# **Case Study:**  How Shady Rays is Scaling Fulfillment: 50% Increased Throughput and 20% Lower Cost Per Order

## Overview

Shady Rays, established in 2012 in Louisville, Kentucky, is a leading provider of high-quality polarized eyewear known for its exceptional customer service and craftsmanship. The company has a growing omni-channel presence, selling direct-to-consumer through its eCommerce platform and eight retail locations across the U.S. Shady Rays operates a combined distribution and fulfillment facility in Simpsonville, KY.

### Benefits and Key Outcomes

#### 50% increase in throughput during peak season

#### 20% reduction in cost per order

#### Capacity to process 90K orders in 5 days

### Industry

Consumer Goods

### ERP

NetSuite

### Website

[www.shadyrays.com](https://www.shadyrays.com/)

### Highlighted Solution:

ShipHawk WMS and TMS

[Download the case study](/content/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/ShipHawk-and-Shady-Rays-Case-Study-1.pdf)

90,000 Orders in 5 Days: Shady Rays’ ShipHawk Success Story - YouTube

[90,000 Orders in 5 Days: Shady Rays’ ShipHawk Success Story](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZmkOnT_zjE)

## Challenge

Everyone needs a good pair of sunglasses, and consumers were immediately drawn to Shady Rays’ quality products and standout customer service. Its business grew rapidly, sustaining 20% year-over-year growth for six years in a row. In addition to the eight retail locations and eCommerce operation, Shady Rays continued to expand into new sales channels that increased complexity, including optical partners for prescription glasses, which require detailed order flows that were difficult to manage on manual systems; international imports; and event selling and bulk fulfillment at major events like NASCAR races and music festivals.

Although Shady Rays had built solid fulfillment processes and had the right team in place to succeed, the underlying systems couldn’t keep up with growth. The combination of increased sales channels, order volume, and overall complexity of operations created limitations to fulfillment.

Manual workflows and rigid processes made it difficult to onboard new warehouse workers and keep pace with shifting demand. Working off rudimentary TMS and WMS systems and no ERP made scaling nearly impossible. “We were outgrowing our legacy systems quickly,” explained Sam Mayic, Information Systems Analyst at Shady Rays. Under the legacy systems, Shady Rays’ daily throughput maxed out at 10,000 orders, making it difficult for the company to keep up with surging activity during major holiday sales. Limited functionality like a manual shipping rate table and no ability to interleave cycle counts also slowed down fulfillment.

## Solution

After deciding on NetSuite ERP and [ShipHawk WMS](/content/solutions/warehouse-management-system/index.html) and [TMS](/content/solutions/shipping-software/index.html) to unify its fulfillment and shipping, the team at Shady Rays set an 8-month implementation timeline with a non-negotiable January go-live. The team went live with NetSuite and ShipHawk WMS and TMS on the same day, and the warehouse was fully operational within two hours. The team shipped 5,000 orders in the first six hours using the new systems, demonstrating immediate stability and continuity.

During its first major sale after go-live, Shady Rays achieved a 50% increase in order-processing capacity compared to its previous systems. It processed 30,000 orders in just 48 hours during its Memorial Day sale and 90,000 parcels in five days over the Fourth of July.

While many of the changes implemented led to this increase in throughput, another benefit for the Shady Rays team was the ability to weave in processes that were already working well for their teams. Rather than forcing a shift, ShipHawk worked with Shady Rays’ established batch-picking workflow, preserving an efficient method for their order types while adding the speed and accuracy of a modern fulfillment system. The ability to dynamically adapt operations to different replenishment methodologies during peak periods, such as summer sales, has further strengthened fulfillment efficiency. Additionally, interleaved cycle counting features enabled while picking also helped the Shady Rays team maintain exceptional inventory accuracy at all times.

ShipHawk also simplified seasonal ramp-ups. With warehouse staff expanding from 15 to nearly 90 during peak periods, the solution’s intuitive design made it easy to train new workers quickly while ensuring accuracy at scale. “ShipHawk is very easy to understand and easy to teach,” said Mayic. “That’s what allows us to ramp up in such high quantities for a short period of time.”

On the TMS side, Shady Rays uses ShipHawk’s rate-shopping feature to optimize carrier selection and control costs across thousands of daily shipments, resulting in a 20% reduction in average cost per order. “It’s led to a significant amount of shipping cost savings,” shared Mayic.

“ShipHawk allows us to provide our customers with the best experience that we can,” Mayic concluded. “It all comes down to having the right team and the right system in place to handle the workload efficiently. ShipHawk has truly made our seasonal sale management a breeze and has played a significant role in setting records here at Shady Rays Fulfillment.”

We went live on January 2nd with a brand-new ERP, WMS, and TMS and were shipping like normal within two hours.

Derrick Anderson | Director of Fulfillment and Logistics at Shady Rays