The Dolls House Emporium, as the name suggests, specialises in the design and supply of 1:12 scale dolls' houses, mainly to the collectors market. However, behind the somewhat twee façade, there is a dynamic marketing business with around 90 employees despatching 90,000 orders per annum from their 65,000 sq ft premises.

You may suppose that dolls' houses are a very seasonal product, focusing on the Christmas period. You'd be right, up to a point. But with a sophisticated promotions strategy, The Dolls House Emporium has marketed its way out of making all its money in November and December, only to lose it all again over the rest of the year.

Jackie Lee, the managing director of The Dolls House Emporium who started the company in 1979, is a typical entrepreneur: only interested in the new things and exceptions. The company has, therefore, been developed to run itself using Arx, with as little manual intervention as possible. Everything that can be automated, has been. This way, the rules are set up once, and the system follows them, consistently.

The advantages of this approach are substantial. The opportunities for things to go wrong are minimised, the customers' experience is consistent, and high-quality customer service is maintained. Relying on staff to be “in the know” is not necessary with a system that is set up to make the decisions.

The Dolls House Emporium is self-sufficient with everything taking place on the premises: digital photography, catalogue production, purchasing, sales, fulfilment. The fully-integrated Arx system ensures data flows to all the relevant places without duplication of effort.

Product information is entered once onto Arx: from there it is imported direct into Indesign/Quark Express and placed onto the catalogue page (page by page). Arx converts the prices from RRP to trade price, and from Sterling into Euros and US Dollars. This routine is also used for the preparation of the monthly special offer brochures.

In addition, the dimensions of each product are taken from the product file into the Warehouse Modelling program, enabling space allocated for the product on the pickface to be adjusted continuously according to demand, minimising stock failures. Picking is done by location, in the quickest sequence, so rearranging the stock does not pose any inconvenience to the stock pickers.