HUBOO.qxp_Layout 2 22/04/2022 17:59 Page 1
BRISTOL BUSINESS
Booming business As one of the country’s fastest-growing e-commerce fulfilment firms becomes the principal sponsor of Bristol Sport, we find out all about the booming Bristol business, Huboo. This month, we sat down with co-founder Martin Bysh, who has been breaking boundaries to do business better...
I
f you’re not yet familiar with the name Huboo, now’s the time to get acquainted. Recently named as one of the best places to work in Europe, the Bristol-headquartered e-commerce fulfilment firm is one of the fastest-growing fulfilment companies in the UK. Born out of a secure storage room at a Safestore in Bath, Huboo has blossomed into a 600–strong team spread across the UK and Europe. After recently hitting the headlines with the news that it will become the principal partner for all five of Bristol Sport’s professional teams – a UK-first for a sporting group – we thought it was time we found out more about this extraordinary local success story. On a particularly wet April afternoon, we sat down with CEO and co-founder Martin Bysh at Huboo’s HQ on Corn Street – an office that oozes contemporary class and creativity. He explained exactly how – in just five short years – he and fellow founder Paul Dodd managed to create a multi-million pound empire; one that has become known as the Amazon of the West Country.
Where it all began Like all great ideas, the concept of Huboo derived from a conversation Martin and Paul had while standing on the side-lines of their sons’ Saturday morning football match. Frustrated by the lack of quality, trusted multi-channel fulfilment providers, they saw an opportunity to bring their entrepreneurial background and technology experience together. With complementary skills, they were able to create the company that we know today – a reliable enterprise that helps online businesses of all sizes grow by taking care of their e-commerce order fulfilment needs. Since 2017, the founders have been refining their craft, creating an optimum customer experience and a failsafe business ecosystem. They have employed hundreds of new starters, won a multitude of awards – including the Global Business Excellence Award for Outstanding Innovation – and opened further warehouses in Chippenham, Eindhoven, Netherlands, Madrid, Spain and Leipzig, Germany. But what was the key to their exponential growth, we hear you ask? First and foremost, Martin and Paul rebuilt the warehouse model from the ground up. They introduced micro hubs into the traditional warehouse model and powered each hub with an intuitive software that provides everything from transaction management and quality control to integration with popular marketplaces, such as Amazon, eBay and Shopify. From the get-go, this model dramatically improved the fulfilment efficiency and kept costs down. What’s more, the founders designed well-rounded jobs to keep their employees happy. In turn, they found that their clients were eager to return. Moving away from the way in which fulfilment companies traditionally employ staff, hiring pickers to walk an average of 10 miles a day while preparing items for shipping, Huboo employed hub 54 THE BRISTOL MAGAZINE
|
MAY 2022
|
No 210
managers to carry out a range of different tasks within the micro hub setup. As a result, their days were kept varied and interesting. Managers would open up in the morning, lock up at night, stay in regular contact with clients and provide a personal service that ultimately allows businesses to grow and succeed at a faster rate. “We have happy people that want to come to work and enjoy what they do,” Martin says. “We also have happy clients who get to speak to the people in the warehouse when normally there’s a barrier. Warehouse churn rates [the rate at which customers stop doing business with a company over a given period of time] are traditionally awful, whereas our churn rates in the micro hubs are near to zero.” To prove that Huboo’s clients are, in fact, happy, Martin explains the company’s Net Promoter Score (NPS) – an index ranging from -100 to 100 that measures the willingness of customers to recommend a company's services to others. It is used as a proxy for gauging the customer's overall satisfaction and the customer's loyalty to the brand. “Our warehouses are at 56, which would be staggering for any business,” says Martin. “The highest score in the entire company, however, is the first micro hub we ever rolled out. It has an NPS of 76. Hardly any businesses have that score, whether they are office-based or work in luxury. We’re creating great jobs for great people. Unlike many fulfilment companies – we have nothing to hide – we’re proud of every part of our business.”
