Company Spotlight: HubBox

What is your company’s mission?

Put simply, HubBox makes click and collect easy for retailers by solving the numerous barriers to entry that commonly exist with courier solutions. By making our solution straightforward and low-risk to adopt, retailers are able to spend less time on technical integrations and more time on areas where they can truly add value: customer satisfaction, the purchasing cycle and internal operations.

The performance of companies such as Amazon and ASOS has raised customer expectations across the board and retailers need to respond. We empower retailers to raise the bar by providing consistent, quality service now demanded by consumers.

Using our software, combined with our network of over 4,200 collection points across the UK, our retail clients are able to quickly add a click and collect delivery option to their checkouts.

Unlike our competitors, our service is not predicated on a relationship with one specific courier, which means that retailers don’t have to make any changes to their courier partners or fulfilment to add click and collect. We connect with more than eight different ecommerce platforms, 40 checkout variants and every payment provider, meaning we can create solutions for any retailer with an ecommerce platform.

Why is click and collect a must-have?

We think of click and collect as providing both qualitative and quantitative benefits. On the qualitative side, offering more delivery options makes customers happier. The more choice you have, the more people you will please.

Click and collect delivers tangible benefits that impact your bottom line. The first is that click and collect doesn’t fail – there is no danger of missing a delivery as our collection points are open whenever customers want to use them. This is no small matter; every missed delivery costs a retailer £14 due to cancelled orders as well as re-delivery and related customer service costs. Each order fulfilled through click and collect reduces this number.

More delivery choices also bring in more customers. Our analysis suggests adding click and collect increases conversion rates from 1.3 to 3.2%. And above all, basket values are also 14% higher than when customers choose home delivery due to their higher confidence that they will not be missing a delivery.

Click and collect really is a win-win for customers and retailers.

What concerns do your customers have and how do you address them?

A common concern of our retail customers is that they don’t want to lose footfall in their stores. We emphasise that our service is a complement to, rather than a replacement for, retailers’ existing in-store collection options. Our unique geo-fencing tool allows retailers to make collection points within a certain radius of their stores invisible so that they continue to drive footfall and sales into their stores. Our research suggests that 27% of click and collect customers will make an additional purchase when collecting an item in-store. For instance, Jack Wills combines our collection points with its 85 stores in the UK to curate a network of delivery stores they want to offer to their customers, in a way that best complements their commercial strategy.

What other services do you offer?

Using the same technology that powers our 4,200 local collection points, we’ve also developed a solution that gives retailers the capability to offer in-store click and collect. This means that our technology now supports a retailer’s omnichannel strategy both online and in their own stores. Our easy to use system is in place in the stores of brands such as Skinnydip and TM Lewin, who now have an end-to-end solution that accompanies customers from the moment they place an order online until they pick it up in store.

Our retail customers also have total real-time visibility and control of their click and collect network in a single centralised dashboard. This enables them not only to manage day-to-day operations and respond to customer queries, but also provides valuable insight as to where and when their customers are using the service. Retailers are then able to use this data to optimise their strategy and deliver increased customer convenience.

We act as a guide to help retailers tackle challenges and improve the quality of their offering with our continued support and training at hand. We help them identify where they can do more or less. If they need help promoting the service we can offer promotions and signposting to boost take-up.

Who are your clients?

We’ve performed over 200 click and collect integrations for retailers and our software is currently used by leading brands such as Boohoo, Jack Wills, Warehouse, hmv and Whistles.

We also provide the only ‘ready-to-go’ click and collect app for popular and emerging retailers using the Shopify platform. Examples are Lavish Alice, Skinnydip, Lazy Oaf and Maniere de Voir.

Give us your elevator pitch

Implementing click and collect is not just about enhancing your delivery proposition. Offering click and collect delivers returns from both operational savings and additional revenue. We want to make it as simple as possible for retailers of any size, on any ecommerce platform and using any courier to access these benefits as quickly as possible.

Case Study: How Click and Collect Drives Higher Basket Values

Founded in 1999, Brown Bag Clothing is an established online brand offering customers high-profile menswear at affordable, discounted prices. With a mission to “provide customers with top designer men’s fashion at the very best prices”, they supply a range of brands including New Balance, Farah and True Religion.

The Story

Getting the delivery mix right is increasingly important when it comes to meeting consumers’ heightened service expectations. With this in mind, Brown Bag Clothing and their sibling site Woodhouse were keen to get a local click and collect solution up and running as quickly as possible.

Giving customers who might be out during the day an alternative delivery option, and thus reducing customer service queries and issues resulting from missed or failed deliveries was crucial to Brown Bag. Ease of implementation and compatibility with existing solutions were also key priorities.

The Solution

Brown Bag Clothing were able to implement click and collect without having to make any changes to their existing couriers, warehouse management system (WMS) or label printing, making the process smooth and straightforward.

Using HubBox’s pre-built module for Magento, Brown Bag completed the integration themselves within a couple of days.

Additionally, the click and collect option was instantly compatible across both standard delivery and next-day delivery options, giving their customers access to their purchases at their desired time.

The Impact

Within two months of implementing HubBox click and collect, the service demonstrated its value. Uptake was swift, indicating an underlying consumer need previously unmet.

Immediately tangible results included:

• Increased operational efficiency as a result of a reduction in the volume of issues resulting from missed and failed deliveries
• Boost to incremental revenue as a result of the higher AOV (Average Order Value) for click and collect orders– over three months Brown Bag’s click and collect orders were on average 15% higher in value than home delivery orders
• Initial 5% uptake rate and growing – highlighting the performance of technology designed to deliver the best possible user experience at checkout Paul Bradley, IT and operations director at Brown Bag Clothing, said: “Adding HubBox was easy. We know how much our customers value convenient delivery when they shop with us, and even in a short time frame we’ve been able to see the tangible returns on customer satisfaction and revenue from adding HubBox click and collect.”

HubBox in brief

Company Name: HubBox
Founder: Sam Jarvis
Founding Date: July 2015
HQ Location: London (SW)
Size / Employees: 20
Customers: Boohoo, hmv, TM Lewin, Jack Wills, Warehouse, Lavish Alice, Oddbins, AX Paris, This Works, etc.
Website: www.hub-box.com

This Company Spotlight was produced by InternetRetailing and paid for by HubBox. 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.