case study
Carter'S
Founded
1865
Headquarters
Atlanta, GA
Industry
Retail
Number of Locations
1200
Abstract
As North America’s leading branded marketer of baby and children’s apparel, Carter’s, Inc. needed to modernize its digital commerce infrastructure to keep pace with accelerating e-commerce demand and expanding omnichannel requirements. Facing internal resource constraints, tight turnaround times, and legacy vendor limitations during peak holiday and pandemic surges, Carter’s partnered with Perfaware. By deploying a global, round-the-clock delivery model, Perfaware resolved high-priority technical debt, executed seamless Order Management on Cloud (OMoC) integrations, built automated monitoring and release pipelines, and expanded omnichannel capabilities across North America. This long-term strategic partnership streamlined fulfillment operations, reduced turnaround times and costs, and empowered Carter’s to scale its digital business with total confidence.
About Carters
Carter’s, Inc. is the largest branded marketer of apparel and related products exclusively for babies and young children in the United States and Canada. Headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, Carter’s sells through more than 1,000 company-operated retail stores, leading department stores, national retailers, and its rapidly growing e-commerce platforms. Built on a century-long reputation for quality and trust, Carter’s continues to invest heavily in digital innovation, omnichannel fulfillment, and global market expansion to deliver seamless shopping experiences across all customer touchpoints.
The Challenges
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As Carter’s scaled its digital commerce and omnichannel footprint, the company encountered several technical and operational bottlenecks:
Resource & Expertise Constraints: Carter’s lean internal technical team required specialized external support and expert Order Management System (OMS) capabilities to handle high-stakes upgrades, system enhancements, and round-the-clock troubleshooting.
Incumbent Vendor Limitations: Previous vendor partners struggled with slow delivery cycles and lacked sufficient expertise in Web Call Center, Order Management on Cloud (OMoC), and timely enhancement rollouts.
Volatile E-Commerce Surges: The pandemic and peak holiday seasons led to unprecedented online order volumes, requiring rapid feature rollouts, high-throughput system stability, and continuous operational support.
Fulfillment Costs & Geographic Inefficiencies: Relying primarily on East Coast Distribution Centers (DCs) caused higher shipping costs and longer fulfillment turnaround times for West Coast customer orders.
Complex Omni & Digital Expansion: Carter's needed to launch multiple digital initiatives—including marketplace integrations, Amazon Pay, Narvar Exchange, and grow revenue in new geographies such as Canada—without disrupting existing operations.
Round-the-Clock Global Delivery Model: Leveraged an expert global support model to provide 24/7 troubleshooting, resolve open defects and stuck orders, test upgrades, and maintain zero-downtime performance during extreme holiday peak and pandemic workloads.
Rapid Omnichannel & Feature Enhancements: Designed and deployed critical commerce capabilities across modules, including Canada rollout, Buy Online, Pickup In-Store (BOPIS), Ship from Store (SFS), Afterpay integration, AI chatbot workflows for order cancellation, carrier integration for delivery confirmation, Amazon Pay, Narvar Exchange, and marketplace connectivity.
Automated Operational Tools & Maintenance: Developed custom automated scripts to resolve frequent issues like stuck orders, built automated Jenkins CI/CD build and release pipelines integrated with regression testing, and deployed custom Splunk dashboards for real-time operational monitoring.
Advanced Business & Operational Reporting: Utilized Cognos on Cloud to build specialized operational dashboards and reporting suites—tracking critical business metrics such as Afterpay cancellations, AVS payment holds, and cancelled quantities to optimize fulfillment visibility.
Key Solutions Delivered
Results (Measurable Business Impact)
Accelerated Feature Velocity: Reduced enhancement delivery cycles significantly, allowing Carter’s to roll out strategic digital initiatives and regional expansions ahead of peak shopping seasons.
Operational Stability & Automation: Slashed processing errors through automated scripts and proactive monitoring, enabling internal teams to operate efficiently at scale during massive volume surges.
Frictionless Geographic & Channel Expansion: Enabled rapid, low-risk expansion into new markets (including successful Canada, BOPIS, and Ship from Store rollouts) while lowering fulfillment costs and turnaround times. Revenue target for this project was to achieve 0.6% of orders using BOSS/BOPIS features, but with this implementation business has seen a 20% increment which states that this is a huge success.
Strategic High-Performance Partnership: What began as targeted technical troubleshooting evolved into a comprehensive, high-velocity managed services engagement across Carter’s digital commerce and OMS tech stack.
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