From 50 Picks a Day to 300: How Hone Scales a 50-Year Social Enterprise with CartonCloud

Hone has taken its 3PL picking capacity from 50 a day to 180 at peak, won three new enterprise clients in the process, and never had to compromise on its founding purpose: meaningful employment for people living with disability. This social enterprise 3PL, based in Western Sydney, NSW with sites across Australia, handles fulfilment, warehousing, and distribution for large-scale clients — all running on CartonCloud's warehouse management system, which supported employees can learn and use with confidence in hours.

— TL;DR — The short version 

• 50 years of purpose-driven care: Hone has spent over 50 years creating accessible, meaningful employment for people living with disability across South West Sydney, while running a commercial 3PL operation to a genuinely high standard.
• More capacity, without more admin: By switching to CartonCloud’s WMS, the team unlocked the power to scale from 50 daily picks to 180 during peak season, empowering them to onboard three additional enterprise customers with zero extra admin strain.
• Growth that doesn't slow the business down: New customers, including ones with complex requirements like batch tracking and FIFO, are onboarded quickly at Hone — building a reputation that naturally attracts and wins larger commercial contracts.
• A workforce that can run it fast: Hone's supported employees are typically picking independently within a couple of hours of a walkthrough — proof that an intuitive system can support a genuinely inclusive workforce.
• Risk down, reliability up: Recall tracing, smart filtering during peak-season order drops, and same-day support response have cut operational risk for Hone and freed up time the team would otherwise spend on admin.

For over 50 years, Hone has had one main purpose at its core: create meaningful, accessible employment for people living with disability across South West Sydney. That purpose hasn't changed since the business — formerly known as Hoxton Industries — started in 1969 with something as simple as a bike repair program. From there, growth naturally followed purpose rather than the other way around: production, packaging, point of sale, destruction, returns and earn, and eventually a full 3PL operation, now proudly employing around 200 supported employees across multiple vibrant sites in New South Wales and Victoria.

What has changed is what Hone has been able to build on top of that purpose — a full-scale 3PL operation, trusted by enterprise clients like Vision Australia, Medtronic, and FurFresh, that proves a workplace built on inclusion can also run at a genuinely high standard.

This is the story of how that growth happened, and the system that helped get them there.

Growth through purpose

Hone began as a much smaller operation, focused on giving people in the local community a place to belong and a job to be proud of. That founding instinct has carried through every stage of growth since — in a community where accessible employment hasn't always been easy to come by.

As Operations Manager Sharon Prasad puts it: "At Hone, disability is at the forefront of everything we do." 

Every step of Hone's growth, she says, has come back to a single, simple question: "where can we find more meaningful work for our people?"

That same question led to something remarkable: Lumiere, Hone's own candle and home fragrance brand, made entirely by Hone's people from production through to marketing at pop-up stores. It's proof that supported employment doesn't just deliver services — it can create something original from the ground up. 

This same purpose is what helped Hone earn their enterprise contracts — backed by real, proven results.

Sharon is clear that clients like Vision Australia choose Hone for their honesty and clear communication: "They partner with us not out of charity, but out of the fact that we have proven results each and every time we deliver on time with the correct orders." — Sharon Prasad, Operations Manager, Hone 

From manual pallet counts to a system built to grow with them

Before CartonCloud, operations at Hone were a lot more manual. The warehouse ran off spreadsheets and a physical book. If a customer needed a stock count, someone had to walk the floor and pull pallets down by hand just to confirm it. That manual approach put a real ceiling on what Hone could take on. Recall tracing, batch and serial number management, first-in-first-out expiry handling — all either impossible or far too labour-intensive to manage manually.

Switching to CartonCloud’s WMS unlocked what Hone could say ‘yes’ to. Every scan now records a barcode and serial number, so full traceability is just part of their daily workflow. 

That difference showed up clearly the day Pino's team faced a real product recall. With CartonCloud's lot and serial tracking capturing a barcode and serial number on every scan, full traceability was just a report away — the team ran it and sent it straight to the customer, accurate, complete, and ready in minutes rather than days.

That same infrastructure now supports work Hone simply couldn't have taken on before:

• Serial + batch tracking with FIFO: Stock with serial and batch numbers can now be tracked end to end, with expiring stock automatically flagged for first-in-first-out removal.
• Faster customer onboarding: New 3PL customers can be set up quickly, with codes entered and stock matched in a fraction of the time.
• Customer-facing visibility: Clients can now see their own stock levels and order status directly on the customer portal, reducing the back-and-forth that used to sit with Hone's team.
• Peak-season order filtering: When a major client's orders spike during a seasonal drop, the team can filter and search for any other customer's orders to make sure nothing gets buried in the volume.

The business has gone from around 50 picks a day to up to 180 at peak season — and in that time, taken on three additional customers. 

