HOWE London’s challenge

Calling Pimlico Road home, HOWE London are antiques and bespoke furniture specialists. Christopher HOWE curates’ one-off antique pieces and traditionally made bespoke, often tailor-made furniture for clients.

Because HOWE London largely operates a one-off product model, dealing with unique items, their inventory management needs are complex. It was a challenge to keep track of when an item was coming or going, and to ensure invoices were produced for every item.

A further complexity to manage was sending furniture away for restoration. Often, pieces are sent to one of multiple restorers, and HOWE were left manually tracking which item was where.

Workhorse’s customisable solution

Previously, HOWE relied on spreadsheets to keep track of their intricate inventory, but these were often muddled and rarely up to date. Things were falling through the cracks – HOWE needed a solution to streamline their inventory management processes and keep everything up to date in one place.

“It’s a base system that we could then work with to make solutions that fit our business – that was why we went with Workhorse.”

HOWE’s priority was a customisable system which they could adjust to fit their business. Having looked into off-the-shelf software solutions, HOWE decided they needed a fully customisable system, not a one-size-fits-all. That’s where Workhorse came in – we helped HOWE set up their Workhorse order management system in a way that was ideal for their business needs. Workhorse provided HOWE with the tools they needed, without leaving them with an overwhelming multitude of tools they didn’t.

“Everything was manual… there was real snagging points.”

— Jack Hamson | Operations Manager | HOWE London

HOWE’s move away from spreadsheets

HOWE used their Workhorse system to create a hub for their restoration activities, which tracks the locations and costings of all restorations.

HOWE have now confidently ditched the spreadsheets, which were getting muddled and slowing them down. Instead, HOWE used Workhorse to create a centralised hub of information which works with their WordPress website to update automatically.

Workhorse to save time and fuel growth

“Before everyone was doing everything manually, writing an invoice, taking a picture from the website. The way Workhorse does things is 4 times as fast”

The move away from manual inventory management allowed HOWE to transform their processes, keeping information in one easily accessible hub for all teams. HOWE used their Workhorse software to facilitate a flash sale, producing invoices at a speed that would have previously been unachievable.

“There’s no way we could’ve achieved that without workhorse”