Cutter & Buck opened a 50,502-bin automated distribution centre in Grand Prairie, Texas, on 9 October 2026 — its second AutoStore installation in three years and its largest to date.

The system pairs 32 AutoStore R5 Pro robots with 13 ports, coordinated by Kardex FulfillX warehouse execution software. It's designed to deliver 1,256 bin presentations per hour, and simulations have already averaged 1,284 — slightly above spec, which in warehouse terms counts as a good day.

For a sense of scale: 50,502 bins means the Texas site holds roughly 16% more storage locations than the apparel company's first automation project in Renton, Washington, which went live in July 2023 with more than 34,000 bins and 54 robots. Renton has since grown by another 9,962 bins plus extra picking ports to keep pace with order volumes and a widening product range.

Kardex has also connected the Grand Prairie AutoStore to downstream operations via conveyor — embroidery, routing, print-and-apply labelling and shipping. That matters commercially: Cutter & Buck fulfils both plain and customised apparel from the same facility, and the integrated flow collapses the gap between storage and decoration.

What does this change for shippers?

For Cutter & Buck's customers, faster bin presentations translate into quicker order turnaround on customised goods, where decoration has traditionally been the bottleneck. For the company itself, the design allows robots and ports to be added independently as demand grows — capacity can scale in increments rather than through costly wholesale retrofits.

Joel Freet, CEO of Cutter & Buck, said: "Our experience in Renton gave us a clear understanding of what automation can make possible for our operation and our customers. With Kardex, we've been able to take what we've learned and apply it to a new facility designed around where our business is going next."

That's a CEO sentence, of course, but the pattern behind it is real. The Renton system expanded once already, and Grand Prairie launched with headroom built in. Apparel fulfilment is moving toward made-to-order economics, and static warehouses don't serve that model well.

A network play, not a one-off

Grand Prairie sits between Cutter & Buck's home base in Renton and its East Coast customers, positioning the new site as the southern anchor of a North American fulfilment network. Texas also offers the logistical advantage of central time-zone coverage and proximity to Dallas–Fort Worth distribution corridors.

The bigger signal is for mid-market apparel brands generally. AutoStore-style cube storage, once the preserve of giants, is now being deployed at companies whose entire US volume fits in two facilities. The automation vendors have noticed, and so have the 3PLs watching from the sidelines.

Expect the Texas robots to multiply before long. Kardex says incremental expansion is by design, and Cutter & Buck's Renton history — 9,962 bins added post-launch — suggests the Grand Prairie floor plan already anticipates more.