Kiva Systems wins a customer and an award

Online retailer Zappos has implemented Kiva’s sortation and shipping system, and Ernst & Young has honored Kiva’s founder for his entrepreneurship.

By Staff -- Modern Materials Handling, 6/26/2008 10:25:00 AM

Kiva Systems, a supplier of nontraditional sortation and shipping systems for distribution centers, made two significant announcements this week: the company has completed another customer installation, and Kiva’s founder has been recognized as a leading entrepreneur in New England.

Early in the week, Kiva announced that online retailer Zappos.com has implemented Kiva’s order fulfillment system, and the entire project took just four months.

“Virtually all the previous automation system deployments I’ve overseen took a year or more to design, build and test,” says Craig Adkins, vice president of fulfillment operations for Zappos. “We were amazed that Kiva transformed our new warehouse from bare concrete to fully operational readiness—with trained supervisors and associates—just four months after we signed the purchase order.”

Zappos deployed a fleet of Kiva’s mobile robots and inventory storage pods at its facility in Shepherdsville, Ky., to support its rising order volumes. Adkins says the company is now working on designs to add multi-level mezzanines to the facility to accommodate more Kiva robots and storage pods.

Today Kiva announced its founder and CEO, Mick Mountz, has received Ernst & Young’s 2008 Entrepreneur of the Year Award in the Emerging Business category for the New England region.

As a New England award winner, Mountz is now eligible for consideration for Ernst & Young’s nation Entrepreneur of the Year awards, which will be announced in November.

“In 2003, we set out to create a game-changing system that could revolutionize the retail fulfillment supply chain, and I am grateful for the strong validation this prestigious Ernst & Young award provides,” says Mountz.

Since the company’s founding in 2003, Kiva has announced three high-profile customers for its order fulfillment system: Staples, Walgreens and now Zappos. Modern Materials Handling detailed the Staples system in a feature story last summer, and the system later won our magazine’s 2008 Productivity Award for Innovation.