HUMAN BEINGS DO IT BEST, SAYS DISRUPTIVE NEW LOGISTICS COMPANY

Even as high streets have opened up again, we’ve become so used to shopping online and having it delivered, that the numbers of Amazon-size fulfilment centres will continue to rise.

But they can reportedly be pretty miserable places to work. So how would it be if these monster warehouses behaved differently, with a manager taking responsibility for the products and having to walk less than half a mile a day?

Welcome to the world of Huboo. Launched by co-founders Martin Bysh and Paul Dodd in Bristol in 2015, this is a business that, arguably rather radically since it calls itself a tech company, puts people at the heart of what it does.

Like Amazon, Huboo holds stock for online retailers large and small (of which more later), which it will pick, pack and deliver in the normal way. Unlike Amazon, it operates a more personal hub model.

Martin explained: “We set up Huboo to offer all the functionality of a large warehouse but in a hub of typically 300-500 sq ft, with one person running that entire space.

“Each hub manages goods for up to 30 clients. The hub manager is responsible for all the inbound and outbound work and offers first line support to our clients. So rather than being one of many workers in a huge warehouse, they can engage with clients, who love the fact that they can talk to the person doing the job.

“It’s a great relationship between us, via our hub manager and our client. And our managers have a sense of ownership which you don’t get in a normal warehouse. It’s more of a retail job than a warehouse operative.”

The idea for Huboo came from Paul. With a background in logistics (in his previous role at Proctor & Gamble he had a remit to save the company half a billion pounds a year), Paul rented 300 sq ft of warehouse space and began playing around with ideas for fulfilment.

He was soon joined by Martin, a computer games entrepreneur who had successfully built and sold three companies. The men looked at how they could set up a more cost-effective logistics operation using technology and people.

“Building and kitting out a fully automated warehouse is very expensive,” said Martin. “We built our business on venture capital funding of £1 million, which might have bought us one robot, so we came at it from a different perspective.

“Our principle idea was that human beings do the job best when costs and calibration are factored in. Technology is usually deployed for a specific task, humans are more flexible.”

But surely people are not as productive as a full automated warehouse? Martin disagrees. “If you are happy, you’re more productive. Some companies use people like light bulbs, plugging them in then throwing them away when they’ve burned out.

“We offer a sense of ownership and a career path. Some of our staff have moved into business development and we have promoted process engineers. Our biggest success so far is Claire, who came in less than a year ago as a hub manager. Now she’s running the entire warehouse.”

Huboo wants to build good jobs for people and offer them career paths, but it also wants to democratise its warehouse space.

“Right now, if an online retailer wants to secure fulfilment services they need to be shipping a large number of units at a certain price point every day, or a fulfilment company won’t talk to them. We offer warehouse space for all online retailers of whatever size. And because our hub managers “own” the space, they become more knowledgeable about the goods they are shipping.”

Much of the sector Huboo operates in is uncontested. “One of our larger clients is worth around £2 million a year to us, but the most expensive item they sell is £6 or £7. Our smallest client is worth around £2,000 a year. We have around 750 clients now and are bringing on around 250 per month.

“And where our business is contested, our processes and cost transparency mean that we usually win that business as well.”

Despite putting people first, Martin and Paul aren’t luddites: “We are introducing some automation at our new Bristol warehouse, which will be split up into about 50 hubs.”

Huboo can take on an empty warehouse and kit out each hub for around £3,000.

Currently the company has around 50 hubs in 50,000 sq ft of warehouse space at Emerson’s Green with a further 50,000 sq ft of palletised storage and a replenishment warehouse. It has just taken on a further 50,000 sq ft of warehouse at Avonmouth and will open a headquarters in Bristol to house senior managers, Paul’s 50 strong team of developers, finance and marketing.”

“Paul has a lot of technology coming online which will improve our sales, optimisation and systems,” added Martin.

All this has been possible thanks to a second round of investment secured last year. The £14 million round was led by venture capital company Stride (which has also invested in Deliveroo, Cazoo and Hopin), with participation from Hearst Ventures, Maersk, Episode 1 and Ada Ventures. This has brought Huboo’s total funding to date to £18 million.

The company now employs around 250 people, and is recruiting more. It is also about to launch its first warehouse in Eindhoven in the Netherlands. The plan was to open on the continent last year, but Covid put the brakes on European growth.

“We were planning to expand into Germany, and then Spain but had to rethink our plans,” said Martin. “When things changed, Eindhoven was the best and most cost-efficient location.”

It also wants to open up warehouses in the Midlands and the North of England, and then in London.

He and Paul are already thinking about their next move after that, and it could be the big one: into the USA. “We have searchers looking for us, but no decisions have been made.”

A further ambition is to develop the last mile offer. “When we are able to cover the whole of the UK, we will look to launch our own fleet of last mile vehicles,” said Martin.

In less than two years Huboo has gone from being two people, part time, in a 500 sq ft space in a warehouse in Bath, to a multi-million turnover business with global ambitious and a rising headcount.

But at the heart of it remains the people. And to keep them entertained earlier this year Martin and Paul recruited their own Bard, Jake Wright from Somerset who, to secure the job, had to write a song about a client’s products. “We reckoned that if a bard could write a song about engineering seals, he could write about anything” said Martin. He has since written songs about VAT and e-commerce, and an ode celebrating the company’s European interns.

Proof, if further were needed, that at Huboo, it really is the people that count.