What does your company do and what is your USP?
Cygnia Logistics is a third-party logistics partner for ambitious brands that want to grow. We provide ecommerce fulfilment across multiple channels alongside custom packaging, personalisation and tracking services. Our USP is we always say yes; we love solving problems.
Which retailers do you work with?
We work with many household names helping them to deliver to store and direct to consumers nationally and internationally including Whittard of Chelsea, Feelunique, Revolution Beauty, Crabtree & Evelyn, Molton Brown, My 1st Years as well as with pure-play ecommerce operators such a Moonpig.
How would you describe your growth?
Cygnia Logistics has achieved average annual growth of just under 50% over the past five years. This growth is thanks to investment in its people and facilities to service the fast-growing e-fulfilment and ecommerce sectors.
2018 marked a significant turning point in the direction of the company as it introduced a new leadership team, launched a new brand and made significant investments in its warehouse and IT capabilities to help fast-track growth in its diverse customer base.
The company rebranded to Cygnia Logistics from Dalepak to reflect its evolution into a business focused on partnering with mid-size ecommerce businesses. Typically, prospects are at the point where they need to outsource their logistics to an expert partner who can help them to fulfil customer requirements seamlessly as their business grows.
What challenges are you addressing for multichannel retailers?
Many of our customers are experiencing sustained double-digit growth. This poses the challenge of scalability which is about being able to quickly adapt solutions to meet rapidly changing requirements.
At the same time, consumer expectations are growing exponentially. Fulfilment plays a big role in the end-customer’s overall perception of a brand so it’s critical to get every aspect right. Sustainability in packaging, fulfilment and logistics is increasingly important to brands as they become more accountable to their customers. This has significantly disrupted many markets, particularly multi-channel retail.
Their supply chain needs to be secure and resilient to help them grow their business and maintain and improve customer experience as they do so.
Last year we invested more than £500k in developing a state-of-the-art order picking solution to handle the increase in range for just one customer. This investment, aligned with our in-house experience and expertise, has enabled Cygnia to carve out a niche servicing particularly demanding sectors, such as beauty, where vloggers and influencers can create mini peaks in demand.
We can manage both micro and major peaks in orders, resulting in successful partnerships with brands that need to respond to increases in sales, driven by online reviews, social media influencers, planned promotional campaigns and seasonal milestones.
We have also continued to invest in our IT systems and are now looking to expand our warehouse footprint. We’re continually exploring how we can use technology to support leaner operations, reduce shrinkage, optimise quality and stay flexible. We don’t believe fixed models work in today’s fast-changing environment and this approach serves us well. Brexit may disrupt supply chains but many of our customers operate globally and we feel well prepared for the changes ahead.
How are you using emerging technology?
One of the key factors that has changed in recent years is the role of social media influencers in driving personalised orders and micro-peaks and we have invested specifically to ensure that our customers can maximise influencer-driven sales.
Recently, we launched enhanced software platforms to provide greater real-time transparency and reporting on orders for customers.
The team has upgraded the existing Gateway, Sorted and Tableau systems to align with specific customer requirements and operational improvements.
We always like to push what’s possible and make existing systems work hard for our customers. It’s part of our ongoing commitment to continuous improvement.
Having an in-house IT team gives us a huge amount of flexibility in terms of the speed of onboarding staff and tailoring our capabilities to specific customer needs. Being able to offer a broad range of delivery options helps to reduce basket abandonment and ultimately increase sales.
What targets are you aiming to achieve in the next five years?
We want to continue our growth trajectory by diversifying our portfolio and focusing on sectors and markets that are predicted to grow, we can see a clear path to our continued development and lots of exciting opportunity.
Give us your one-sentence elevator pitch.
We help retailers navigate digitalisation and continue to thrive.
CASE STUDY: Revolution Beauty
Revolution Beauty is a British cosmetics, skincare and haircare brand. Stocked in 44 territories around the globe, Revolution Beauty is No 43 in the UK’s top 100 growth companies.
The rapidly growing beauty business specialises in creating and developing products faster than anyone else, which makes it highly responsive to changing tastes. With much of its sales driven by social media, influencer and customer advocacy, lead times need to be flexible to meet peaks in demand and to match customer expectations.
The company appointed Cygnia Logistics in September 2018 to ensure seamless delivery of its products to customers with a 16-hour, five-days-a-week shift pattern to accommodate their predicted volumes. Revolution Beauty and Cygnia implemented the plan in around two months. Within two weeks of the service going live, Revolution Beauty was averaging 1700 orders per day at an average of seven units per order, with over 30,000 orders shipped in the first 18 days.
Within three weeks, those orders stepped up to three-fold requiring 24-hour, seven-days-a-week cover to keep pace. Average items per order also increased by 50%.
The stock keeping units (SKUs) in the range rose 60% which prompted the whole layout of the warehouse to change. Over the Black Friday weekend, the company fulfilled ten times the normal order level in just three days.
Cygnia IN BRIEF
Headquarters: Northampton
Turnover: £50 million
Employees: 600
Website: cygnia.net
This Company Spotlight was produced by eDelivery and sponsored by Cygnia. Funding articles in this way allows us to explore topics and present relevant services and information that we believe our readers will find of interest.
