Sign of the Times – How London Retailers Keep Up with Ecommerce Giants like Amazon

When the average customer thinks of online shopping, they will more likely than not default to thinking of the web behemoth Amazon. Starting off as an online book store, the growth of Amazon has been vast and incredibly quick in the past decade. So prevalent is the company, that its faster delivery service Prime is now commonly used as a verb. Need something urgently – why not Prime it?

Amazon has forged its reputation for ease and convenience by consistently improving and expanding its service, raising their own standards, and then, of course, consistently meeting them. Now, if you get an Amazon delivery even a day later than it was scheduled, it seems odd. Because customers are so used to transparency, quick deliveries and an extremely varied product range, it’s very jarring when your order is an anomaly.

So with this impressive reputation, how does your ecommerce business compete with companies like Amazon? While it’s basically impossible for an independent business to echo everything they do, there are equivalents to be done to ensure you come as close as possible. But before we get to these, let’s look at how Amazon do it.

The Amazon Way

Amazon’s ecommerce operation is massive. They have separate fulfilment centres and distribution centres and they sell a wealth of products, many of which aren’t even made by the company. Yes, they make and ship a large majority of their own products too, but they also sell a lot of items that are defined as FBA – fulfilled by Amazon. These items are made by 3rd-party companies and shipped to Amazon’s fulfilment centres, where the American-owned company will take care of end-to-end delivery for you.  

A lot of smaller companies who don’t have a physical store location see this FBA option as a highly worthwhile method. And for a particular type of business, it really is. These kinds of businesses are ones that care less about branded packaging and personal touches, instead prioritising speed and ease of deliveries. And they are the type of brand who can justify shipping 100% of their stock from an external warehouse, not needing to sell any items via other channels and entirely comfortable with Amazon handling stock management.

This kind of set-up just can’t work for those shipping from their own stores. So how can you mirror their setup despite being a fraction of their size?

Keeping Up With The Big Boys

Setting up your own order fulfilment funnel in the same vein as Amazon would take some serious capital. You’d need a warehouse or at the very least, bags of external space. And then you’d need the staff to run that space, keep on top of the packaging, and make arrangements with multiple couriers. In short – it’s impossible to match them if you’re a new store or boutique.

Partnering with a 3rd-party logistics service allows your business to get all of these delivery perks but traditional solutions still have the drawbacks of surrendering your stock to an external property outside of London. This is a vital point for up-and-coming brands as they really can’t afford to surrender that large a percentage of stock. So if you need all of the positives but want your products closer to home, you need door number three. A door that was previously closed until a few years ago.

A Unique Type of Order Fulfilment

Like many modern solutions in business, Weengs highlighted a common pain point for numerous London businesses and set out to correct it. Knowing that half of the offerings served up by traditional 3rd-party logistics firms were wholly desirable and didn’t need adjusting, they instead focused on the ones that weren’t, like splitting up your products.

Weengs offer a unique collect, pack & ship method of order fulfilment, offering ultimate convenience that fits into your shop’s routine. Using Weengs is as simple as logging your orders into the app and from there, Weengs will do the rest. A driver will come into your shop during your chosen 2-hour time slot, pick up each item and transport it to a London-based warehouse, professionally pack each item, and find the best carrier for the job depending on your requirements. Using their intelligent algorithm, they’ll find the best deal for your products and send each item via tracked services.

Using Weengs, you’ll not only be able to say goodbye to packing, but you’ll have buckets of time to focus on growing your business, customer base, and of course, your sales.

Partnering with Weengs means

• Convenient daily collections from your shop
• Professionally packed products
• Tracked deliveries on each order
• No more packaging yourself
• More time to focus on your shop