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Here are some details of projects we've managed before to give you an idea of what we can do for you!

Case scenario 1

In our early days we were approached by a, at the time, reasonably unknown company Red Letter Days, to fulfil a number of orders which required kit assembly of 11 components into one of 22 packs, to be wrapped in shrink wrap through a heat tunnel and packed for retail. The current company did not have heat tunnel facilities. At the time neither did we so we purchased one on securing the contract.

Within 6 months were kitting ALL of Red Letter Days, retail packs and distributing them to retail.

They had a problem with Sainsbury's where appx 22,000 retail packs had become lost within around 65 major Sainsbury's locations. They asked us if we could uplift, we went through a telephone checking process, establishing contacts at each store who could identify the stock, once established we placed vehicles to collect and return to our warehouse. We then opened and checked 22,000 packs listing the all important code numbers establish which was short and which was not resulting in a settlement to Red Letter Days form Sainsbury's saving them over £20,000 which would otherwise had become lost.

We have performed similar uplifts and returns for the same client from multi store retailers such as Debenhams, John Lewis, House of Fraser, Beatties, Jenners, and many more.

To this day we still handle all of Red Letter Days retail, although the kitting, now encapsulation is performed by another Essex based company.

We still arrange their uplifts for return and checking and have just completed a 50-60 pallets total from all Debenhams UK locations of some 5000 kits which will require, checking, scanning into stock and ultimately destruction.

Case scenario 2

A client offering media coverage in changing rooms of a large retail group with over 450 stores offers sampling linked to poster advertising in store.

An approach was made to us to handle the logistics involving various projects from leaflets to food samples.

One particular project started with arrival of 24 pallets of Christmas offer brochures arriving with us on a Tuesday; on the Wednesday we received instructions that the brochures, all million of them had to be even distributed to 360 stores nationwide and that they should be in packs of equal numbers already banded together for simple separation. Upon checking we discovered that all were loose, being only loosely banded together with an elastic band. The brochures were all required to be in store to tie in with advertising on the Monday giving us just 3 days to repack to cartons and despatch.

We achieved it with all but a few stores, receiving their deliveries on the Monday.

A very similar case with the same client was for sample bars of a breakfast cereal, this one being a total of 150 pallets of stock, we wanted to make sure that the stores were able to accept such quantities so checks were made with all stores to ensure, appx 50% of them were not able to so we staged deliveries to them of smaller consignments over a period of a week to aid handling in store.

Case Scenario 3

A large health and beauty product brand owner and distributor had an opportunity to launch a new health and beauty site with a range of products that were not available anywhere else in the UK.

They didn't have the resource ( manpower ) to devote to the sales and fulfilment side of the business despite having their own operation and warehouse and asked if we could supply an entire package.

We offered them a fully serviced package that includes retail website, order processing and fulfilment, product enhancement, repackaging, customer service and telephone call order handling.

The website has been live for 6 weeks and has had over 1500 orders and a client base of some 1200 clients.

Case Scenario 4

An Australian client approached us in to supply a simple supply chain logistics platform for their product which was quite unique for the UK.

They were having amazing success and sales with the product back home and wanted to explore the UK market.

They shipped across several loads of stock ready for the market and started by attending one of the large trade fairs in Birmingham later that year.

The results were phenomenal, although the trade were very interested it would be a slow build as they had limited resource and nobody to mange the project for them as they were stretched to their limits back home. As a result of a sample being taken by a giftware writer for the Sunday times, an article had appeared in one of the Sunday Times style magazines with the companies' 0845 number, which because of their poor cover in the UK was switched to a mobile phone of on the directors. They received over 8000 calls of which most were lost because the volume could just not be handled on a single mobile.

They spoke to us about this and asked if there was any way that we might be able to help.

We started by suggesting they cover the potential calls by using our partner call centre who have a 200 seat 24/7 operation and can take orders or enquiries which can be passed on.

We then suggested that they appoint us as distributors for their product for a percentage on return and we will appoint and mange sales agents as well as place the product online as our retail website where we could offer them a greater margin than through trade.

Furthermore through our resident design team we are in the process of manufacturing complimentary products which will sell with their product and let us both enjoy margins on both products, one paid as a royalty.

Case Scenario 5

We were contacted by a Artist and Designer who had spent 3 years developing and manufacturing two new board games.

She had a large quantity of two board games which had been manufactured in the UK and the Far East.

Remarkably she had managed to organise this all herself, with no help or any previous experience.

Her problem was what to do next?

With appx 2000 of each game sitting in an expensive self store unit in Brighton and sales of 1 or 2 games per month to local shops and friends it was going to take her years if not decades to make any return or recovery on her investment.

Being semi retired in her late 60's and not very mobile, she had achieved an awful lot already but had come to almost a complete stop when it comes to what to do next.

Our initial meeting resulting in us very quickly agreeing that we would firstly remove the stock from the expensive self store unit and transfer to our warehouse in Brentwood. Once there we could check and count and start working on any contact that she's had to follow up on and any of our own database of some 7500 small and large retailers that we knew.

We also agreed that we would put together a website for her, where she could sell her games at retail prices and have some platform to launch other games or things that she was working on.

The website with fully secure merchant facilities was built and operating in around 5 weeks, using our unique DSO template design, that lets clients build a fully secure retail website, with a powerful back office suite of functions, for the fraction of the cost of a normal retail site.

We then set about the task of marketing the product for her and encouraged her to attend trade fairs and gain more contact that we can work on.

We use a more personalised approach for contacts with our call operatives making a selective maximum of 30 calls per day, with personalised letters and any marketing material also being sent, with follow up calls two or three days later. In more comprehensive cases we use sales agents.

Our marketing activity paid off with sales increasing to a point where the UK stock was totally exhausted earlier this year and a second production run being made in the Far East.

We have managed to successfully get the game into many retailers and received a very large order from a UK retailer with over 30 stores and 1.3 million online customers.

We continue to increase sales and are currently looking at advising the client on a third production run and development of two new games.

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