Anthropologie, BHLDN, Free People, Terrain and Urban Outfitters. Urban operates more than 400 stores in North America and Europe and have distribution centers in Lancaster, PA, Trenton, SC and Reno, NV. URBAN’s Direct-to-Consumer sales for all brands combined accounts for approximately 20% of its consolidated net sales of $2.47 billion in fiscal 2012.

About Vanderlande Industries 
Vanderlande Industries is a $1B leading global supplier of turnkey material handling systems for distribution, parcel and post, as well as baggage handling systems for airports. The company offers a complete solution from engineering and design to installation and operations and maintenance services. Vanderlande Industries offers more than 60 years of experience and ranks as the 5th largest material handling supplier in the world. Its North America headquarters is located in Atlanta, GA and serves the US, Canada and Mexico