Royal Mail acquires Storefeeder

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Storefeeder hmRoyal Mail have just announced that they’ve purchased multichannel management solution StoreFeeder.

StoreFeeder built Royal Mail’s consumer and small business shipping tool, Click and Drop, which was launched in October 2014.

As well as allowing consumers and small businesses to ship with Royal Mail within a few clicks, Click and Drop enables eBay sellers to integrate their accounts and buy and print postage labels without manually inputting the address of each individual buyer. Click and Drop now also offers Paypal as a payment method in addition to credit and debit cards.

Royal Mail say that the purchase of StoreFeeder will support their ongoing efforts to enable customers of all sizes to connect and ship parcels easily through online tools and APIs.

Nick Landon, Managing Director of Royal Mail Parcels, said: “Having successfully developed and launched our new shipping tool which has worked very effectively through the busy Christmas period, the acquisition of StoreFeeder was a clear strategic choice. I’m delighted that we will now be able to accelerate the development and release of even more tools to make shipping parcels with Royal Mail easier and more convenient.”

The news has only just broken and we’ve put in a call to StoreFeeder to find out more and will have a conversation later in the week to discuss how this will benefit their existing customers and what it means for the company as a whole.

In the mean time they told us “The StoreFeeder team are delighted with the acquisisition and are keen to assure all current customers that it’s business as usual”.

Congratulations to all the guys at StoreFeeder!

7 Responses

  1. Click & Drop … you have to print each stamp separately too time consuming, only tried it once.

  2. I have to say that after using several ways to send small parcels via Royal Mail it is just to much hard work. No personal service and post offices that seem to resent you using them.

    We tried PPI and paid for a daily collection that was hit and miss – then moved to drop and go, the post office weren’t sure how it worked – two months of that resulted in getting a small franking machine – but even that has it’s problems and costs to buy postage.

    From today we are now sending 100% of our deliveries, big and small via UK Mail and I just feel like a lot of hassle has been removed from my shoulders.

  3. Drop and go has no benefit whatsoever unless you are allergic to Post Office queues. It’s quicker standing in a post office queue for 20 mins than it is spending 2 hours filling in all the forms required for Drop & Go. It could be stremlined to make sense but it won’t be, because Royal Mail don’t listen to their customers.

  4. The business logic behind this completely escapes me.
    If Storefeeder are a serious multi-channel software vendor then being bought by RM makes no obvious sense and will seriously compromise their independence and customer focus.
    For RM it seems an expensive way to obtain a half decent team of software kiddies to simply provide ‘tools’ and decent APIs into their system.
    Obviously somebody wanted to make a quick buck and monetise the Storefeeder expertise/skillset but if we were a Storefeeder customer we would be evaluating our options right now.
    They may be good but they are expensive as well so other options are available!

  5. I never quite understand the frustrations with Royal Mail. In a whole it has to be be one of the best delivery services in the world. Sure we use couriers also but in general we use Royal Mail for up to 500 shipments a week with an incredible record of speed and accuracy. What I find amazing is the amount of companies shifting towards certain courier companies who are very cheap but seriously lack service. This is becoming more and more common and it baffles me to be honest.

    We have no experience with Drop and Go to be fair but we have a Royal Mail account manager who is fantastic and calls us regularly to make sure things are running smoothly and he is always looking for ways to streamline our service which has been greatly appreciated.

  6. i use smartstamp and have had mixed feelings.

    one post office, close’ishwhere i used to live, is great and most of the time i will make the detour because its soo easy and they are great. hand over and get proof stamped, they know me and work with me great.

    then there is the local one where i lived – literally round the corner. the staff in there were rude and resented me using it. they even said to each other in full ear shot of me.. ” why should we accept these we dont get paid for them” which makes me think the post office may get a penny or two from each stamp / postage they print?

    at the moment i have moved and my local one – the first time i used last week, i was there nearly an hour because they didnt know smartstamp and phoned up their helpdesk, and they were no use either.
    but they figured out how to mark it as pre paid on their system and seem quite willing to learn new ways and methods, and had a good convo on ebay selling and what systems / products ebay sellers use. hopefully they will become as easy to use as my first paragraph.

    i feel im in a middle ground with postage, not enough volume for the business rates, but more than the average person that vists the PO to send a parcel back occasionally.

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