Toyota Material Handling UK and Draper Tools – A relationship built to last
About Draper Tools
For more than 100 years, Draper Tools has been a trusted wholesaler of hand and power tools. The family-owned business supplies over 4,000 tool retailers across the UK and overseas, offering an extensive product range that spans everyday gardening and DIY essentials through to premium tools for specialist trades and professional users.
Facts & Figures
- Company: Draper Tools
- Location: Hampshire, UK
- Industry: Retail & Wholesale
- Solution: 14 Toyota RadioShuttles and high-density racking
Supporting Draper Tools through a changing landscape
Like many businesses, Draper Tools adapted quickly during the Covid-19 pandemic. To support its retail customers as they shifted towards ecommerce, the company launched a dropshipping service that enabled retailers to outsource fulfilment of online orders directly to Draper.
The service was an immediate success and has continued to grow ever since. Today, around 40% of all orders picked at Draper's Hampshire-based national distribution centre are delivered directly to consumers who purchase tools online.
Adapting to a new way of working
The rapid growth of the dropshipping operation presented a new operational challenge.
"Our intralogistics model has always been based on replenishing stock for retailers and distributors," explains Matt Boschi, Operations Director at Draper Tools. "These customers typically order 40 to 45 different line items at a time, and our storage, picking and packing processes were designed around that demand.
"Online consumers, however, tend to purchase single items. We therefore had to rethink our storage, picking and packing strategy to efficiently support ecommerce fulfilment while continuing to provide the high service levels and fast delivery times our retail partners and their customers expect."
As demand continued to increase, it became clear that Draper needed to hold more inventory while also creating additional ground-level picking locations. Crucially, this had to be achieved without sacrificing valuable pallet storage capacity.
Unlocking warehouse capacity
Making better use of the available warehouse space became the key to successfully operating both Draper's Business-to-Business (B2B) and Business-to-Consumer (B2C) fulfilment operations within its 560,000 sq ft distribution centre.
Having worked together for many years, Draper turned to Toyota Material Handling UK to develop a solution that would increase storage capacity, improve operational efficiency and support future growth, without the need for a costly building extension or significant structural changes.
Following a detailed assessment of the site, Toyota reconfigured the warehouse layout and replaced the existing racking with a high-density storage system incorporating Toyota's RadioShuttle pallet storage technology. The solution delivered the additional capacity Draper required while minimising disruption to day-to-day operations throughout the installation.
RadioShuttle: the ideal solution
Toyota's RadioShuttle is a deep-lane pallet storage system designed to maximise both floor space and building height. Its flexible and scalable design makes it ideally suited to operations that require high-density storage while maintaining fast, efficient pallet handling.
For Draper, the solution provided the ideal balance between increased storage capacity and operational efficiency.
"We didn't hesitate when Toyota suggested a solution centred around RadioShuttle," says Matt Boschi.
The technology was already well proven within the business. Draper first introduced Toyota's RadioShuttle system in 2006 and subsequently expanded its use in 2008, 2014 and 2018 before making its latest investment.
"We first deployed Toyota's RadioShuttle pallet storage system in 2006, and it has delivered significant benefits to our business ever since."
Today, 14 Toyota RadioShuttles operate throughout Draper's warehouse, supporting a high-density storage system capable of accommodating approximately 35,000 SKUs across 40,000 pallet locations.
A partnership built for the future
The latest RadioShuttle installation has enabled Draper Tools to significantly increase storage density while improving pallet put-away and retrieval speeds, ensuring the business is well positioned to support continued ecommerce growth alongside its established wholesale operation.
The Results
· Increased warehouse storage capacity without extending the building
· 40,000 pallet locations supporting 35,000 SKUs
· Faster pallet put-away and retrieval
· Efficient support for both B2B replenishment and growing B2C ecommerce fulfilment
· Future-ready, scalable warehouse operation
Summing up the project, Matt Boschi says:
"RadioShuttle has delivered efficiencies to our business for many years. Our latest investment has enabled us to increase the speed of our pallet put-away and retrieval processes, while the exceptional storage density means we are making the very best use of our warehouse space.
"I would not hesitate to recommend Toyota's RadioShuttle solution to any business looking to maximise its storage capacity while improving operational efficiency."