Introducing Sellar Shipping 🚚
We started Sellar with the aim of making trade sales simple for the analogue $1.7 trillion beverage industry. From building a simple e-commerce tool in 2019 for Good Things Brewing, Sellar has grown into the leading trade sales platform for the industry, responsible for powering trade sales for thousands of businesses.
Our first focus was to help our partners streamline trade sales within their direct delivery radius - cutting out the manual admin involved while providing their customers with a slick buying experience. This meant integrating with the popular inventory, production and accounting tools and making it fast and simple for buyers to view live availability, access their usual terms and start ordering online.
An illustrative example of a Manchester Brewery’s direct delivery radius
As we’ve grown and expanded to work with partners all over the UK, so has the network of buyers using Sellar to order. Given Sellar eliminates much of the friction in suppliers and buyers forming new trading relationships, our partners have benefited from new growth opportunities outside of their direct delivery zone. However, this has presented some new challenges. Shipping.
In the hundreds of conversations we’ve had with our partners, we’ve come to understand the challenges associated with selling to customers outside of their direct delivery zone. Today, options include distributors, couriers, hauliers etc. and often cause operational headaches.
Many of our partners and their customers value direct relationships. For suppliers, the data and understanding of their customers are key to providing a personal experience that turns faceless orders into fruitful long-term relationships. Not to mention better margins. For buyers, a direct relationship means better pricing, flexible payment terms (top of mind in these challenging times) and of course access to the full product range from their favourite suppliers.
But today’s shipping options are not economical, are often limited to small pack, and involve a lot of manual data entry (typing out each order, address, product weights etc) into clunky courier portals. Additionally, most couriers are not set up to handle fragile products and resending damaged orders makes it even less economical and creates more operational headaches.
Introducing Sellar Shipping
We knew this was a big problem to tackle and before we started, we wanted to build an experience that was:
Automated - automatic order booking and shipping label generation. No manual entering of data into clunky courier portals.
Economical - consolidated volume across all of our partners means we’re able to pass on much better rates.
Built to handle industry-specific product formats - not being thrashed around by automatic conveyor belts or sloshing about the back of a van.
A better experience for buyers - built-in tracking for you and your customers means not having to chase the depot for customers when their delivery hasn’t arrived as expected.
Flexible - keeping our partners in control. You choose which orders to fulfil with Sellar Shipping and when you have your collections.
As we work with a number of suppliers who don’t use couriers given the damage rates, our first consideration when selecting a logistics partner is if they’d be set up to carefully handle industry-specific product formats - kegs, bottles, cans etc. Our logistics partner, DX, processes their packages by hand rather than robots, throughout the entire process. Their vans are also equipped with 2x2m cages so you don’t have fragile products being tossed about. This results in a 0.001% damage rate, the lowest in the industry. Ideal.
Image courtesy of DX
The other consideration was the quality of their APIs. We wanted to build out a slick and automated experience so our partners didn’t have to faff with manual data entry, or going back and forth with customers to answer the question of ‘where’s my beer?’ leading to the faff of finding, then copying/pasting tracking numbers via threads of email.
The buyer experience was key. Generally, people are increasingly impatient when it comes to delivery times (thanks Jeff!), so next-day delivery was a must. Buyers are also kept in the loop with supplier-branded email and SMS updates including a 2-hour delivery window which helps ensure successful delivery.
Lastly, and most importantly, was ensuring our partners were in control. This is core to Sellar’s approach to solving the problem with trade sales for the industry. Relationships require more than a one-size-fits-all approach. So the ability to easily personalise the experience (pricing, payment terms minimum order quantities etc.) depending on who’s ordering, where they’re based and what they’ve ordered is crucial.
Since June we’ve been quietly piloting the first phase of Sellar Shipping with a handful of our partners and are very excited to finally announce it. The impact it’s had is clear. Not only is Sellar Shipping freeing up a huge amount of time AND expanding the size of the market for our partners, but the cost savings are significant. In one case, we’re saving a partner £9,568 per year on shipping small-pack nationally, while also opening up an entirely new revenue stream to send kegs nationwide with no minimum order. Additionally, buyers win from better pricing and a wider range of products they can access and offer on their menus.
It’s exciting that this is just phase one. There’s a lot more opportunity to tackle. Onwards.
To see more detail on how this works in Sellar, here’s our release notes.
To get a quote, head here to Sellar Shipping