Merchants / Hello Adorn

How a Handmade Jewelry Brand is Saving $300K/Year After Switching ERPs

Key Results

$300K
Annual savings
Year-over-year shipping cost savings after switching to Fulfil
$60K+
Recovered inventory
In forgotten raw materials found and accounted for during ERP transition
Zero disruption
Peak season launch
Launched mid-August, straight into Black Friday and Cyber Monday

Products Used

I never experienced such a smooth ERP transition. From the moment we launched, there was no disruption to our day-to-day.

Peter Kephart
Director of Operations, Hello Adorn

Hello Adorn is a handmade eCommerce jewelry company based in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. They run their operations on Fulfil, a Shopify ERP built for DTC and multi-channel brands. Everything is made by hand, 15 makers on the production floor turn out 4,000 to 5,000 pieces of jewelry every week, primarily producing gold-filled and silver jewelry. They sell through Shopify, Faire, TikTok Shop, and their own retail store, and they're expanding into Shopify B2B. The company started in the kitchen of founder Jess's house and has grown to 50+ employees.

Peter Kephart, Director of Operations, oversees supply chain, fulfillment, and production. He comes from a data analytics background and has worked across industries, automotive (Oracle), healthcare (EHR systems), and Fortune 500 operations, before joining Hello Adorn.

View video transcript
I'm the Director of Operations for Hello Adorn. We're an e-commerce jewelry company in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. Everything's handmade. We have currently 15 makers on our production floor that are handmaking typically gold filled and silver jewelry five days a week. We do some made to order, we do build to stock as well. We're returning four to 5,000 pieces of jewelry a week. Everything for our finished goods and raw materials can fit on a 600 square foot area, because it's jewelry, it's very small pieces. We utilize Shopify, Faire, TikTok. We're getting into Shopify B2B. We have a retail store as well, on site with our production facility, all internal marketing. Hello Adorn started in the kitchen of our owner Jess's house and they started with just her and her husband and then they had grown to 50 plus employees in a relatively short time. Blew up right during that COVID time when e-commerce was really booming and you haven't looked back. Previously, we utilized an MRP system. We switched to the ERP system with just the volume that we were doing. The size of business, being able to have better control of our inventory. As operations, I oversee the supply chain, fulfillment, production. Everything integrated with Fulfil super easy. Our customer service platforms, Gorgias and Yotpo, we were able to integrate with Fulfil. Our logistics times greatly improved. And we launched mid-August, right into our peak season. Starting a new job and launching a new ERP system going right into peak season, I was a little bit worried. But from the moment we launched, there was no disruption to our day-to-day. We were able to keep trucking, keep doing what we're doing. We had a bigger Cyber Monday and Black Friday than we ever had. And that was partly due to Fulfil, we were able to sell against our buildable inventory, sell against the raw materials that we had and the team that could build it that next week. Previously we were selling to stock always and we'd have to forecast. We were at 20% growth year over year for the last five years, trying to forecast trends. Jewelry is very trend heavy, the jewelry that people want to buy in November is different than what they wanted in August. Being able to sell against buildable is huge. We saw record sales this year and we also really leaned up our holdings too. That was a big goal when I came in, how can we be more efficient with what we're holding? And it just inherently did that because now we're making what we're actually selling and we're not building things that we're going to sit on for a long period of time. I never experienced such a smooth ERP transition. A year in, and it's been very good. I have quite a background. I used to be in the automotive industry utilizing Oracle. I actually helped open up a chiropractic office with my wife, implementing a couple of different EHR systems. I even worked with a major Fortune 500 company that was in the midst of shifting software when I was there. With Fulfil, if I send an email, I get an email back the same day. If we had a question, we were getting a response within 24 hours. Having somebody come from Fulfil on site for the week was huge as well, being able to ask questions in real time, walk through SOPs, help develop those SOPs in real time. And a lot of times you launch and then you're forgotten about. With Fulfil, the last nine months we have bi-weekly communications. Team members are submitting questions on the daily and we're getting responses in real time. We were shipping and using Shopify previously, going in and creating individual shipments in batches. There's really no rhyme or reason to the batches within Shopify. With Fulfil, we were able to put different rules and different automations in place. Our most popular item, our tiny twist, we'll have 15 different shipments that are all those tiny twists, and somebody can rip through that in 10 minutes versus hours before, because now it's just the same thing over and over versus having a mix of different items in each batch. During peak season we had a lot of seasonal help that just doesn't know the product. We can put them on one or two items and hand them the items. Put this one item in the box, put it in the bag, go. So just being able to scale for that peak time was extremely important. I come from a data analytics background. I started utilizing the data warehouse with Excel, building out reports and doing data dumps into built-out Excel spreadsheets. That worked really well. But within the last month we added Claude connections to Fulfil and my gosh, it's a night and day difference. You type in, hey, pull this data from Fulfil, and it does, and you can generate great reports, great dashboards that we can share with the team. Now I'm not spending a lot of time in Tableau or trying to create these different presentations. It's just: give me this data, get it into this format, and I have it within minutes versus hours. With our supply chain, having visibility to inventory is greatly improved. We previously used Katana, an MRP system that was specifically built for jewelry. It worked fine at small scale, but going to a fairly big scale, retail space, warehouse, 1099 contractors across all of that, Fulfil made it extremely helpful. Each day I'm able to check where we're sitting on different inventory levels. We launched a lot of new products. We also retire a lot of products. And we were able to find over $60,000 worth of raw materials that we were no longer using, because Fulfil was able to present them in such a way, these materials are just kind of in limbo right now. Now we have a plan for those materials and we can get better cash flow back into the business. With jewelry, $60,000 worth of materials doesn't take up a lot of space. It could be in one drawer. It was set aside and not entered into the MRP system correctly. Somebody's going to forget about it. But when doing that transition with Fulfil, we were able to get everything in correctly and have better visibility across the board. We recently shifted to Shippo and I know Fulfil has a really good connection with Shippo. So that made it super easy. We were able to start rate shopping and that's going to be huge savings for us. Year over year we should see $200,000 to $300,000 in savings. From my point of view, I'm really looking at the EDI side of things. I would love to have EDI. That would allow us to run leaner on our holdings, especially selling against buildable, having that real-time understanding of what our vendors are holding. As soon as we get that information, it sounds like it's going to be plug and play. We're buying a lot domestically and can get anything within 24 hours, so that would allow us to be even more agile. The Claude connection, I'm probably a month into it but every day I'm going to town on that. It makes it so user-friendly. All of our leads are into it and it's made their expertise within Fulfil that much better. I've been doing a big analysis on our inventories. We have over 300 different products, over 4,000 different SKUs. Trying to nail down our A, B, and C, not just units and profitability, but lead times from suppliers, production lead times, and because we do a lot of handmade work, the skill set of each maker is different. So how do I line up our forecast to our A, B, C sales and tie that to future production planning as well as efficiencies on the production floor? You can ask it anything and it spits it out. We're looking at barcoding next. That's the next big thing with Fulfil we're moving to. It's going to take a little more clicks to start, but switching to barcoding is going to connect our inventory, production, and fulfillment teams to get everything out in a smooth, clean manner. And returns, when we get returns back, there's no barcode right now. We're having somebody open a package, figure out what it is, and enter it back in manually. Barcoding is going to be a huge time saver. Partnerships been great. I absolutely recommend Fulfil.

