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GEORGETOWN CUPCAKEBakes and ships gourmet cupcakes.

Founded: 2008Based: Washington, D.C.Employees: 400Website: georgetowncupcake.com

Sweet taste of

S ince opening their first shop in 2008, Georgetown Cupcake founders Katherine Kallinis Berman and Sophie

Kallinis LaMontagne have seen their business skyrocket. The sisters, stars of the hit TLC series DC Cupcakes, have since added stores in Boston, New York, Los Angeles and Bethesda, Md., as well as a nationwide bakery and shipping center in Sterling, Va.

But business growth is never with-out its challenges. Burdened by ship-ping-related labor time, Georgetown Cupcake switched to UPS from another carrier to help streamline the process and cut labor costs in half.

A SIMPLE RECIPE TO SAVE TIME“The order management process we had previously required us to

Gourmet cupcake retailer Georgetown Cupcake slices fulfillment costs with UPS.BY DONNA BARRETT LONGINO

Georgetown Cupcake’s Sophie Kallinis LaMontagne and Katherine Kallinis Berman

do everything twice,” says Stephen LaMontagne, CFO at Georgetown Cupcake. “We had to print customer orders from our own backend soft-ware and print customer labels from a different system. Then, a person had to match them.”

To complicate matters, a lot of Georgetown Cupcake’s orders are corporate gifts. “We have large com-panies sending hundreds of different cupcakes to hundreds of different customers throughout the country,” LaMontagne explains. “We had to print out gift cards; then, match up all three things – customer order, ship-ping label and gift card – manually.”

UPS analyzed Georgetown Cupcake’s order management process and recommended the company implement OzLINK,® a third-party CH

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ChallengeGeorgetown Cupcake needed to streamline its labor-intensive order management and fulfillment process for shipping gour-met cupcakes nationwide.

SolutionUPS Ready® software, OzLINK,® automates Georgetown Cupcake’s order management and fulfillment process to reduce errors and increase labor efficiency.

Choosing the right technology can make your business more efficient, save money and give you more time to focus on customer service and product development. UPS Ready® solutions are third-party technology products designed to streamline processes, reduce errors and share data across your company, while providing you UPS shipping, tracking and returns functionality.

You can use the UPS Ready program to:l Find approved vendor solutions that fit your particular business needs –

everything from e-commerce order management and fulfillment to ware-house inventory management to accounting/financial solutions.

l Find UPS Ready solutions that will run on a PC-based or Mac-based system.l Be assured that no matter what UPS Ready solution you choose, UPS func-

tionality has already been built in, so you can be up and running in minutes.

Ready, set, solutions!

software solution offered through the UPS Ready® program. UPS Ready gives customers access to third-party tech-nology solutions that integrate with UPS services.

OzLINK streamlined Georgetown Cupcake’s order management and fulfillment operation into a seamless process. According to LaMontagne, “It reduced errors and removed two lay-ers of our old, manual process, which saves a lot of time and labor expense. We had two people sorting through orders and now we have only one person who does that, enabling us to devote more staff to customer out-reach and order fulfillment.”

UPS also eliminated the need to separate air and ground packages since one UPS driver collects both. “Not having to sort packages into air and ground helps our efficiency,” LaMontagne says. “The same UPS drivers service our location and they understand how to handle our product and the uniqueness of a Georgetown Cupcake gift.”

UPS also delivers very personalized customer service to the Sterling cen-ter – something the gourmet cupcake retailer relates to and appreciates.

“Our UPS account representative, Marla Miller, proactively calls us,

particularly during our busiest days, to make sure that packages are getting out, and even comes to our facility during these hectic periods and lends a hand,” LaMontagne says.

PERFECT PACKAGING: THE ICING ON THE CAKE

Georgetown Cupcake began ship-ping nationally in 2009 after the sis-ters discovered that customers were coming into their store, buying cup-cakes and shipping them on their own. Today, the company ships hundreds of packages each day and thousands on busy holidays like Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day.

“When we started shipping nationally, we wanted to recreate the Georgetown Cupcake store experi-ence,” Berman says. The retailer worked with UPS to refine its packag-ing to reduce the weight of each ship-ment by a pound while maintaining the distinct look and quality of the Georgetown Cupcake experience.

“The shipping experience is an extension of our retail experience,” Sophie LaMontagne says. “We wanted a business partner who stays ahead of the curve to help us stay at the fore-front of our industry. UPS really has their pulse on the future.”

For a complete list of UPS Ready Solutions,

visit ups.com/upsready.

ROBUST THIRD-PARTYSYSTEMS INCLUDEUPS FUNCTIONALITY.