"Before CartonCloud, we were doing 50 picks a day. We've gone up to 180 at peak season. We've hit 300 picks in one day, which was unheard of before. If you compare the 50 picks to 300 picks, we've taken on three extra customers since then. So it's bottom line." — Pino Gattellari, Site Manager, Hone.

That’s the real proof point: being able to handle higher volumes with ease, while having the operational power to confidently pitch for, win, and support major new business.

A system built for a team where training matters most

For most 3PLs, having an easy-to-use system is a bonus. But for Hone, it is at the very heart of how they support their team. Because they regularly welcome new starters — including supported employees who might be completely new to warehouse systems — the platform needs to be a place where everyone feels capable and confident from day one. It’s all about giving every single person the tools to learn fast, feel proud of their work, and keep things moving out on the floor.

Felicity has worked in 3PL systems before, and says CartonCloud's ease of use was what surprised her most.

"What surprises me about using CartonCloud is its ease of use. I used to work in a different 3PL and I found their system to be very hard to navigate. With CartonCloud, I managed to pick up everything quite quickly, which made my job a lot easier to teach our supported employees." — Felicity Pezzano, 3PL Supervisor, Hone.

New starters are typically shown how to pick a sale order on the mobile app and are picking independently within a couple of hours — the same goes for staff learning admin on the desktop app.

Supported Employee Jordan Thomas at Hone describes that learning curve honestly: "At first it was a little difficult, but after a little while of using the system, I found myself more confident. It took about a few weeks until I got used to the flow." 

That capability shows up in how the team feels about the work, too. 

Site Supervisor Patricia Gould describes the payoff of training someone new, watching a team member go from hesitant to independent, and making sure that moment gets marked properly: "Watching my team develop their skills across the board is very satisfactory. It just gives you the sense of accomplishment that they can achieve something that they think that they can't... that sense of achievement that you see across their face when they've managed it, and you give them a high five, well done."

Support that matches the pace of the business

A system is only as good as the team behind it, and Hone's staff point to CartonCloud's support as a real part of why the partnership has lasted. Pino, who has worked across many different systems in his 30 years in the industry, points straight to the support team.

"The customer service people at CartonCloud have been amazing. I've sent requests within the same day, I get an email back within 24 hours, I'll have a solution for my problem. If there isn't a solution, there's a phone call that we can talk through it, and it's great." — Pino Gattellari, Site Manager, Hone

Felicity describes the same experience from her side of the floor. "The people are really helpful — they'll get on a video call and talk it through, person to person. Everyone's very quick to get back to us as well." — Felicity Pezzano, 3PL Supervisor, Hone.

What this means for other purpose-led or scaling 3PLs

Hone’s story shows that purpose and performance go hand in hand. When you are regularly welcoming new team members — whether it’s for seasonal rushes, steady growth, or an inclusive workforce model — having an easy-to-use system is a massive advantage. It determines how quickly a new member feels right at home and ready to go, how confidently you can say yes to big new clients, and how often the team gets to celebrate that proud moment when a new starter completely masters the system on their own.

You can read more customer stories from 3PLs, transport companies, and in-house logistics teams across Australia, New Zealand and North America.

If you'd like to see how CartonCloud works for operations like Hone's, book a free demo.

FAQ

Q: What is Hone?

A: Hone is a social enterprise 3PL based in Western Sydney, NSW, with sites across NSW and VIC, Australia. Operating since 1969, it creates accessible employment for people living with disability while running a commercial fulfilment, warehousing, and contract packaging business for clients including Vision Australia, Medtronic, and FurFresh.

Q: What's the difference between a social enterprise 3PL and a regular 3PL?

A: A social enterprise 3PL runs the same commercial fulfilment and warehouse management operations as any other provider, but reinvests its purpose into the workforce — typically through employment pathways for people who face barriers to mainstream work. Clients choose Hone for performance, not charity: on-time, accurate delivery is the deciding factor.

Q: How has CartonCloud's WMS helped Hone scale?

A: CartonCloud's warehouse management system helped Hone move from roughly 50 picks a day to up to 180 at peak season, supporting three additional customers won in that time. The platform replaced a manual spreadsheet-and-book system with barcode scanning, serial and batch tracking, and automated reporting.

Q: How does Hone handle product recalls?

A: Hone uses CartonCloud's barcode scanning system, which records every barcode and serial number, so a full recall trace can be run as a report and sent directly to the affected customer. This replaces a manual search through paperwork and physical stock, cutting recall response from days to minutes.

Q: How long does it take new warehouse staff to learn CartonCloud?

A: At Hone, supported employees typically pick independently within a couple of hours of an initial walkthrough on the WMS. Full day-to-day confidence generally builds over a few weeks alongside supervisor support, which the team credits to the CartonCloud's straightforward, easy-to-navigate interface.