Why Hello Adorn Switched from Katana to Fulfil

Hello Adorn had been running on Katana, an MRP system. At small scale it worked fine, but as the business grew to 50+ employees, a retail location, multiple sales channels, and 1099 contractors, the limitations became real.

"Going fairly big scale, retail space, warehouse, 1099 contractors across all of that, Fulfil made it extremely helpful," says Peter. The team needed an ERP built for jewelry brands that could handle the full picture: production, inventory, fulfillment, financials, and integrations, all in one system.

The move from an MRP to a full eCommerce ERP for manufacturing wasn't just about features. It was about control. With volume growing at 20% year over year for the past five years and jewelry trends shifting faster than any forecast can track, Hello Adorn needed a system that could keep pace.

See related: What an ERP Should Actually Do for Your DTC Brand in 2026

Launched Mid-Peak Season. Zero Disruption.

Hello Adorn went live on Fulfil in mid-August, right at the start of their peak ramp-up heading into Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Peter was new to the company. Both the ERP and the Director of Operations were starting from scratch at the same time.

"I was a little bit worried that there's a lot of changes happening," he says. "But from the moment we launched, there was no disruption to our day-to-day. We were able to keep trucking."

The result was their biggest peak season yet. Part of that was down to a capability they didn't have before: selling against buildable inventory.

Selling Against Buildable Inventory Drove Record Sales

Before Fulfil, Hello Adorn sold to stock. They'd forecast demand, build inventory, and hope the trends aligned. With jewelry changing as fast as it does, that approach meant either building things that sat, or missing trends entirely.

With Fulfil's manufacturing and inventory management, they shifted to selling against buildable inventory, listing products based on raw materials on hand and production capacity, not just finished goods sitting in a bin.

"Being able to sell against buildable is huge. We saw record sales this year and we also really leaned up our holdings too. Now we're making what we're actually selling and we're not building things we're going to sit on for a long period of time."

It's a meaningful shift for a business that produces 4,000 to 5,000 pieces a week in a 600-square-foot space. Less guesswork, less overstock, more cash flow.

