Cutter & Buck
Turning production complexity into a competitive advantage
At a Glance
Customer
A premium lifestyle sportswear brand, founded 1989, now the premier multi-brand apparel partner for corporate, retail and team customers.
Industry
Apparel manufacturing, decoration & fulfilment
Channels
Corporate apparel, retail and licensed apparel (NFL, MLB, college)
Facilities
Seattle (Renton), WA · Dallas, TX · Hebron, KY (3PL) · Brampton, ON
Solution
Tracker real-time production management system
Headline Result
Schedule runs cut from 60+ minutes to 5 minutes
The Challenge
Cutter & Buck's business had outgrown its systems. Average decorated order size fell from a historical 40 pieces to 7–11 pieces, and as low as 2 during peak. The fastest-growing segment, licensed apparel for the NFL, MLB and college teams, now ships single on-demand units direct to consumers in just over 24 hours.
The legacy, site-based system had been pushed far beyond its design, and it was limiting growth:
Scheduling a 2,500-order peak run took more than an hour — and the team needed a new run every hour.
The system froze or crashed at critical moments, making every peak season a risk.
A planned ERP and WMS replacement, plus a new Dallas site, meant rebuilding integrations on a timeline nobody believed the incumbent setup could meet.
A key objective for the Dallas site was to improve service to over 40% of the customer base.
"Our customers never felt it, because our people absorbed it. But that doesn't scale. We couldn't expand, couldn't grow."
— Diane Spaur, Process and Project Manager
Why Tracker
Cutter & Buck was introduced to Tracker by Barudan, its embroidery machine supplier. Three things set Tracker apart.
Deep knowledge of decoration
Tracker understood every line of a requirements list built up over years.
A promise kept
A missing scheduling capability was promised in ninety days, and delivered on time.
Challenge, not just compliance
Tracker's questions led Cutter & Buck to redesign its entire Dallas workflow.
"Working with Tracker is like having an operational partner who knows our business."
— Diane Spaur, Process and Project Manager
The Implementation
Tracker executed one of the industry's most complex parallel implementations — live at the Renton facility integrated with the legacy WMS, while simultaneously integrating with a new WMS for the Dallas distribution and fulfilment centre launch.
Tracker went live in Seattle in July 2026, running alongside the existing WMS. In parallel, the team integrated Tracker with the new WMS for Dallas, ahead of a company-wide rollout planned for March 2027. Tracker also took on several critical functions that helped the Dallas site open on schedule.
"Tracker hit their deadlines at every milestone."
— Diane Spaur, Process and Project Manager
The Results
Scheduling is now more than 12 times faster, and the operation has the headroom to grow.
Production
- • 12x faster scheduling — peak runs of 2,500 orders cut from over an hour to 5 minutes
- • Rock-solid stability at peak — no outages reported, where the legacy system froze and crashed
- • Dallas launched on time, a year in the planning
People & Growth
- • Dramatically reduced training time — guided machine-side screens got new staff productive fast
- • 20–25-year veterans adopted it immediately
- • Confidence to scale across multiple locations and technologies
"Scheduling went from more than an hour to five minutes."
— Diane Spaur, Process and Project Manager
"I spent years looking for a replacement and I didn't think it was out there. I was delighted to find Tracker."
— Scott Sumpter, Executive Director of Distribution
What's Next
Multiple sister companies within the group have expressed interest in evaluating Tracker after seeing its role in the Dallas launch. With Dallas live, Cutter & Buck is focused on getting closer to its customers, shortening turnaround times and growing its women's apparel range.
"Based on our experience, I would expect organisations with more than 100 heads, a complex business model and/or small order sizes are likely to see significant benefits."
— Scott Sumpter, Executive Director of Distribution