Mobile-First Fulfilment: What Industry Leaders Like Luna Rae are Doing

“We’ve saved 80% of time on our fulfilment and are now able to pick over 150 orders per person per day. If we wanted to, we could go from a customer ordering a product to being ready for carrier pickup in as little as 5 minutes, syncing that update into Shopify. Making our workforce mobile has saved us over $20,000 on both technology costs and wasted paper.” — Chris Bradley, Director at Luna Rae

In Sydney’s Northern Beaches, jewellery brand Luna Rae has always focused on timeless, sustainable design. But as orders surged, the business ran into a common challenge: its fulfilment setup couldn’t keep up.

The legacy warehouse management system (WMS) the team had relied on from the early days was no longer fit for purpose. Each growth milestone, and each seasonal spike, exposed inefficiencies that slowed picking, complicated onboarding, and created friction the team no longer had the capacity to absorb.

Chris quickly realised the old workflow was standing in the way of scale.

The Challenge: Fulfilment that Couldn’t Match Demand

As Luna Rae’s customer base grew, so did the operational strain on its warehouse. The team was juggling multiple systems during peak periods like Black Friday, switching between platforms to pick, pack, and print labels. These handovers created costly slowdowns.

Training new staff was another major bottleneck.

“Training a new staff member on our old warehouse management system took weeks – we had to push through a lot of friction just to get someone started and allocated a lot of internal resources to support,” says Chris.

With onboarding cycles stretching into days or weeks, scaling headcount for short, intense sales seasons became difficult. The reliance on manual checks also meant that occasional errors slipped through, adding delays, returns, and additional pressure on the customer service team.

In Chris’ words, “The old process was clunky and slowed us down when we needed to scale headcount quickly and with confidence.”

The team needed something faster, more accurate, and far easier for new staff to adopt, especially given the brand’s rapid growth trajectory.

The Turning Point: Moving to Mobile-First Fulfilment

To replace their legacy WMS workflow, Luna Rae implemented Starshipit’s mobile pick & pack app. This shifted the operation to a paperless, device-driven workflow, using low-cost iOS and Android devices paired with bluetooth scanners.

Instead of relying on printed pick slips or manual validation, the entire process now runs on mobile: items are scanned, totes are validated, and labels are printed directly from the app.

The shift removed the slow, paper-heavy processes that previously caused delays and ensured every order update synced across devices in real time. Even warehouse outages became less disruptive; with mobile devices running on 5G, fulfilment can continue even if Wi-Fi drops in peak.

Flexible, Fast, and Built for Scale

The team restructured their workflow around the app’s three picking and packing modes:

• BAU workflow (single-item orders): Small orders skip the picking stage entirely. Staff go straight to pack and print for a simple, fast paperless flow.

• Split pick and pack (larger, multi-item orders): One team member picks items into a tote, another validates and packs them. “Every order we know for sure is right, even if it’s a new person, because it’s been double-scanned,” explains Chris.

• Redundancy workflow (peak periods): During high-volume events, the team can still pre-print slips and labels as a fallback, but the mobile workflow has become their default thanks to its reliability and real-time accuracy.

Onboarding in Minutes Instead of Weeks

Training time, once one of the brand’s biggest pain points, has been nearly eliminated.

Chris notes, “We had somebody start this week and it took them less than 20 minutes to get going.”

New hires now achieve high accuracy immediately because the workflow is guided by scanning at every step. This has made seasonal scaling significantly easier and more cost-effective.

Accuracy Through Scanning: Simple but Powerful

Behind Luna Rae’s new fulfilment speed is a scanning setup designed for both simplicity and technical growth.

While the Starshipit app supports mobile camera scanning, the team chose to integrate Socket Mobile Bluetooth scanners for additional capabilities.

Chris confirms, “This works brilliantly, and allows us capabilities such as GS1 support, capturing GTIN, serial codes, and so forth. It really gives us the ability to scale technically as our company grows, and orders become more complex.”

The scanning alerts built into the app ensure that incorrect items are caught immediately, reinforcing accuracy without slowing the team down.

The Results: Faster Fulfilment, Lower Costs, and Sustainable Scale

The impact of adopting mobile fulfilment has been significant.

By processing orders directly through Starshipit’s mobile app, consolidating pick, pack, and print in one flow, the team has removed delays that once caused bottlenecks during peak periods. Where the warehouse previously processed around 10 orders per hour under the legacy WMS, they now complete 20 to 25 per hour, averaging roughly two minutes per order.

Overall, Luna Rae estimates they are operating at around 80% greater efficiency compared to their old process.

The cost savings have been equally meaningful. With mobile devices replacing WMS licensing and paper-based workflows, the team has saved over $20,000 across technology and consumables.

In the words of Chris, “You just don’t know what good looks like until you see it in action. I show people and once they see one of our staff doing 25–30 orders an hour, they’re like, wow!”

If you’re ready to cut fulfilment times, eliminate paper, and onboard staff in minutes – not weeks – trial Starshipit today. Your 30-day free trial includes full access to their mobile pick & pack app, so you can experience faster, smarter workflows from day one.