When your business is growing there are only really two choices to handle increased volumes and the need for more space – a bigger warehouse and more staff or opting to use a fulfilment company.

Fulfilment is often a scary proposition, cost and loss of control are top of many people’s minds, not to mention the fact that most fulfilment companies are only interested in relatively large fufilment requirements – they’re not set up for SMEs.

There’s also the issue of your chosen fulfilment company not truly being a business partner and working with you giving your customers the same care and attention that you would. That’s where Huboo step in, Huboo split their warehouse into multiple hubs – mini warehouses within a warehouse, each run by a Hub Manager. You’ll be talking to the same person every time you pick up the phone and they’ll be focused on your business.

We spoke to Martin Bysh from Huboo to find out more:

Who are Huboo?

Huboo is a revolutionary fulfilment solution, providing reliable and inexpensive multi-channel fulfilment to online retailers of all shapes and sizes. Founded by myself and Paul, I have 30 years of experience in the tech industry, and Paul is a 25 years veteran of the fulfilment/logistics industry; we think that’s a pretty good combination to have at the top when one is trying to re-imagine a whole industry!

We believe Huboo fundamentally democratises the fulfilment industry, by enabling SMEs to access an incredibly good value fulfilment service, in a way that other fulfilment companies haven’t been able to do before. Like-for-like, we are the cheapest fulfilment service in the UK, without any sacrifice of operational quality.

What do Huboo do?

The idea for the service came from our experience as e-commerce sellers; we set-up a small online shop to see what problems e-commerce sellers might come up against, with an inkling fulfilment could be the major one. This was straight away confirmed when we struggled to find any service out there to take fulfilment off our hands; and thus, Huboo was born!

The major advantage of our service for any online sellers, particularly SMEs, is the amount of free time that has been created, by handing over the hard-yards of picking, packing and posting to the experts (rather than doing it themselves, or managing staff and warehouses themselves). We know for some of our clients Huboo has quite literally been a God-send, as they have got hours of their life back every day.

For most of our clients, these extra hours give them more time to spend growing their business, exactly what they got into business in the first place to do. Whether that means more time refining their product range or more time spent on marketing, Huboo clients experience genuine growth after onboarding with Huboo. For other clients, Huboo doing the hard-yards means more time spent on the beach in Thailand, kicking-back with a cocktail and enjoying life – and that’s great too!

For bigger clients, too, Huboo has also helped to enable a fresh lease of life. Due simply to the lack of alternatives out there, many online sellers set-up their own fulfilment operations, without any real expertise in how to make such an operation run smoothly and efficiently. Not having to worry about managing this aspect of the business yourself and being able to contract this out to Huboo is another example of how Huboo have freed up the time of all our clients and helped set them on a path to rapid growth.

What makes Huboo different

We are different from more traditional fulfilment companies in that we have re-imagined fulfilment from the ground-up allowing us to provide our service at a lower price than other fulfilment companies, with no compromises on service. We’re called Huboo as have broken down the warehouse space into smaller ‘Hubs’, with dedicated ‘Hub’ managers. This enables a real, personal link to be established between the Hub managers and the businesses they serve, as clients are in touch with the team who are personally picking and packing their products. Larger clients are allocated multiple hubs, so the hub system scales beautifully as clients scale. For clients it’s almost like having their own mini fulfilment warehouse, but with all the advantages of the wider Huboo ecosystem.

We’ve also built bespoke software that guides everything we do, which enables us to provide a reliable service and to pass on our efficiencies to our clients, in the form of our incredibly good-value prices.

Our bespoke software integrates with all major channels, e-shops and Multi-channel management applications. If you need an integration we don’t have, our team of developers will build it for free.

Why should I be interested?

We believe it’s worth having a chat to us at Huboo no matter what your fulfilment situation. Particularly for SMEs, we know that so many business owners have previously failed to put enough of a price on their time. I do not blame them, as prior to Huboo, there simply wasn’t a fulfilment service out there that could service their needs in the way, and at the price, that we can. But, quite simply, we believe any time spent as an online entrepreneur on fulfilling your orders is almost certainly time wasted. The e-commerce world is already complicated enough without worrying about how best to organise your shelves!

It’s also worth bearing in mind that we are in the process of building the Huboo community. We’ve got dedicated client success managers, whose job it is to work with Huboo clients to grow their business and share best practice. I really can’t emphasise enough how Huboo clients grow when they sign up, and I really encourage if you’re online seller to get in touch if you’re reading this for an explanatory chat.

Huboo Case Study – Ojewellery

As mentioned above Huboo works with all sized clients. Many of them large, but also small startups, investing in their growth. Lindsay Hayman runs Ojewellery, one of the many success stories of Huboo. OJewellery had grown rapidly, and the fulfilment of orders was her biggest job. Not yet big enough to have her own Royal Mail account, Lindsay was stuck every day in the queue at the Post Office. Other fulfilment companies were only interested in bulk.

Lindsay didn’t know where to turn… That is, until she came across Huboo. Freed up from the demands of picking, packing and posting, Lindsay now has time to focus on sales and marketing, as well as enjoying a well-earned family holiday for the first time in years.

Black Box service

For larger clients that would like the fulfilment operation to be as deeply integrated into their systems and locations as possible we offer our black box hubs, where we locate a complete managed hub at the client’s warehouse. Literally dropping into place a plug and play, scalable, fully managed, fulfilment operation. This is particularly useful for wholesalers interested in trying direct to consumer selling without wanting to invest in their own fulfilment operations.

What should I do now?

Go to our website and sign up now, and ship your products to us! For smaller clients it really is that simple – sometimes we have been able to start fulfilling our client’s orders without even speaking to them once on the phone. The Huboo dashboard is simple to use and your channels are easy to link up.

For most clients, though, just give us a ring on 01722 444 025 as there’s often a few things to discuss as most clients have slightly different needs that we’re happy to come up with bespoke solutions to meet. Our friendly team are genuinely keen to discuss you and your business so get in touch as soon as you can!