European Premium Beauty Retailer – Omnichannel Fulfillment Transformation with HaiPick System 3

Project Overview

A leading European premium beauty retailer — whose identity is not disclosed in the published case study — partnered with Arvato and Hai Robotics to automate its warehouse operations using HaiPick System 3 (HPS 3). The project addresses one of the most operationally complex fulfillment challenges in the consumer retail sector: running B2C e-commerce and B2B retail distribution simultaneously from a single warehouse, at the service levels that premium beauty brands and their customers demand.

The case study was published in March 2026 and represents Hai Robotics' entry into the European premium beauty vertical — a sector where fulfillment quality is inseparable from brand quality, and where the combination of high SKU counts, frequent product launches, and dual-channel order profiles creates a warehouse management challenge that manual operations struggle to sustain at scale.

Technical Solution

HaiPick System 3 for Omnichannel Operations

HaiPick System 3 (HPS 3) is Hai Robotics' flagship high-density goods-to-person ACR system, built around the company's grappling-hook tote retrieval technology that enables 0.0mm spacing between linked totes and ultra-dense storage configurations. In the beauty retailer deployment, HPS 3 provides the unified automated storage and retrieval infrastructure that serves both the B2C and B2B order streams.

The system's core operational model — robots retrieve totes from the storage grid and deliver them to operator workstations — is well-suited to the beauty sector's mixed order profile. For B2C orders, the operator at the workstation picks individual items from the delivered tote into a consumer-facing shipping package. For B2B orders, the same workstation infrastructure supports case-level or multi-unit picks for store replenishment. The warehouse execution software manages the routing logic, ensuring that the robot fleet prioritizes retrievals based on the combined urgency and volume of both order streams.

Key Features

Simultaneous B2C and B2B Fulfillment from a Unified System The defining operational requirement of this deployment is the need to serve two structurally different order channels from a single automated infrastructure. HPS 3's flexible goods-to-person model handles this by routing different order types through appropriate picking workflows at the workstation level, while the shared automated storage pool maximizes inventory utilization across both channels. This unified approach eliminates the operational overhead and inventory duplication that would result from running separate B2C and B2B storage areas.

High-SKU Flexibility Premium beauty operations typically manage thousands of active SKUs across skincare, makeup, fragrance, and haircare categories, with each category having its own demand seasonality and velocity profile. HPS 3's software-managed storage location optimization handles this complexity dynamically, without requiring manual re-slotting as the product range or demand pattern changes.

Service-Level-Consistent Accuracy The goods-to-person model's system-directed picking workflow sustains high order accuracy across both channels — a non-negotiable requirement in premium beauty where picking errors affect consumer experience in B2C and create store replenishment discrepancies in B2B.

Scalability for Growth The modular HPS 3 architecture supports capacity expansion through robot fleet additions and storage grid extensions without operational disruption, providing the beauty retailer with an infrastructure that can grow alongside the business without requiring facility replacement or major reconfiguration.

Challenges & Solutions

The central challenge of this deployment is the structural complexity of omnichannel beauty fulfillment — specifically the requirement to serve B2C and B2B orders simultaneously at high service levels from a shared inventory pool. Manual warehouse operations typically address this by physically separating B2C and B2B areas, which duplicates inventory and increases storage requirements. HPS 3's unified storage architecture with software-managed order routing eliminates this separation, reducing inventory duplication and improving overall storage utilization.

The beauty industry's demand volatility presents a second structural challenge. Promotional campaigns and product launches can create order spikes that overwhelm manual picking operations, leading to dispatch delays and service level failures precisely when brand visibility is highest. The automated system's throughput capacity is not dependent on staffing levels — it can sustain its rated output continuously, providing a buffer against demand spikes that a manual operation cannot replicate without emergency temporary staffing.

The high-service-level requirements of the premium beauty sector — where packaging presentation and order accuracy are brand values, not just operational metrics — make the accuracy characteristics of the automated goods-to-person model particularly well-aligned with the customer's needs. The system's consistent, system-directed picking process removes the human variability that is the primary source of accuracy degradation in manual beauty fulfillment operations.