Made In Cookware Automates 78% of Wholesale Order Revenue with SPS Commerce Fulfillment

The Challenge

Made In Cookware built its wholesale business fast. Once customers started requiring EDI, the company signed with a provider built for small, emerging brands. It worked, until Made In’s wholesale volume started doubling year over year for three straight years running.

The provider had promised a flexible, automated setup. What the operations team got instead was manual: new trading partner requirements landed on their desk to interpret and configure themselves, rather than a network that already knew how each retailer worked. Transmissions were unstable and unpredictable, which caused delays and chargebacks. Customer service was thin, and the team was largely on its own to resolve issues as they came up.

As Made In added larger retail customers who expected full compliance out of the box, the gap became harder to ignore. The team needed a partner who could absorb that complexity instead of routing it back to a lean staff already stretched by a growing wholesale footprint.

“We were expecting automation, but it was unstable and inconsistent at best. Instead, we got transmission and chargebacks. The customer service wasn’t great, and we were on our own to resolve a lot of the issues including a lot of the day-to-day, highly technical EDI work.”
– Becky Dolenak, Director of Technology, Made In Cookware

The Solution

Made In Cookware moved to SPS and connected Fulfillment directly into its NetSuite. Orders that once required manual configuration for each new trading partner started arriving already mapped to that retailer’s requirements, because the network had already onboarded thousands of suppliers into those same accounts.

“SPS brought the expertise, knowing what our customers need for us to be a successful vendor for them, and helped truly automate our transactions.”
– Becky Dolenak, Director of Technology, Made In Cookware

Since SPS’s Intelligent Supply Chain Network and team of experts already understand what Made In’s retail customers require, onboarding no longer requires Made In’s team to reverse-engineer every vendor guide on its own. Across Made In’s major retail partners, including Crate & Barrel, Macy’s, Bloomingdale’s, Nordstrom, and Williams Sonoma, orders are created, acknowledged, and sent to the warehouse automatically. Made In is currently building out their WMS integrations with SPS to fully automate labels, ASNs, and Invoices, and is already seeing great efficiency gains for their operations team.

For a lean team that does not want technical EDI work eating into its day, that shift matters. The team that once maintained every trading partner relationship by hand now has a standard process for bringing on a new one, and it did not require adding headcount.

Made In is extending that automation further by connecting SPS Fulfillment directly to its warehouse management system, generating shipping labels and submitting ASNs automatically instead of through a separate manual step. That integration is running with four trading partners today, and the team estimates it could save the broader organization up to 100 hours of work each week as it expands to more partners.

The results

SPS now creates 62% of Made In Cookware’s bulk wholesale orders, work that used to mean entering data by hand from vendor portals and emailed purchase orders. Those orders represent 78% of the company’s bulk wholesale order revenue. Acknowledgements, ASNs, and invoices go out to trading partners with minimal touchpoints.

“It unifies everything. When an order hits SPS, it processes correctly, our warehouse has it, and the team already knows the requirements — no more digging through documents to figure out what’s next.”
– Becky Dolenak, Director of Technology, Made In Cookware

Made In’s team spends less time troubleshooting a process that should have worked and more time preparing for what comes next. Wholesale volume has doubled year over year for three straight years running, and the team plans to keep pace.

Made In is also moving its dropship business onto SPS to consolidate its EDI providers, extending the same automation to that side of the business.

Lessons Learned

Becky Dolenak’s first year rebuilding Made In Cookware’s EDI foundation taught her a few lessons worth passing on to other operations leaders scaling wholesale fast.

1. Get specific about what “automation” means before you sign. The word gets thrown around a lot, and it can mean very different things to different providers. Align on that definition before day one, not after go-live, so you know exactly what will run itself and what will still land on your team.
2. Ask about hidden costs up front. There are a lot of hidden costs in the EDI world, and not every provider is transparent about them. Find one that is clear and upfront about pricing before you sign, not after you are already dependent on the connection.
3. Look for a partner that works well with your existing tech stack and warehouse setup, not just your budget. Made In runs lean by design, and the team does not want technical EDI work eating into the day. The right partner lets the day-to-day run itself, so people can focus on the work that actually needs them.

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