Hair accessories company Durham Brands has transformed its warehouse operations thanks to a partnership with supply chain technology firm Infios. Together, the companies oversaw a systems overhaul that has helped the fast-growing consumer packaged goods (CPG) firm scale rapidly, improve accuracy, and deliver record-breaking peak-season performance.
All it took was a new warehouse management software (WMS) system. Durham Brands, which goes to market as Gimme Beauty, implemented Infios Warehouse Management (WM) last year, upgrading from a legacy system that relied heavily on manual processes. The transition has helped the company keep pace with its double-digit growth rates of the past five years and position itself for even more growth ahead.
“This strategic move was more than a system upgrade; it was a meaningful shift in how we operate,” Jeff Durham, CEO of Durham Brands, said in a statement describing the project. “We scaled through our biggest volume surge in company history without adding labor, and we improved accuracy and created opportunities to promote from within. The impact continues to compound across the business.”
PICKING UP THE PACE
Durham Brands is a Salt Lake City-based, family-owned business that specializes in hair accessories—bands, brushes, clips, curling products, and the like. The company has experienced more than 30% year-over-year growth for the past several years, supplying major retailers such as Target, Walmart, Kroger, and Ulta Beauty. As the company’s order volumes, SKU (stock-keeping unit) complexity, and warehouse footprint expanded, it outgrew its legacy warehouse management system, which relied on manual processes and disconnected workflows across picking, packing, and shipping, according to company leaders.
As one company manager described it, Durham Brands needed a user-friendly, world-class solution that “could grow with us.”
By switching to Infios WM, Durham Brands was able to introduce system-directed workflows across picking, license plating (a system that assigns a unique identifier—a license plate number or LPN—to a group of items in a container, pallet, or box), lot control, and scanning—all within a unified fulfillment environment. These capabilities eliminated manual steps, reduced the risk of mis-ships, and improved real-time visibility across the company’s warehouse operations.
Specifically, the change allowed Durham Brands to:
- Nearly double facility throughput from 10,000 to 19,000 cases per full-time employee;
- Achieve 98.5% inventory accuracy;
- Record zero audit errors for the first time;
- And reduce a full week’s worth of work to just three days.
The peak-season results were especially gratifying, according to Debbie Johnson, Durham Brands’ vice president of finance, who describes the switch to Infios as “a positive move for the company.”
“We ended up finishing the month at 170% over forecast—the biggest month in the history of the company,” Johnson said in a video case study describing the project. “Realistically, we could not have done it without Infios being implemented at that point.”
What’s more, the system’s intuitive workflows and NetSuite integration have empowered employees across the operation—including a hearing-impaired team member who speaks only Mexican Sign Language (MSL), who now independently manages e-commerce fulfillment, according to both companies.
The system has also enabled better, more strategic decision-making across the business: Durham Brands strengthened inventory control and financial performance by moving to continuous cycle counting and improving lot visibility, enabling more strategic sourcing decisions and generating hundreds of thousands of dollars in tariff savings.
“Durham Brands’ results demonstrate how intelligent supply chain execution can unlock new levels of performance at scale,” Tim Moylan, Infios’ chief growth officer, said in the statement. “The team is now completing a full week of work in just three days while maintaining exceptional accuracy and throughput. This is exactly the kind of continuous optimization and agility modern supply chains require to keep pace with growth.”
Now with a scalable, modern warehouse management platform in place, Durham Brands is positioned to sustain its rapid growth while maintaining high service levels, operational efficiency, and workforce productivity, according to the partners.
And Durham Brands’ automation journey isn’t over yet. Company leaders say they plan to continue investing in automation, data visibility, and scalable infrastructure to support the company’s next growth phase.
