How Ship From Store Helps Retailers Boost Store Effectiveness by Modern Retail

How Ship From Store Helps Retailers Boost Store Effectiveness

Contents

04-05

What does the growth of ecommerce mean for retail?

06-07

The growing need for flexible delivery options

08-09

Why now is the time to consider your fulfilment options

10-11

Introducing Ship from Store How does Ship from Store work? What are some of the benefits of Ship from Store?

12-13

Using Ship from Store to create a better brand

14-17

How Matalan shipped over 1 Million orders with Ship from Store Capitalisation on In-Store Inventory During COVID-19 ShipStation enables Click and Collect, Ship from Store The ease of onboarding fulfilment teams onto ShipStation Increase in productivity and sales

What does the growth of ecommerce mean for retail? The key question is what happens next?

Growth is great. Or is it?

Retailers across the board are now under more pressure than ever to stay ahead of competitors, deliver an excellent customer experience and adapt to ever-changing customer demands.

Since the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic, for many retailers this decision was made for them. Irrespective of strategic plans or customer buying habits, retailers had to move online.

If ecommerce continues growing at its impressive rate – globally, this is expected to reach $4.2 trillion – where does this leave retailers who have nationwide store estates supported by online fulfilment capabilities?

These expectations have intensified in recent years due to the growth of ecommerce; a mammoth wave of disruption that has rewritten the retailer’s rulebook and what it means to sell products to the public and other businesses.

Many retailers scrambled to rewire their operations from top to bottom. Others expanded their existing ecommerce capabilities to ensure that when brighter days finally returned, irreversible store cannibalisation hadn’t occurred.

What do customers actually want from their favourite brands, and how can retailers stay sharp, ready to adapt to a seemingly never-ending wave of change?

The pace of change has been relentless and high street retailers, as well as those with a physical presence, have been forced into reassessing whether ecommerce is an extinction threat or whether it’s a saviour brought about by the digital age.

As is often the case with systemic change, this entire experience has meant that many retailers have now successfully entered the omni-channel era.

This eBook dives into that topic and explores an easy-to-implement approach that can provide retailers with everything they need to thrive.

The growing need for flexible delivery options Shoppers are fickle. One minute they love the excitement of returning to interactive in-store experiences, the next they enter pseudo-hibernation for the entirety of winter, unwilling to buy any products outside the convenience of their smartphone. Every customer is different too. Some adore click-and-collect. Others are high street champions who will brace wind, rain, and snow to visit their favourite store for some weekend retail therapy. Generation-to-generation, this differs. Town-to-town, this differs. There are no longer easy-to-define shopper demographics, and when you add the freedom, flexibility and reach of ecommerce to the equation, retailers face a heady mix of combinations to cater for. Ultimately, it’s all about giving the customer what they want. And that means near-complete flexibility in how they buy from you and how their products are delivered to them.

Nowadays, customers want the ability to select their delivery date and slot, with round-the-clock detailed visibility into where their order is, how it will arrive and the opportunity to, with a few clicks, change things on the fly. Retailers that stoically set expectations will find themselves under threat from nimbler brands that embed flexibility into every delivery touchpoint. At a minimum, retailers should provide: y The option of next day, standard and economy delivery y A delivery service offering a selectable day with a precise delivery window y A click and collect option y Clear tracking that communicates near real-time status y Easy returns All of these should be changeable whenever the customer desires. Anything else, and shoppers will vote with their feet and look for more flexible brands.

The days of “Arrives on a Weekday 7.30am – 7.30pm” delivery visibility is fading fast.

Why now is the time to consider your fulfilment options Peak has all but begun, although that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t sense check your fulfilment options or consider adding additional capabilities to your well-prepared plans. The best thing about omnichannel retailing is the ability to easily test new functionality or channels, even during the busiest periods. Before Peak really gets going, in your final stages of preparation ask yourself the following questions: y Do I have enough carriers in place? y What are those carriers communicating about Peak? y What are our redundancy plans? y Have we checked our order fulfilment and order processing flows? y Are products where they should be? y Are stores equipped to enable our omnichannel ambitions? Last year’s photos of stacks and stacks of parcels at delivery hubs haven’t faded from memory just yet so even if this year’s Peak has started strong, there’s plenty of grumblings in the media about widespread supply chain disruption to stay conscious of. As Christmas approaches, the effects of this squeeze will likely become more apparent and it’s important your shipping methods, inventory management and returns experience can navigate through any disruption.

