The Skechers and Unicarriers brands share a long history: in 2002, Unicarriers' original brand Atlet delivered the first six forklifts to the US footwear company, which was building up its European distribution at the time. Today, Skechers' European Distribution Center (EDC) in Liège, Belgium, is 118,000 square meters, almost five times the size it was in 2002, and the brand has become the second largest sports shoe manufacturer in the USA. The Group has also established itself in Europe and has achieved double-digit growth rates in recent years.

In order to accommodate the rapid growth, Skechers has not only expanded its logistics center fivefold, but has also continued to expand its collaboration with Unicarriers. Today, 75 warehouse trucks from the international manufacturer are in use in Liège - from maneuverable pallet trucks to reach trucks for intensive operations. "When we opened our distribution center, we were looking for a reliable forklift supplier with whom we could build up our business activities in Europe. We found this in Atlet back then and are continuing the good cooperation today with the successor brand UniCarriers," describes Bart Geenen, Director of Operations EDC at Skechers.

Hundreds of thousands of shoes per day
Skechers manages multichannel distribution for the whole of Europe from Liège. It supplies large online retailers as well as small retailers and end customers. To ensure that orders are processed efficiently and on time, Skechers operates the warehouse in two shifts and relies on a combination of automated and forklift-supported processes.

PLP and PMR pallet trucks are used for fast loading and unloading of pallets. © Unicarriers

Once the goods arrive from China, Unicarriers PLP and PMR low lift pallet trucks ensure that the pallets are handled quickly in the incoming goods area, thus avoiding congestion in the operational process. The pallets are then transferred to Tergo UMS heavy-duty reach trucks. These take care of feeding the pallets to the correct storage aisles in the narrow-aisle high-bay warehouse. With 118,000 pallet spaces and 40,000 carton spaces for remaining stock, Skechers has created the capacity for a throughput of hundreds of thousands of shoes every day.

Multitasking in the picking area
Skechers achieves a high picking performance through multi-order picking. With the help of PPL low-lift and OP medium and high-lift order pickers, the goods required for different customer orders are first pre-picked. To do this, the order pickers ascend to picking heights of up to ten meters in the 60-aisle high-bay warehouse. The cartons are then transferred to an automatic sorter, which allocates the contents to the individual customer orders. For larger orders, a shuttle serves as a buffer until the entire consignment has been picked.

The automated process ends in the dispatch area and the forklift trucks take over again. UMS reach trucks are usually used to distribute the goods ready for dispatch to the truck loading gates, enabling intensive work with a transport volume of up to two tons. The numerous extensions to the EDC mean that there are loading gates on both the north and south sides. PLP and PMR pallet trucks are used for internal transportation over long distances and for loading the trucks. Some of these are equipped with particularly long forks so that they can transport two pallets at the same time and enable particularly effective work.

Order volume determines the size of the machine park
The months of January to March and June to August are busy at Skechers - that's when the new collections arrive. "We handle 40 percent of our total annual volume in the first three months alone," explains Bart Geenen, adding: "During these busy periods, we need more forklift trucks than usual." This is ensured by a flexible model consisting of leasing, rental and purchased equipment. Skechers purchases the rental equipment for one to three months as required and returns it at the end of the peak season.