Watch Now


As e-commerce ramped up, Sauder Woodworking sought technology solution

Ready-to-assemble furniture maker found e-commerce and omnichannel answer with Cleo

Customers of Sauder Woodworking can buy its products on a number of top retailers’ sites, but the ready-to-assemble furniture maker needed to upgrade its technology to accommodate the direct-to-consumer shipping requirements e-commerce demands. (Photo: Jim Allen/FreightWaves)

Customers of Sauder Woodworking are accustomed to finding their ready-to-assemble furniture products in traditional brick-and-mortar stores such as Walmart, Target, Ikea and Office Depot.

But as e-commerce has grown in recent years, the Archbold, Ohio-based company has found it is shipping more items direct to consumers, taking advantage of the omnichannel capabilities of its retail partners as well as e-commerce sites such as Amazon and Wayfair.

“We rely on supply chain agility, end-to-end process visibility and real-time data insights to understand our customers,” Jan Arvay, vice president of IT at Sauder Woodworking, said. “Because providing a personalized customer experience — for all types of customers — both drives us and gives us competitive advantage.”

Prior to the onset of COVID-19 pandemic, Sauder recognized the need to upgrade its technology platform to give it the flexibility it needed to address the omnichannel needs of its 170 global partners. The company processes more than 200,000 transactions each month, necessitating improved technology integration.


Arvay told Modern Shipper that Sauder was deliberate in investigating the proper solution for its needs, eventually settling on Cleo’s ecosystem integration platform, Cleo Integration Cloud (CIC).

The platform allows businesses to self-service their business-to-business integration strategy, use Cleo’s managed services or take a blended approach, which is what Sauder is taking advantage of.

“We looked at all the major players before we made a decision,” she said. “It took us about a year to make a decision. [Cleo offered a hybrid solution where] “we could choose to have their team do customer setups or we could do the setups.”

CIC offers Sauder the chance to continue utilizing electronic data interchanges (EDI), which over 90% of its customers use to send through transactions, but added an application programming interface (API) option, which more and more customers and suppliers are transitioning to.


“With Cleo Integration Cloud we have one cloud-based platform that offers every type of transaction processing that we need, whatever our customers are asking for. We don’t have to build custom solutions or find a different tool,” Arvay said.

Cleo said its CIC platform offers “end-to-end integration visibility across API, EDI and non-EDI integrations that gives users the confidence to rapidly onboard trading partners, enable integration between applications and accelerate revenue-generating business processes.”

Arvay said the e-commerce side of Sauder is really taking off as its retail partners grow that side of their business, and with that came same-day shipping demands.

“We really needed a reliable [and fast] system,” she said. “The Cleo solution was very helpful there.”

Using CIC and its easy-to-use API functionality is also helping Sauder improve data sharing with vendors.

“It was important that we found a vendor platform that offered that,” Arvay added, noting that Cleo’s solution offers full coverage of the data movement within systems, both internal and external, and came with a suite of secure connections to make the entire system operate seamlessly. The result has been improved visibility, better data capture and a single source of information.

Arvay said Sauder benefited because it had already started the deployment of CIC prior to the pandemic, so as shoppers shifted from in-store to online shopping, the company was ready for the surge.

“I’m glad we had it in place,” she said.


Click for more articles by Brian Straight.

You may also like:

Drones are flying into weather data deserts. Can they be stopped?

Navigating COVID-19 shipping chaos: Finding capacity and servicing the customer

Need a warehouse? You may have to wait 9 months

6 Comments

  1. David Yax

    i won the lottery and then people kept on asking me how did i do it, well yea there is a little secrete you all never knew about, i was able to win the 80.000.000 lottery with the help of Dr Dominion lottery winning spell, he gave me number to play and instructed me when to play the lottery and i did as he instructed, my dear friends getting rich is never by luck it’s something we all have to work for, people have been playing same lottery for years now and have never won, we need to be on the right track to get what we want i am saying this here because i want the best for everyone, you can’t win the lottery just like that you need to know exactly what to do, what to play and when to play this is a truth that no one will never tell you, if you want to win big my dear i advice you to talk to Dr Dominion let him guide you on what to do and how to do it with his lottery spell. you can try him

    Email: [email protected]
    website: https://drdominiontemple.com
    WhatsApp: +16574277820

