Umbrella Card Company

Throughout 2005, Aspin has been working with and developing a custom version of AMSolve for the Umbrella Card Company.

The business idea behind Umbrella Card was conceived by John Welsh, whose JWA company located in Pleasley, Mansfield, has for many years been providing warehousing services and delivery logistics for greeting card publishers.

Through JWA’s experience of managing greeting card deliveries to large retail chains like Clinton Cards, John was keenly aware how difficult it was for new or smaller publishers to justify the costs of servicing at store level, particularly when the range of products was small.

To trade with a major greeting cards retailer like Clintons, because of the high number of possible delivery locations, requires a supplying publisher to be able to send, receive and process electronic data quickly and most importantly to react rapidly and efficiently to large multiple delivery schedules.

John Welsh discussed this situation with Clintons, who also were also aware of the problem. From Clinton’s point of view this potential trading-hurdle meant it was not easy for new or smaller greeting card publishers to be market tested and, and critically if successful then ‘rolled-out’ in volume deliveries nationally.

John decided therefore to establish Umbrella Card Company as an independent business which would specialise in co-ordinating deliveries into the Clinton Card Group on behalf of multiple publishers. In this way, by working with Umbrella Card Company to supply a major retailer like Clintons, smaller publishers might achieve at a reasonable cost service standards only available to the larger publishers.

“Everything you need in just one box” is the simple concept that Umbrella Card Co promise, a philosophy as attractive to Clinton Cards as it is to the individual Publisher. Importantly, Umbrella Card does not publish any greeting cards or have any affiliation with other publishers.

From the outset, Umbrella Card’s business aim was to provide this service with the minimum of administrative staff. John Welsh knew that to meet this objective he would require a computer system and IT partner company who were not only already knowledgeable about the greeting card trade, but also had extensive practical experience of Clinton’s IT systems and their data processing requirements.

After evaluating a number of possible computer system suppliers, all of whom claimed experience of greeting cards and Clinton’s supply chain, John decided that only Aspin and AMSolve had ‘off-the-shelf’ solutions, and importantly the in-depth experience, he required

The AMSolve System that Aspin developed for Umbrella Card is now fully operational. What has been delivered is a process and control system able to automatically manage the entire Clinton’s supply cycle, from a Publisher’s initial delivery through to re-provisioning despatches to every Clinton Store.

AMSolve electronically receives each publisher’s stock information which automatically is used to create and maintain Umbrella’s stock data. Umbrella Card in-turn send that received data, now validated, on to Clintons (now called ‘Model Line’) together with another set of control data to the relative Clinton’s Buyer.

Additionally, when integrated displays (that is, displays which are comprised of multiple suppliers cards) are involved, AMSolve also sends information to Carlton Cards who manage Clinton’s displays. Carlton having processed the data, return display / delivery schedules, termed “participations” back to Umbrella Card Co where AMSolve automatically updates each individual Publisher’s display and stock/pocket data. Using the ‘participation’ instructions received from Carlton, AMSolve produces the despatch documentation for each scheduled Clinton’s store.

Subsequently, when display-pockets require replenishing, the Clinton’s BOSS system sends electronic (XML) instructions to Umbrella Card, which the AMSolve software again automatically converts into further stock deliveries. All Umbrella Card delivery documentation, produced by AMSolve, provides each receiving store with barcoded stock delivery data that can be scanned directly by store staff into Clinton’s BOSS computer system.