Unparalleled Returns Management for a Live Entertaintment Agency
UNPARALLELED RETURNS MANAGEMENT
Introduction
Based in Buckinghamshire, UK, This company is a major player in the live entertainment industry, specialising in creating immersive and engaging experiences. Their services encompass a wide range of creative and technical disciplines, including:
- Creative Development: They bring ideas to life from character conception to storyboarding.
- Production Design: They design and build stunning sets, props, and costumes.
- Music and Sound: They compose original scores and design immersive soundscapes.
- Performance and Casting: They source and train talented performers.
- Technical Production: They handle lighting, sound, video, and special effects.
- Developing and designing unique merchandise: This involves creating exclusive products that align with the overall theme and brand of the attraction or experience. This could include souvenirs, apparel, collectibles, and other branded items.
- Managing retail spaces: This encompasses the design, layout, and operation of retail stores within the attraction. This includes visual merchandising, inventory management, and staff training.
- Creating memorable guest interactions: This involves developing unique and engaging experiences that connect guests with the brand and characters. This could include meet-and-greets, character dining, backstage tours, and exclusive events.
Their recent projects have included creating and operating a vibrant entertainment venue aboard a luxury cruise ship. Moreover, their clients include some of the biggest names in the leisure and hospitality industry, such as major cruise lines, Holiday Park operators, and fitness chains. With a global footprint, the company has production facilities in multiple countries and offices worldwide, allowing them to deliver world-class experiences to audiences around the globe.
We're incredibly impressed with Prolog's efficiency and professionalism. We've significantly reduced costs and improved turnaround times. They have done an outstanding job and are great to work with!
Challenges
Within this dynamic portfolio, the company frequently supplies plush toys, stationeries, games and accessories to their Holiday Parks. Historically, when goods were returned— needed inspection.These items would be shipped back to the customer’s Holiday Park sites.
At this point, the live entertainment company must dispatch its quality control (QC) teams to physically travel to each Holiday Park to assess the returned items. This meant inspectors needed to be on the move, visiting multiple geographically dispersed locations, resulting in inefficient resource allocation, increased travel costs, and significant time delays.
The complexity of managing returns at numerous scattered sites also introduced inconsistencies in how quickly and thoroughly returned items were assessed. Some goods remained untouched for extended periods, tying up valuable inventory that could otherwise have been refurbished, requalified, and quickly turned back into stock for resale or immediate use in future productions.
The Solution
The company partnered with Prolog to develop a more streamlined and cost-effective returns management process to address this pressing operational challenge. Prolog implemented a returns solution that diverted all returned stock from the individual Holiday Park sites and directly into a centralised warehouse. Within the warehouse environment, a specialised team of our trained QC engineers, fully briefed on the standards of the live entertainment company’s products, conducted thorough assessments to determine if items could be restored to saleable condition. This included:
- Quality Checks
QC checks were implemented as determined by the client. Some of the checks were more involved than others as some have safety elements e.g. swimming buoyancy aids. Meanwhile, some of the others are purely a normal check e.g. for the plush toys.
- Repacking & Ready for Delivery
The plush toys and other products were securely repacked and made ready for resale or sent back to the owner depending upon the condition of the product as assessed by your quality assurance engineers.
By centralising and standardising the QC process, Prolog’s solution effectively eliminated the need for costly travel and on-site inspections. Instead, these trained experts could thoroughly and consistently evaluate the stock under controlled warehouse conditions.
The Outcome
The results of implementing this returns management strategy were significant:
- Cost Savings: Centralising the QC process drastically reduced travel-related expenses and freed up valuable staff time. Instead of sending inspection teams across multiple sites, the staff remained in one location, utilising their time more effectively.
- Enhanced Inventory Turnover: Since items were quickly funnelled into a dedicated QC environment, the interval between return and resale-ready condition was substantially shortened. Products suitable for resale could be reintroduced to stock rapidly, ensuring timely availability for upcoming shows and projects.
- Improved Consistency and Quality: Conducting inspections in a centralised warehouse setting allowed for a standardised and controlled evaluation process. This led to greater consistency in quality checks, ensuring that returned products met the high standards the company’s clients have come to expect.
- Optimised Resource Allocation: The entertainment company could focus its creative and technical staff on more value-added activities by streamlining the returns process. Our client was free from all the demands of on-site QC visits, personnel could concentrate on developing new productions, innovating performance elements, and enhancing their creative services portfolio.
Key Takeaways
Challenges
Previously returned products were sent to customer’s Holiday Park sites. From here, Prolog’s customers had to regularly send staff to every site to quality check and inspect products to assess whether they were saleable. This process was time consuming and costly.
Solution
Outcome
Prolog enabled their customer to achieve significant cost savings while ensuring a large amount of stock was processed for resale in the most time-efficient manner.
