The user-friendliness of Vitality’s automated warehouse system sets it apart from other cash and carry groups. Rod Addy reports

Nicky Edden, joint MD of Tottenham-based Vitality Group cash and carry, is focused on making life as easy as possible for customers and staff. The next revolution he’s planning is radio frequency identification technology, but the automated picking system already sets Vitality, which specialises in household and personal goods, apart from the crowd.
It’s the kind of well-oiled process you’d expect to see in the warehouse of a major manufacturer such as Procter & Gamble, not a cash and carry, which is why The Grocer decided to take a look.
The set-up is impressive. Vitality’s sole 66,000 sq ft depot is divided into two ground floor areas - one for storage, the other for cash and carry, plus a mezzanine floor for high security items such as razor blades and perfume.
Customers can either telephone in their orders, which can be delivered to or collected by the customer - or they can browse the cash and carry. The area is as well-lit and slick as any average c-store, with clean white floor and walls.
Retailers walk around at their leisure, clocking up the products on the shelves using hand-held scanner guns. The regulars use the technology as if it’s second nature, but staff are on hand to advise new customers. Once they’re finished, they hand their scanners in at the counter, grab a coffee and watch daytime TV while warehouse staff pick their orders. It’s a process that commonly takes half an hour.
The storage area conveys an impression of clinical efficiency. Employees picking the orders use the same scanner technology to locate the products. These are then loaded on conveyor belts and whisked along to the order out bays. Orders are checked off using laser scanning technology and prioritised using a magic eye detection system. Boxes queue up on one belt, like cars at traffic lights, while others glide past.
From there they’re carried to customers’ vehicles or Vitality’s own delivery fleet. Meanwhile, the pickers go straight to the next order. It really is that simple, which is not bad for an in-house system that cost £80,000 to set up 10 years ago, although Edden points out that there have been regular tweaks.
Edden has been involved in the business since he was a child. “My father worked for toiletries supplier Elida Gibbs,” he explains. “During the school holidays I used to go round with him, visiting customers. He was friends with Jeff Clarke, the owner and founder of CBS, which merged with wholesale-to-wholesale business Marsam to become Vitality two years ago. I started work there as a Sunday boy.”
Leaving school at the age of 16, he worked in almost every area, from telesales to buying. Of course, much has changed since the early days of his involvement with the company. Since it was founded in 1950, it has grown into a £47m business, one of the 10 wholesalers bubbling under in The Grocer’s Big 30 league.
The acquisition of Marsam added £11m to annual sales, a boost of more than half at the time. The business has continued to grow, with sales up by 18% in 2004, presided over by Edden and joint MD Gary Rosen, Marsam’s former MD.
Post merger, there have been four planks to the business: cash and carry, delivered pharmacy, delivered non-pharmacy and wholesale-to-wholesale. The company handles products ranging from toiletries to bleaches and kitchen towel and its major customers are small independents, from pharmacists to grocers. The entire wholesale operation shifts more than 32,000 cases of product a day, aided by just nine company-owned delivery vehicles and 14 sub-contracted trucks.
Edden is now poised to give the green light to a £250,000 IT package, Sanderson’s Sword, which will update the existing warehouse management system and is RFID compatible.
In the meantime, he adds: “We will continue to grow off our own back and we will continue to look at more acquisitions. We bought Marsam from our own working capital.
“But our chairman Andrew Deacon is also deputy chairman of Saga and is well-connected in the City, so we’re well placed to raise funding in the future.”