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Harnessing value opportunities

Want value beyond low rates? Pinpoint your needs, then determine what solutions can be achieved for you. That’s how Saddle Creek delivers for two beauty products companies.

GIFT SETS. Individual products are arranged into gift sets for Jurlique USA.
GIFT SETS. Individual products are arranged into gift sets for Jurlique USA.

The answer might lead you to a company that provides a suite of services in much the same way it pointed two beauty products marketers to Saddle Creek Corp.

• Jurlique USA, a developer of organic skin-care products, required both personal attention and turnkey capability as the Australia-based company expanded its business fivefold in five years—without increasing internal warehousing operations.
• A multibillion-dollar global beauty company needed both packaging and inventory control services that could be flexible in responding to long-range product forecasting.

Lakeland, FL-based Saddle Creek, with $210 million in sales, is a giant among integrated service providers. Contract packaging is a fast-growing part of the company. Cliff Otto, company president, says the goal is to double the size of the company’s contract packaging business over each of the next two years.

Packaging operations complement Saddle Creek’s massive warehousing and transportation businesses as a third-party logistics (3PL) provider. The company’s offering of supply chain solutions spans 15 million sq ft of owned and leased space at 32 locations in 12 states, and also includes operations directly in some of its customers’ own distribution centers. Saddle Creek is growing even more through acquisitions, such as the November 2009 purchase of ServiceCraft Logistics.

Saddle Creek’s “ideal customer” wants more from its provider than just packaging services, says Stephen Cook, vice president, marketing and business development. “Our customer wants to be a product manufacturer and marketer, and outsource the rest,” he notes.

Saddle Creek answers the call with plant-to-store manufacturing, cross-docking, and inventorying near the distribution point, where packages can be reconfigured for a specific retailer.

“For a 3PL to be really valuable, they have to be able to provide all those services,” Otto explains during Contract Packaging’s recent visit to the company.

“Then a customer can customize the solution.” When that happens, he adds, steps are removed from the equation, and the benefits fall directly to the customer’s bottom line.

U.S. distribution point

Those benefits attracted Jurlique to Saddle Creek. Jurlique, a marketer of organic skin-care products designed to promote health and well-being, produces its products in Australia. In the U.S., the company markets its products through 14 Jurlique-branded retail stores, about 300 wholesale customers such as spas, and over the Internet. All products pass through Saddle Creek’s Atlanta, GA, distribution center.

Annual Outlook Report: Workforce
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Annual Outlook Report: Workforce
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Break out of the ordinary: see what’s new in packaging & processing!