Cheshire Cheese Company Adds Delivery Options

The preservation of a lucky few enjoying explosive growth can cripple a business due to inadequate infrastructure. While Cheshire Cheese Company had everything else in order, their delivery management wasn't scalable; Parcelhub has since granted the premium food retailer the ability to proactively respond to higher volumes and a wide variety of product types via a range of carrier partners.

With a background in graphic design and product branding, Macclesfield-based Simon Spurrell launched Cheshire Cheese Company with Richard Buxton in 2010, securing brand rights and discovering 'exceptional cheesemaker' David Williams

Taking on the establishment

 Realising that the major players in the cheese industry were very 'oldy-worldly and serious', the pair wanted to make their cheese 'cheeky and fun'. A fusion of valuable talents, branding, ideas and manufacturing led to the creation of the brand with a tagline "the only cheese that makes you grin".

 Multichannel in nature, the retailer sells via an eCommerce website, in addition to local artisan markets throughout the UK and at national shows such as Ideal Home and The Good Food Expo. In keeping with its traditional look and feel, these channels work alongside a brick-and-mortar store operation across the Midlands, and Northwest called the Cheese & Wine Emporiums. Furthermore, the firm has its wholesale division headed up by fellow director Laurence Bass, which has recently expanded its warehouse by 80% in size to 18,000 sq ft.

Building brand commitment

With over 40,000 members, the Cheshire Cheese Club grants foodies a 10% discount across all channels and access to exclusive products.

Simon Spurrell: "To increase brand loyalty, our brand advocates are first to get new flavours such as the recently introduced gin, rhubarb and ginger varieties. We now have over 40,000 members, many of which are our inspiration for new product developments."

Not only is their membership base a precious sounding board for new product ideas, Simon and Richard's experience monitoring and responding to the latest consumer tastes has proven of crucial importance for delivering sustained growth:

 "We make sure our range of cheeses reflects the most recent consumer trends; our most recent introduction was our Gin & Lemon Cheshire Cheese (left), which has proven to be an enormous success. Featured in publications such as Cosmopolitan and Vogue, viral success led to sales of over 60,000 units of one product, all in the space of a month!

 "Over the last decade, we have expanded our product range from 30 to over 150 cheeses, chutneys, accessories and gift hampers, many of which have resulted from long-term collaborations with traditional artisan food companies. We have also established strategic partnerships with the likes of Virgin Wines and Oz Clarke's Three Wine Men, featuring our products at their events and collaborating online."

Parcelhub's free multi-carrier shipping software integrates seamlessly with Magento, leading to enormous cost and time savings.

Integrating carrier options

Simon Spurrell explained their eCommerce operation: "Initially, our online store was built using OSCommerce (a free alternative to Magento), and within two years, we migrated over to Magento. Following this development, we introduced eBay and Amazon, seamlessly integrating multiple channels with one central order management system, M2E Pro.

"We had issues with couriers integrating directly to Amazon and eBay and looking for seamless Magento shipping integration. While payment processing, listing, and inventory management were in hand, we needed an integrated shipping solution for our website and marketplaces. Following extensive research, Parcelhub was recommended to us by a trusted developer.

Parcelhub heralded a host of major benefits that have been instrumental in supporting our significant growth in volumes and have enabled us to respond to volatile demand. Parcelhub provided integrations for despatching. Previously, we had problems dealing directly with carriers with failed consignments, which led to a lot of wasted staff time checking if consignments were correct – this made us nervous that dealing with a delivery carrier directly would not have been scalable.

A wide range of carrier options empowers this expanding retailer to dynamically alter services offered to maximise delivery experience quality throughout seasonal demand fluctuations."

Increased flexibility and control

"Parcelhub multi-carrier solution has given us greater flexibility and control; with differing parcel dimensions, some carriers were unsuitable for some of our bulkier and international shipments. Processing 100-150 orders at one time took over three hours; after a review from Parcelhub's software development team, we can now process 150 orders in less than five minutes! A pre-selected list of service preferences from various carriers allows us to seamlessly switch to a more convenient solution when necessary.

Simon continued: "Demand is very seasonal, with two-thirds of our annual sales in the run-up to Christmas, although Valentine's Day, Bonfire Night and Halloween are becoming increasingly popular due to the introduction of products specifically designed for these annual celebrations, such as our Strawberries, Cream & Champagne Cheshire Heart.

Challenges resulting from solid growth

Since 2009 Cheshire Cheese Company's annual growth has hovered around the 30% mark. By responding more to consumer trends, and increasing brand commitment and exposure, last year, the manufacturer and retailer experienced a phenomenal 70% sales uplift, which led to significant challenges:

 "This Christmas, we had a massive influx of orders, with thousands in the space of a few days; thanks to Parcelhub's rapid label processing and expanding our workforce by a factor of 10 during peak periods, we managed to fulfil all of our orders. Despite a 400% increase in customer orders, we received minimal complaints.

In addition to selling online, this retailer has wholesale and brick-and-mortar operations and plans to expand into even more channels and marketplaces.

Since switching to Parcelhub's range of carrier partners, our complaint rate has reduced from 12% to less than 3%, which has had a massive impact on our bottom line. Proactive in nature, Parcelhub's unique SMART Notifications platform has dramatically reduced our tracking queries leading to further time savings. Throughout our experience working with Parcelhub, Donna Smitton (now Head of Account Management) has been amazing to deal with."

The future of Cheshire Cheese Company

"we will continue introducing five new flavours yearly, expand our product range and innovate with a new mobile eCommerce app for Apple and Android. Key to driving retention, our app will integrate fully with Magento. In addition, thousands of requests from foodies throughout Australia, Canada, South Africa, the USA, and New Zealand have developed distribution to these countries

About Parcelhub, part of the Whistl Group  

Parcelhub is a multi-carrier shipping and eCommerce customer services solution. Flexible and scalable, it integrates seamlessly with order management systems, providing hundreds of multichannel retailers, global brands, and wholesalers with one access point to many of the largest UK and international parcel carriers.

 Multichannel eCommerce platforms are easily integrated and dedicated; proactive parcel management comes as standard.

With multi-carrier shipping software, thousands of national and global businesses access to 'pooled volume' discounted rates from a carefully selected range of carrier partners, including Yodel, Evri, DPD, UK Mail, DHL, Whistl, UPS, DX, Parcelforce, CollectPlus, SkyNet, ArrowXL, Interpost, Panther Logistics, Direct Link and Palletfor

About the Whistl Group