All these crucial components dictate customer experience and when one fails, others often grind to a halt. Successful omnichannel retailing is all about seamless shopping – the ability for customers to flit between online, mobile, stores and delivery options to have a smooth buying experience – so make sure your fulfilment is well and truly up to scratch.

Realistically, there’s no one perfect Peak plan and things will always get bumpy – that’s just the nature of the season - but the worst option is to do nothing. No matter how experienced you are with Peak, check, check and check again – before, during and after the shopping period.

Introducing Ship from Store Pioneered during the pandemic and proven by leaders like Matalan and Mind, the charity shop organisation, the Ship from Store model powered by ShipStation shows what’s achievable when retailers double down on omnichannel selling.

How does Ship from Store work? At its most basic, Ship from Store lets retailers leverage their in-store inventory to capitalise on ecommerce’s momentum. The shopper buys online like normal. Simple. Behind the scenes, the store is notified, and a manifest is created with a carrier. All that’s left to do is for a store employee to pick and pack the product, print the shipping label and hand the item over. Everyone wins in this scenario and it’s a strategy that works excellently for stores of every size

and shape, in particular multi-store retailers, convenience stores (both franchise and grocery) and industrial / out-of-city estate retailers.

What are some of the benefits of Ship from Store? When ShipStation is your Ship from Store engine, retailers can deliver a host of immediate and long-term benefits, including: y Selling more product y Accelerating delivery for online orders y Maximising your store estate and lowering site overheads y Enhancing customer satisfaction by controlling stock levels effectively y Strengthening sustainability through more local fulfilment y Simplifying your existing online retailing

Need proof? Just ask Matalan, which through partner SHIFT Commerce, said the following about its experience with Ship from Store retailing: “About 40 to 50% of Matalan’s online orders are coming through ShipStation to stores right now. It’s phenomenal. It’s really helped them ramp up their online capacity.” Those numbers are nothing to scoff at, especially when you consider the rental burden of stores and the fact most stock was essentially dormant for eighteen months. Ship from Store offers an easy-to-implement way to transform your stores into something more than just stores. And with 65% of people saying they will prefer to shop online instead of in stores, even once COVID-19 has well and truly passed, it’s important you find ways to capitalise on that momentum.

Using Ship from Store to create a better brand Ship from Store isn’t just a way to better utilise in-store resources and reduce the burden on central warehousing, it’s also a powerful method of overcoming common fulfilment issues and order management pinch points. The approach enhances delivery tracking. It combines in-store customer service with home delivery and convenience. It can raise a retailer’s sustainability credentials by reducing carbon emissions generated by distribution centre associated haulage. Customers are happier too. They receive more flexibility in how they buy from a brand and indirectly they support the high street, even if they aren’t fans of visiting the location. Other benefits include: y y y y y

More sales Faster delivery Efficient inventory management A more profitable store estate Effective stock control

The advantages of Ship from Store extend even further once the power of ShipStation – its underlying engine – are considered. These are: y Full delivery tracking y Unlimited users and stores y Integration with countless channels, POS and carriers y Automated order assignment and manifests y Better inventory forecasting y Branded returns y An expert team always ready to help

How Matalan shipped over 1 Million orders with Ship from Store

For over 30 years, Matalan has been on a mission to provide outstanding quality and value for modern families. As one of the leading omnichannel retailers in the UK, they operate over 200 retail locations spread across the UK, Europe, and the Middle East. The fastest-growing sector of their business now, however, is ecommerce. When Matalan initially brought on ShipStation partner, SHIFT Commerce, a digital retail platform, to help tailor and optimise their marketplace strategy in 2017, they knew the future of retail was online and that they needed to become a more agile ecommerce brand. Based on their brand awareness and physical retail presence, Matalan also knew they needed to build their online store on a platform that could handle high volumes and still have room to scale. In a matter of a couple of years, SHIFT Commerce enabled Matalan to adapt to the digital market, grow a strong online presence, and open and staff a distribution centre solely for ecommerce orders.

