MacKenzie-Childs' annual Barn Sale has transformed from a modest local sale event in the early 1990s into a retail phenomenon attracting customers worldwide. Before the pandemic, the five-day in-person event drew over 21,000 visitors from as far as Australia to their Aurora, New York location.
When COVID-19 struck in 2020, MacKenzie-Childs faced a pivotal decision: cancel their signature event or pivot online. They chose to adapt, moving Barn Sale to a digital format while simultaneously expanding warehouse operations to meet accelerating demand. This transition exposed some operational challenges that threatened their ability to serve customers effectively.
Before implementing RF-SMART solutions, MacKenzie-Childs struggled with significant inefficiencies. Warehouse fulfillment operations relied on manual, paper-based systems that couldn’t scale with business growth. Workers depended on handwritten bin locations added to pick tickets, creating persistent operational delays and raising the risk of lost orders during high-volume periods.
"When I started in 2017, one person was handing out pick slips from another system and writing in the bin locations by hand every day," recalled Liz Rozwood, Chief of Staff at MacKenzie-Childs. "It was remarkable that shipments moved at all."
In 2019, the team implemented NetSuite along with portions of the RF-SMART WMS (warehouse management system) solution. However, the transition highlighted how deeply rooted their operational challenges were. Without fully leveraging the systematic capabilities of their new WMS, manual processes continued to create significant delays. The first online Barn Sale in 2020 perfectly illustrated these limitations, with fulfillment taking three months instead of the anticipated six weeks.
Despite implementing NetSuite and RF-SMART solutions by 2024, the company continued to face operational bottlenecks caused by legacy systems. Their existing third-party shipping platform struggled to handle the increased volume efficiently, creating longer fulfillment cycles that put pressure on staff resources and negatively impacted customer experience. Only when this final bottleneck was addressed did MacKenzie-Childs realize the full potential of their integrated ERP and WMS environment.
Determined to optimize operations ahead of their annual Barn Sale, MacKenzie-Childs implemented RF-SMART Shipping. The native NetSuite integration eliminated middleware complexities while providing batch processing capabilities, real-time inventory updates, and streamlined fulfillment workflows essential for handling extreme seasonal volume.
The impact was immediate and measurable. RF-SMART Shipping reduced Barn Sale fulfillment time by a full month through advanced batch shipping label processing capabilities. "RF-SMART Shipping helped us save a month in fulfillment time. What was taking eight weeks in years prior, now took four weeks, even with more volume," explained Liz.
The efficiency gains extended throughout the operation. The integrated shipping solution eliminated bottlenecks by combining packing and manifesting into a single step, reducing packing time from 1-2 hours to 30 minutes or less for batch orders. Label printing speed improved dramatically, dropping from 12-15 seconds per label to approximately 2 seconds, significantly improving throughput during peak periods.
Building on shipping success, MacKenzie-Childs implemented RF-SMART's Pick Planner, creating an integrated solution addressing both picking and shipping optimization. Pick Planner revolutionized their approach to high-volume order processing, replacing paper-based picking with digital solutions that created optimized picking tasks aligned with operational zones and staffing structure.
Implementation delivered concrete improvements. "We went from 200 scans to 4 scans," explained Rozwood. "It just sped everything up."
The system enabled strategic batching of "ship-alone" items, classified as pre-boxed products processed efficiently through RF-SMART's streamlined workflows. "We are currently able to use Pick Planner to carve these items off of the broader sales order pool by selecting them individually, allowing us to pre-pick these high-volume items in just a few steps," explained Liz.
The 2025 Barn Sale delivered remarkable outcomes. MacKenzie-Childs reduced fulfillment timeframe to 3.5 weeks, resulting in a 78% reduction from the original eight-week timeline in years before. Despite processing 15% more orders, staff experienced a 33% reduction in working days during the 2025 event.
Most significantly, they achieved these improvements with reduced staffing levels, demonstrating substantial productivity gains. Pick Planner now handles approximately 48% of dollar value during Barn Sale with a much smaller team than traditional operations. "A 12-person Pick Planner team now processes a disproportionate share of order value at peak," noted Rozwood. These advances enabled MacKenzie-Childs to ship over $1 million in goods in a single day.
Beyond operational metrics, improved accuracy and speed delivered measurable customer experience benefits. Faster shipping times increased reorder rates, as customers no longer waited weeks before placing additional orders.
"A lot of times the customer won't order again until they get their shipment, so when you're shipping it quickly, it’s helped us be able to get reorders,” Liz said. “Normally after Barn Sale, sales died off in the past. In 2025, it's been strong because people are getting their items quickly."
Customer service improvements were equally impressive. "Where's my order" and "wrong items" tickets decreased significantly, while cancellation rates dropped from 2.6% in 2024 to 1.8% with the new systems in place.
Future Growth and Expansion Plans
MacKenzie-Childs recognizes they've only begun leveraging RF-SMART's full capabilities. "We did use it in a limited case with ship-alone items only, so future plans should see additional efficiencies once we are picking all item and order types in pick planner," says Rozwood.
The company plans to expand Pick Planner to their entire direct-to-consumer operation by holiday peak season and explore RF-SMART's LTL shipping capabilities to handle complex international inventory routing needs.
RF-SMART's integrated solutions enabled MacKenzie-Childs to slash Barn Sale fulfillment times and boost operational efficiency, even as order volumes continued climbing year over year. "RF-SMART allowed us to grow," concludes Rozwood. "It has definitely been a key part of our success and expansion."