Sustainability Starts Inside the Box

Altitude Sports, based in Montreal, Canada, has been in business since 1984, offering durable outdoor apparel and equipment from hundreds of well-known brands.

In 2008, the company began transitioning to e-commerce only as its website's popularity outpaced brick-and-mortar stores. Now, Altitude Sports has embraced its identity as a 100% online retailer and, as a B Corp-certified company, is on a mission to become a sustainable e-commerce leader in Canada.

As Altitude Sports' business model evolved, they experienced significant growth, shipping over 1.2 million orders in 2023 (April 1, 2022 - March 31, 2023). However, this fully e-commerce approach also brought challenges, particularly with increasing transportation costs.

“Being 100% e-commerce, logistics costs are significant for us. We can control these transportation costs by increasing fill rates and optimizing the volume in our boxes. This benefits everyone, from Altitude Sports and our carriers to the environment and our customers,” said Francis Lapointe, Logistics Manager at Altitude Sports.

The Packing Challenge

Shipping a large volume of lightweight products, such as apparel, created a unique challenge. Altitude Sports often experienced DIM weight charges due to the empty space inside the box rather than the actual weight of the items shipped. Recognizing the need for a more efficient packing solution that could adapt to their needs, they turned to their long-time partner Deposco.

Together, the companies integrated Paccurate's packing intelligence platform to address Altitude Sports' specific packing needs, reducing transportation costs and increasing efficiency. As a Paccurate Enabled™ partner, Deposco facilitated advanced 3D cost-aware cartonization through seamless intergration.

Parcel Packing Intelligence

Altitude Sports quickly saw results after implementing Paccurate's entire platform. At the heart of their success is PacAPI, the cartonization engine that determines the right-sized box or mailer based on item dimensions and specific packing rules. These rules ensure SKUs with specific characteristics, whether fragile, foldable, or compressible, are always packed accordingly.

For Altitude Sports, this flexibility is a game-changer. Many of their products can be folded or compressed to optimize packing. Resources, a key tool within the Paccurate platform, allows users to save components of an API request that cannot be saved or easily manipulated within a customer’s system of record.

By implementing packing rules in Resources such as alternate dimensions, foldability, compression, and exclusions, Altitude Sports saw a significant increase in fill rates.

“We launched with Paccurate in October, and our fill rates have already increased by 6%. We’re already seeing this upward trend continue through November,” said Lapointe.

Beyond increasing fill rates, PacAPI tailored the packing process to accommodate Altitude Sports’ negotiated shipping rates for every order. This ensured each order was packed in the most cost-effective way, proving especially beneficial for international shipments where optimizing volume directly impacts transportation costs.

“There is a significant impact on transportation costs. Some of our carriers don't care about volume, with flat fees for local shipments,” Lapointe explained. “However, for international shipments and deliveries to remote Canadian territories, the savings are substantial.”

Boosting Mailer Utilization and Increasing Efficiency

Altitude Sports was already using both boxes and mailers for shipping orders. To ensure they had the right size packaging materials on hand, they used PacSimulate® to analyze historical order data. This helped identify additional mailer sizes to add to their line-up, resulting in an 18% increase in mailer utilization—from 60% to 78%.

Operational efficiency also improved significantly. By streamlining the packing process, implementing Paccurate’s suggestions removed the guesswork for warehouse staff, making packout faster and more intuitive. Packers no longer have to spend time determining the correct shipping container or how best to pack items which has decreased training time by at least 15%.

Beyond cost and efficiency gains, Paccurate’s packing intelligence platform has helped Altitude Sports work towards its sustainability goals by minimizing wasted space inside packages. These efforts align with the company’s commitment to decreasing carbon emissions while maintaining exceptional service for their customers.

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Conclusion

Through their partnership with Paccurate, Altitude Sports has significantly improved packing efficiency, transportation cost reduction, service quality for their customers, and overall operational efficiency. Paccurate has proven to be an essential partner in supporting Altitude Sports' ongoing success
in the competitive e-commerce landscape.

Lapointe stated, “I’ve done packing with and without Paccurate, and it would be hard to go back.”