Capitalisation on In-Store Inventory During COVID-19 Once news of COVID-19 started to spread in early 2020, the Matalan team met with SHIFT to discuss opportunities for encouraging in-person shoppers to buy online.

After a meeting of the minds, they decided to experiment with a fulfil-from-store distribution model. Emma Sutton, Operations Director of SHIFT Commerce recalls the brainstorm with Matalan as “We’ve got the stores, we’ve got the staff. Let’s get them picking orders,” she said. With hundreds of retail locations spread across the UK, the concept of converting empty retail stores into mini distribution centres was a no-brainer. As a budget retailer, margins are key to Matalan’s business success. With this new process, they would not only save money on postage by shipping parcels from the closest retail location, but they were also able to capitalize on selling the inventory already stocked in-store. “Having flexibility and being agile was really important for Matalan. Since coming on board, their online revenues have grown by 77%, organic traffic has risen by over 30% and conversion rates continue to climb.” Emma Sutton, Operations Director, SHIFT Commerce The only problem? Matalan needed a shipping software solution that would support shipments through multiple carriers, allow them to fulfil orders from multiple locations, and seamlessly communicate with their existing platforms.

ShipStation enables Click and Collect, Ship from Store

The ease of onboarding fulfilment teams onto ShipStation

Given that Matalan already managed their inventory through SHIFT Commerce’s order management system, implementing this fulfilment process was relatively easy and hands-off for Matalan’s development teams.

After a couple of test runs at their store in Leeds, a few chats with the local UK ShipStation support team to set up workflow automations, and creating internal process documentation, the Matalan teams felt confident enough in the software to start shipping out orders.

By coding an order router within SHIFT Commerce, Matalan can now cross-reference inventory across all stores in real-time and route orders as necessary for the most efficient shipping option. By setting up each independent store as a user account in ShipStation, Matalan was able to funnel only relevant orders to quickly onboard their existing employees. Users can see the orders, can go around the store, pick them, print the labels directly from ShipStation, and then Hermes picks them up from the store for distribution. “The selling point with ShipStation is obviously you have the APIs available, so it makes it easy to integrate with our platform,” said Sutton. “We all agreed this was the quickest and easiest way to get Matalan rolling with a fulfil-from-store programme.”

“There doesn’t have to be extensive training. ShipStation is quite an easy interface,” said Sutton. “In a matter of a few months, they were up and running.” “The store users have been able to pick up ShipStation really easily. Users can see the orders, can go around the store, pick them, print the labels directly from ShipStation, and Hermes then come and pick them up from the store, and distribute them.” Because the systems are continuously talking to each other through API calls and responses, there is very little manual intervention required by Matalan’s fulfilment team. Even simply printing the label through ShipStation triggers a dispatch email to the customer so that the customer knows their order’s on the way or that it’s ready to pick up at the store.

Increase in productivity and sales Since integrating with ShipStation through SHIFT Commerce, Matalan has shipped over a million orders, and millions of pounds in product from their individual retail stores.

the ever-changing landscape of retail. And, given its success the past year, plans to continue and build on their fulfil-from-store distribution model.

Quick action and innovation from both the SHIFT Commerce and Matalan operations teams meant that within a few months into the pandemic, Matalan stores and staff were set up to pick, pack, and fulfil online orders directly from the ShipStation mobile app.

“It’s just what makes this partnership and this solution so important and so valuable. Because, it’s really allowed them to weather the storm, so to speak,” said Sutton. Sutton credits a lot of Matalan’s success this past year on good timing, good strategy, and the importance of good software solutions for ecommerce.

“About 40 to 50% of Matalan’s online orders are coming through ShipStation to stores right now. It’s phenomenal. It’s really helped them ramp up their online capacity.” Emma Sutton, Operations Director, SHIFT Commerce

“Having a system that gives you a view of the orders, lets you see what you’ve sent and what you haven’t, or what you short shipped — it puts things into queues, which is vital — that view and that organisation this year has been so desperately needed because everything has shifted to online,” said Sutton.

And there are no plans to slow down their ecommerce growth, despite retail shops opening back up. With the help of SHIFT Commerce, Matalan has been able to embrace

Ultimately, retail is all about giving the customer what they want. And that means near-complete flexibility in how they buy from you and how their products are delivered to them.