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Outsourcing logistics with Parcelninja

Joanne Carew
By Joanne Carew, ITWeb Cape-based contributor.
Cape Town, 05 Feb 2015

Parcelninja is SA's first cloud based e-commerce warehouse and order fulfilment service.

Speaking on the final afternoon of the eCommerce Africa Confex in Cape Town, Justin Drennen, CEO of wantitall.co.za, shared how the fledgling e-commerce logistics company played an integral role in the growth and success of lifestyle e-tailer Superbalist.

Parcelninja launched its first commercial services in October 2014 and just a few days ago the company announced it had secured a R20-million investment from UK-based data and cyber security fund manager, C5 Holdings.

According to Drennen, Parcelninja takes the hassle out of running an Web-based shop by handling all of the logistics and warehousing for online merchants. The team from Superbalist lacked the manpower, knowhow and resources to effectively manage their own logistics, a stumbling block that was preventing the company from reaching its potential, he noted.

When Superbalist, then called Citymob, approached Drennen and his team, they were receiving about 500 orders each day but were only able to fulfil 300 of these, which meant that they were 1 000 orders behind each week, he outlined. "There was no way that this was sustainable."

At the time, if you went onto local name-and-shame platform HelloPeter, the sentiment around Citymob was far from positive, Drennen continued. "Their warehouse was disorganised. It took four weeks to deliver a product. They were not properly managing product returns and basically had really crappy customer service. They were properly messing things up."

Since partnering with Parcelninja, Superbalist has been able to deliver products to customers in a timely fashion and track the product en route to its destination, in addition to gaining valuable feedback from their customers about their experience.

Superbalist also gained a more comprehensive grasp of what products were actually available in their warehouses and this allowed them to keep better track of what was coming in and out, he went on to say.

To put this in context, Drennen detailed that this year, on Black Friday ? the Friday following Thanksgiving Day in the US ? Superbalist enjoyed a 474% increase in transaction volumes compared to 2014. "The company was able to do so because it can now do what it wants. It doesn't have to worry about logistics. It doesn't have to worry about stock or packaging or inventory. All it cares about is sales."

What this meant for Superbalist, according to Drennen, was it could focus on what it really wanted to do. "No one wants to put stuff in a box and ship things. And even if you do, as a start-up this is probably not your area of expertise. This sort of partnership allows an online retailer to spend less time worrying about logistics and rather focus on what they know about - their product."

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