Scaling Smart: How Gimme Beauty Mastered Hyper-Growth with Tech

MINNEAPOLIS, MN – April 14, 2026 – For a fast-growing company, success can be a double-edged sword. Durham Brands, the parent company of the wildly popular hair accessory line Gimme Beauty®, was experiencing this firsthand. With its products flying off the shelves at major retailers like Target, Walmart, and Ulta, the company’s sustained 30% year-over-year growth was putting immense pressure on its warehouse operations. Legacy systems dependent on manual processes and disconnected workflows were buckling, threatening to derail the brand’s upward trajectory. But a strategic pivot to intelligent supply chain execution has not only solved these growing pains but has also set a new standard for operational excellence, allowing the company to smash its peak season forecast by an astounding 170%.

By implementing the Infios Warehouse Management (WM) system, Durham Brands transformed its fulfillment center from a bottleneck into a competitive advantage, demonstrating how targeted technology can unlock unprecedented levels of efficiency and scale.

From Growing Pains to Record Gains

Before the transformation, Durham Brands’ warehouse was a complex web of manual tasks. As order volumes and SKU complexity soared, the existing system couldn't keep pace. The reliance on paper-based picking and manual data entry created significant risk for errors, slowed down fulfillment, and offered little real-time visibility into inventory—a critical liability for a company supplying the nation’s largest retailers.

“This strategic move was more than a system upgrade, it was a meaningful shift in how we operate,” said Jeff Durham, CEO of Durham Brands, in a recent announcement. The results of this shift have been dramatic and quantifiable. During its busiest month in company history, Durham Brands not only handled the record-breaking volume but did so with remarkable efficiency. Throughput nearly doubled, jumping from 10,000 to 19,000 cases per full-time employee, all without adding labor costs.

This leap in productivity was matched by a dramatic improvement in precision. The company achieved 98.5% inventory accuracy, a figure that rivals best-in-class operations and is a significant jump from the 85-90% accuracy typical of manual systems. For the first time ever, the company recorded zero audit errors, a testament to the system’s ability to provide a clear, reliable, and traceable record of every item in the warehouse. These metrics are not just operational wins; they translate directly into financial gains by reducing costly mis-ships, preventing stockouts, and improving customer satisfaction.

The Technology Behind the Transformation

The engine driving this operational overhaul is Infios WM, an adaptable, cloud-based solution designed to orchestrate complex warehouse environments. Infios, a joint venture between technology provider Körber and investment firm KKR, operates in a competitive WMS market where agility and integration are paramount. The system replaced Durham Brands' fragmented workflows with a single, unified fulfillment environment.

At the core of the implementation were system-directed workflows. Instead of relying on employee memory or paper lists, the WMS now guides workers through every step of the process—from picking and packing to shipping—via mobile scanning devices. Key features like license plating (assigning a single barcode to a pallet of mixed goods) and enhanced lot control (tracking specific batches of products) eliminated manual data entry, minimized the risk of shipping the wrong product, and provided granular, real-time visibility across the entire operation.

A crucial element of the project's success was the system's seamless, pre-built connector for NetSuite, Durham Brands' existing Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software. This integration ensures that data flows freely between finance, inventory, and fulfillment, creating a single source of truth that informs better decision-making across the business. This kind of deep integration is a hallmark of modern WMS platforms, which are increasingly replacing siloed legacy systems with flexible, interconnected ecosystems.

More Than Metrics: Empowering the Modern Workforce

While the productivity and accuracy numbers are impressive, the story at Durham Brands extends beyond automation. The implementation has had a profound human impact, fostering a more empowered, inclusive, and skilled workforce. The press release highlighted a particularly powerful example: a hearing-impaired, Spanish-speaking team member, who, thanks to the system's intuitive, visual-based workflows, is now able to independently manage the entire e-commerce fulfillment process.

This illustrates a key benefit of well-designed technology: its ability to lower barriers and create opportunities for all employees to excel. By simplifying complex tasks and providing clear, unambiguous direction, the Infios WMS enabled the company to tap into the full potential of its diverse team.

Furthermore, Jeff Durham noted that the new system “created opportunities to promote from within.” By automating repetitive tasks, the technology freed up employees to focus on higher-value activities and develop new skills. With clear performance data and streamlined processes, pathways for career advancement became more visible and accessible, boosting morale and aiding in employee retention—a critical advantage in a tight labor market.

A Blueprint for CPG Agility

Durham Brands' success serves as a compelling case study for the broader Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) industry, where supply chain agility has become a critical driver of growth. In a market defined by intense competition and volatile consumer demand, the ability to respond quickly and efficiently is paramount.

“The team is now completing a full week of work in just three days while maintaining exceptional accuracy and throughput,” noted Tim Moylan, Chief Growth Officer at Infios. “This is exactly the kind of continuous optimization and agility modern supply chains require to keep pace with growth.”

The financial return on investment has also been significant. By leveraging the WMS for continuous cycle counting and gaining superior lot visibility, Durham Brands was able to make more strategic sourcing decisions, resulting in hundreds of thousands of dollars in tariff savings. This direct financial return, combined with labor cost avoidance and efficiency gains, showcases a rapid and robust ROI that aligns with industry benchmarks for WMS implementations, which often see payback periods of 12-24 months.

With a scalable and modern platform now in place, Durham Brands is not standing still. The company plans to continue investing in automation, data visibility, and scalable infrastructure to support its next phase of growth. This forward-looking strategy aligns with major industry trends toward AI-driven forecasting, robotics, and end-to-end supply chain digitization, positioning Gimme Beauty to not only sustain its rapid ascent but to further solidify its supply chain as a core competitive advantage.