  2. realdocs78

    BUY CDC COVID-19 REGISTERED VACCINATION RECORD CARD AT realdocumentservices.com
    BUY DMV REGISTERED DRIVERS LICENCE ONLINE AT
    WhatsApp: +1 (951) 480-4136
    WhatsApp: +1 (951) 480-4136
    BUY COVID19 VACCINATION RECORD CARD
    BUY COVID19 VACCINATION RECORD CARD
    BUY COVID19 VACCINATION RECORD CARD
    BUY CDC COVID-19 CACCINATION RECORD CARD
    covid19 vaccination card
    BUY COVID19 VACCINATION RECORD CARD
    BUY COVID19 VACCINATION RECORD CARD
    BUY COVID19 VACCINATION RECORD CARD
    BUY COVID19 VACCINATION RECORD CARD
    https://realdocumentservices.com/buy-driving-license-online/
    https://realdocumentservices.com/buy-covid-19-vaccination-card-online/

    https://realdocumentservices.com/buy-driving-license-online/
    WhatsApp: +1 (951) 480-4136
    WhatsApp: +1 (951) 480-4136
    Buy covid-19 vaccine record card online without taking the vaccine

    Buy covid-19 vaccine record card nline, for now, the best way to show that you have been inoculated against the corona virus is a simple white card
    Buy covid-19 vaccination card online
    Covid-19 vaccine record card for sale in USA
    paper COVID-19 vaccination ID is a verified , physical eveidence of your individual vaccination ststus, complete with sophisticated anti counterfeit technology to ensure authenticity and peace of mind

    BUY REAL REGISTERED EU DRIVERS LICENCE ONLINE
    GET EU DRIVERS LICENCE ONLINE
    WhatsApp: +1 (951) 480-4136
    WhatsApp: +1 (951) 480-4136
    We produce verified registered cdc covid19 vaccination cards that can enable you travel or present at your job side on request, Buy regietered covid19 vaccine card at affordable prices without getting vaccinated

  3. Dariusi Paityne

    Buy Genuine CONVID19 VACCINATION CARDS
    We produce digital certificates with your (IHI)
    https://www.passportsservices.com/buy-covid-19-vaccination-card-online/
    We are not doing this for nothing but to save the world’s population against the poisonous vaccine.

    NB: stay away from the vaccine. come to us for your Digital Certificate and any other thing you need as pass concerning this issue.

    We provide International Covid-19 travel certificates, you can travel and work without any problem.

    The Digital certificates we provide to you are all checked online with stickers attached before assigned on to you.

    Email [email protected]

    WhatsApp +1(901)878-9747

    TELEGRAM @Passportsservicese

  4. Amy Livingston

    Life doesn’t get easier, instead we strive hard to make it easy for us and today I’m so happy and glad that my husband is back to himself again after he had turned drinking into a habit. I don’t want to lose my husband for any reason. I was hurt with how our lives just changed and I needed help. I went online to search for help on how I can save my marriage and I came across lots of genuine testimonies about Lord Zakuza that specializes in all kinds of spell casting and I gave it a try to save my own marriage. Lord Zakuza accepted to help me and he cast a spell for me that made my husband reduced his intake of alcohol within 48 hours and within 7 days, he stopped drinking. My marriage was fully restored back with Joy, love and romance and I want to say thank you to Lord Zakuza for helping me. Anyone that needs help can contact him via Call/WhatsApp on this cell phone number +1 (740) 573-9483 or visit his website: Lordzakuzaspells.com or send him an email via: [email protected]

  5. violet barnes

    URGENT EFFECTIVE LOVE SPELL TO GET YOUR EX BACK FAST AND TO SAVE YOUR MARRIAGE!

    My name is Violet Barnes. I want to say a very big thanks to DR PETER for the wonderful work he did for me in helping me to save my marriage, my husband ask for a divorce letter because of the little misunderstanding we had in the past few month, And i never wanted this because I love my husband so much and all our investment was a joint business and I don’t want to be far away from my family and my two lovely kids. My friend told me about DR PETER and how he also helped her with her marital issues, so I had to contact him because I want to stop my husband from completing the divorce letter and I want to keep my family together and after contacting him, I was told what I needed to do and when I was going to start seeing the result, I did as DR PETER has instructed and after 2 days my Husband call me and start asking for my forgiveness and it was all like a dream to me and we are all living happily together again all thanks to DR PETER . Contact Him today for any problem bothering you and he will get them solved for you via Email: [email protected] text/call WhatsApp number: +19844092762
    page: https://web.facebook.com/drpeterspellcaster22
    BLOG: https://drpeterspellcaster22.blogspot.com/
    website: https://drpeterspellcasters.wordpress.com

Comments are closed.

Brian Straight

Brian Straight leads FreightWaves' Modern Shipper brand as Managing Editor. A journalism graduate of the University of Rhode Island, he has covered everything from a presidential election, to professional sports and Little League baseball, and for more than 10 years has covered trucking and logistics. Before joining FreightWaves, he was previously responsible for the editorial quality and production of Fleet Owner magazine and fleetowner.com. Brian lives in Connecticut with his wife and two kids and spends his time coaching his son’s baseball team, golfing with his daughter, and pursuing his never-ending quest to become a professional bowler. You can reach him at [email protected].