Fulfillment Time Cut from Hours to Minutes During Peak

Previously, Hello Adorn was creating shipments through Shopify without any real batching logic. Each batch was a mix of different products and different SKUs, workable at low volume, slow at scale.

With Fulfil's Warehouse Management System, they set up rules so that orders for the same item get batched together. Their most popular product, the Tiny Twist, would generate 15 shipments in a single batch, all the same item, same pack-out.

"Somebody can rip through that in 10 minutes versus hours before, because now it's just the same thing over and over."

That consistency also made it possible to bring on seasonal help during peak without a long onboarding curve. Put this item in the box. Put it in the bag. Go.

See related: ERP Automation for DTC Operations

$60K in Forgotten Raw Materials Found During the Transition

When Hello Adorn migrated their data into Fulfil, they did something they'd never been able to do cleanly in Katana: get a clear picture of every raw material in the building.

What they found was $60,000 worth of raw materials that had been set aside, not entered correctly into the old system, and effectively forgotten.

"With jewelry, $60,000 doesn't take up a lot of space. It could be in one drawer. It was set aside and not put into the MRP system correctly. Somebody's going to forget about it. But when we did that transition with Fulfil, we were able to get everything in correctly and have better visibility across the board."

That inventory is now accounted for, planned against, and generating cash flow instead of sitting in a drawer.

$300K in Annual Shipping Savings With Fulfil and Shippo

Fulfil integrates directly with leading shipping carriers, enabling rate shopping and label generation without leaving the Warehouse Management System. For merchants who want access to an even broader carrier network, Fulfil also integrates natively with Shippo, bringing Shippo's carrier rates directly into Fulfil's fulfillment workflows.

Hello Adorn took advantage of that integration, and the transition was overnight with no disruption and no reconfiguration. Everything still runs through Fulfil's WMS. This enabled Hello Adorn to realize $300K in annual shipping savings with Fulfil and Shippo.

Claude AI + Fulfil MCP Replaced Hours of Tableau Work

Peter has a data analytics background. When he first joined Hello Adorn, he started building reports the way he always had, pulling data warehouse exports into Excel, manipulating them manually, and building out dashboards.

That worked, but after connecting Claude AI to Fulfil via the Fulfil MCP, everything changed.

"My gosh, it's a night and day difference. You type in what you need, it pulls the data from Fulfil, and you can generate great reports and dashboards that we can share with the team. Now I'm not spending hours in Tableau trying to create presentations. I have what I need in minutes."

The team is now running A/B/C inventory analysis through Claude, pulling in unit velocity, profitability, supplier lead times, production lead times, and maker skill sets to build production plans that actually reflect how their floor works.

"You can ask it anything and it spits it out."

See related: Claude Skills for eCommerce Operations

Everything in One Place: Shopify, Faire, TikTok Shop, and Retail

With Fulfil as their central operating system, Hello Adorn manages Shopify, Faire, TikTok Shop, and their on-site retail store from a single multi-channel eCommerce ERP platform.

The shift from backward-looking weekly meetings to forward-looking decision-making has been one of the less obvious benefits.

"Before Fulfil, I feel like we had a lot of weekly meetings where we were looking back at the past week and not really making decisions off of that. Now that everything's rolled up in one, we're able to look at it and clearly make decisions about how do we make changes going forward. E-commerce is always changing, if we're not able to make those decisions for a month, three months, a year out, we can get stuck."

ERP Implementation and Support: A Fortune 500 Veteran's Take

Peter has implemented software across multiple industries, automotive ERP at a Fortune 500, Oracle, EHR systems at a chiropractic startup. He's seen what enterprise software support looks like at different scales.

"With Fulfil, if I send an email, I get an email back the same day."

Having a Fulfil team member on site for a full week during implementation meant seeing the physical operation firsthand, walking the production floor, and applying 10+ years of eCommerce operations experience to help build SOPs that actually fit how Hello Adorn works.

A year in, Hello Adorn still has bi-weekly check-ins with a dedicated Merchant Success Manager. Team members submit questions daily and get real-time responses. No waiting to find out if a ticket was received.

"A lot of times you launch and then you're forgotten about. That hasn't been our experience at all."

See related: Why We Visit Merchants Onsite: Real Impact Beyond the Screen

What's Next: Barcoding and Returns Automation

Peter is tracking several near-term improvements to Hello Adorn's operations, both enabled by Fulfil:

Barcoding on the production floor will connect inventory, production, and fulfillment with fewer manual touches, reducing reliance on human data entry and bringing further efficiencies across both production and fulfillment with scan-based accuracy end to end.

Returns automation will eliminate the current manual process of opening packages, identifying products by sight, and entering them back into the system one by one.

Each of these is a step toward the same goal: more visibility, fewer clicks, and a production floor that can scale up for peak without scaling up the complexity.

See also: ERP for jewelry and accessories brands

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