Partnering with a 3PL fulfilment provider had a significant positive impact on EGLO
Prior to Zendbox, it took EGLO up to 5 working days to deliver their products from Europe to their UK customers. Brexit presented additional challenges, prompting EGLO to find alternative solutions beyond investing in an expensive UK-based warehouse. As a result of these challenges, the company’s continued growth was restricted and EGLO was falling short of homegrown UK competition that could fulfil orders on a next-day or 48-hour basis.
EGLO outsourced its UK fulfilment process to Zendbox, meaning the brand could deliver orders to customers through next-day delivery and a late order cut-off time of 9pm. EGLO’s ability to fulfil orders quicker than before enabled the company to expand its product range into major retailers and access a wider consumer base. With increased earning potential from new revenue streams, EGLO experienced instant growth in the value and volume of their sales. The business also had the freedom and flexibility to expand its product range knowing that Zendbox could maintain the same high-quality order fulfilment process.
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Looking back on the company’s fulfilment processes prior to Brexit, Ben Szreider – Operations Manager at EGLO – says:
“EGLO was always the European cousin that had a slightly different product offering to other UK suppliers, but we weren’t able to make huge growth within the UK market because of our longer lead times and inability to fulfil orders within a certain period.
“Then Brexit hit and caused significant logistical issues for EGLO. We had even considered opening our own warehouse in the UK. However, there was an opportunity to outsource our UK fulfilment operations, and that’s how we came across Zendbox – the first 3PL provider we’ve worked with.
“Since partnering with Zendbox, we’ve been able to access more customers through big brand retailers, ensuring we meet their Service Level Agreements (SLAs), which require quick shipping that – even prior to Brexit – we were unable to meet. Zendbox has opened this door for us.”
The main factors for choosing Zendbox were service and value, as Ben explains:
“When considering a 3PL provider, we took into account our current costs for shipping from Europe and what returns we would get by providing a significantly improved service to the consumer. We realised that Zendbox offered an enhanced service that could handle our products and was very competitive on cost.”
EGLO retains an experienced team that performs many complex API integrations with customers worldwide. Reflecting on this, Ben believes the process of integrating and onboarding with Zendbox was quick and seamless. He adds:
“The physical integration was quicker than we anticipated. Before the stock had even been delivered, we were ready to go live with the eCommerce platform integration. Once we were onboarded with Zendbox, our business experienced an immediate impact with deliveries being much faster.
"We were really pleased that we could go to the wider UK market and offer customers delivery within 1 to 2 working days. This opened doors for EGLO, and we were able to extend our range of products to a customer base that was, perhaps, a lot smaller at one point. We saw instant growth in the value and volume of sales made.”
What I find most impressive about the service from Zendbox is the ease of everything, from understanding where an order is within the fulfilment process, to just teaching someone on our team how to use Zendportal. The latter takes me about five minutes! We use SAP as our global system at EGLO and teaching someone how to use that is a substantial task. It’s a big learning curve in contrast to Zendportal.
Zendbox prides itself on providing comprehensive support from the moment businesses partner with the 3PL provider. This ensures the company’s premium 3PL fulfilment service continues to deliver on the demands of eCommerce businesses like EGLO and their customers. Ben says:
“Whenever I need anything, I can pick up the phone and speak to someone at Zendbox. I’ve spoken to Stephen Peers from the Zendbox team to manage the operations side on integrations. Because I’ve dealt with 4 or 5 people overall, it gives me the confidence to know who to go to if I’ve got a problem. Alex Mitchell will deal with queries straight away and Alex Borg has been very supportive in helping us understand the fundamentals of the service and technology.
“Zendportal, in particular, is very user-friendly. I’ve not really had any issues trying to find things on the platform and when we have struggled, we’re able to raise a support ticket and any queries we have are resolved very promptly. Overall, the service from Zendbox is easy and efficient. The customer feedback has been that we can deliver products to them and, therefore, meet strict SLAs.”
With the help of Zendbox, EGLO is constantly growing and implementing new products into its range. Ben continues:
“Zendbox enables us to make changes to our product range very quickly without having to worry too much about notifying lots of people and getting it all agreed. In fact, we’ve been able to grow our range by about 60 to 70 products in the last few months. It was just really easy, and we’ve had no problems with it at all.
“Moreover, I’ve been able to use the Inventory Analysis feature on Zendportal as a reporting tool for the wider business to illustrate our inventory health and overstock, so that we can work out where we need to focus our efforts. Pulling that information out of the system is going to help me hugely.”
By outsourcing its fulfilment operations to Zendbox, EGLO has expanded into other markets beyond its European roots. Ben says:
“Zendbox has enabled EGLO to deliver the service level that the UK consumer is now expecting, which means our UK business can expand and fulfil a growing demand.”
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“We saw instant growth in the value and volumes of sales made.”
“We were really pleased that we could go to the wider market and offer customers delivery within 1 to 2 working days.”
“The onboarding process with Zendbox was relatively quick.”
“We were able to get a more cost-effective solution from Zendbox versus other options.”
“Zendbox has opened doors and continues to open doors for EGLO.”
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