S&S Activewear Is On The Cutting Edge Of Warehouse Automation

Forbes

13-06-2025

S&S Activewear, a leading North American distributor of imprintable apparel and accessories, implemented a solution from Geek+ called PopPick. Warehouse robotics is going through an ongoing revolution. PopPick represents a new wave of flexible warehouse automation.
Founded in 1988 and headquartered in Bolingbrook, IL, S&S had revenues of $4.1 billion in 2023 following the acquisition of alphabroder, another leader in the branded merchandise industry. S&S ships more than 100 brands. Their 17 distribution centers, scattered across the US, have more than 4 million square feet of warehouse space, allowing them to offer next-day shipping to 41 states. If an order hits their warehouse by 5 pm, they will ship it out that day. The freight is free on orders over $200.
The company fulfills 6 million orders annually and claims to offer the deepest inventory in its industry, combined with the lowest error rates. Their investments in automation have been key to this.
A small order, for example, might consist of delivering 20 jerseys of the same color and basic design, but different sizes, that will be sent to a customer in the imprinting industry. The imprinter will print and decorate the apparel - t-shirts, hats, sweatshirts, socks, etc. - and then ship to the end user. Some imprinters can have very large orders that support concerts, marathons, trade shows, and other events.
So, while in some ways the S&S supply chain resembles an e-commerce supply chain in terms of speed of delivery, an e-commerce order is smaller, typically involving picking onesies and twosies.
Traditional warehouse automation was bolted down. There might be miles of conveyors with sortation, A-frames, carousels, or shuttle systems. John Santagate, the senior vice president of global robotics at Infios, points out that when warehouses with this bolted-down automation were designed to support multiyear growth, initially, the automation had greater throughput than was needed. Then, there was a period, often a relatively short period, when the throughput was a good match for shipments, and then, eventually, the throughput was insufficient. Adding more throughput is unwieldy and impractical. So, for most of the asset's life, it is underutilized.
Infios, where Mr. Santagate is employed, is one of the largest warehouse automation system integrators.
Warehouse robotics was revolutionary because it allows for greater throughput and flexible automation. Goods-to-person robots are used to move small racks containing inventory shelves to a picking station. A typical rack was small. It might be a short rack with four shelves on one side and four on the other. This is the primary type of robotics used in Amazon warehouses.
For each picking, this eliminates the redundant walking of the order selection workers. Compared to manual picking, the throughput is improved by a factor of 2 to 3 times. But this form of automation is also easy to install. It is nondisruptive to existing operations to add new robots and shelving as the throughput needs increase.
S&S implemented the PopPick solution from Geek+ Automation. This represents a new wave of automation. These X, Y, Z-axis robots transport much taller racks - up to 12 columns of totes - that contain full cases of a stock keeping unit. An arm with suction can grip a case or tote, pull it out, and ergonomically present it to a worker at an order selection station. Larger orders are easier to assemble, and warehouse storage density is many times larger than with the first-generation goods-to-person bots.
S&S has the largest implementation of the PopPick solution in the world. 100 to 200,000 square feet of racking have been replaced at five distribution centers – Lockport, IL, Reading, PA, McDonough, GA, Reno, and Dallas – with mobile robots and racks. At the 750,000 square foot Lockport DC, for example, 200,000 square feet are now devoted to 350 PopPick mobile bots, 3000 automated racks, and 120,000 customized blue totes.
The company was looking for automation. It is increasingly difficult to find workers willing to work in a warehouse. But what type of automation should they select?
Brian Tanquary, the vice president of information technology at S&S, said that one of 'the key decision factors that was used in selecting an automation solution was obviously the cost to implement, but it was also about how could that system fit within our current distribution footprint, and could that solution be adapted to work with our custom ERP platform.'
This solution is an excellent fit for apparel. An order to support a sports team might include two extra smalls, three smalls, 15 mediums, etc. These different SKUs are in different totes. Only a few SKUs would be brought over by a robot carrying a small rack. But PopPick allows for big racks – racks with up to 40 totes - to be brought to the picker. All the SKUs to complete the order are conveyed by one mobile robot.
The racks are reslotted every night to include SKUs likely to ship together. The same style and color of goods are placed on one rack. That leads to a more efficient delivery of racks to associates the next day.
Adam Kranich, an assistant operations manager at S&S, said that flexibility and productivity were both critical. One of 'the unique benefits of having PopPick is the ability to reslot and change your rack configurations on the fly, but it also offers an increased throughput that you won't get with standard goods-to-person. Our entire process has changed. Our associates went from spending 50 to 60% of their day driving around to the pick location instead of actually performing the job.'
Now robots do that. The workers have the work all lined up for them. They pick orders right into outbound boxes, and thus the downstream packing process has been streamlined. Cole Lohman, the director of automation, stated that 'in the past, we would see pickers work at 40 lines per hour, and we can get triple that. Now, under good conditions, we can see pickers that pick up to 200 lines per hour.'
Picking accuracy has also been improved because of the way the system was implemented. Mr. Tanquay explained that we 'weigh and measure the totes as they're being inducted into the system. This is a key checkpoint for us to ensure that we have the proper quantity and type of product in each tote. That helps us ensure that we get the correct product to the customer.'
The way product is inducted into the system is unique. Induction is putting goods into empty totes that will subsequently be picked. The process has been streamlined. Empty totes are extracted from the top of the rack while full totes are fed into the lower levels of the rack almost simultaneously. A multistep process has been simplified.
There have also been improvements in the speed with which new employees can be trained. Mr. Kranich said training 'went from upwards of 90 days to six months, down to about a week to two weeks.' The company believes that the simplified picking process, the fact that the workers don't have to walk as much, and improved ergonomics has also led to improved worker retention.