The summer sales season is coming to an end, and another major commercial period is already on the horizon: “back to school.” Quickly following will be the French Days from September 24 to 30, Black Friday on November 29, and of course, the frenzy of Christmas shopping. These are all opportunities to generate sales peaks, boost revenue, and acquire new customers. These events are real opportunities for e-tailers and marketplaces to stand out from the crowd. One essential condition emerges in the run-up to this critical time of year: prepare your e-commerce logistics well to manage this peak of activity brilliantly! In this article, discover the behind-the-scenes of Octopia Fulfillment during peak shopping periods, ensuring our clients’ success during these intense and crucial times!
What challenges do e-tailers face during the shopping season?
A successful shopping season is the result of several key, inseparable factors. The main challenges facing e-tailers are:
- Anticipation: The number of orders increases significantly during these high-activity periods, so preparation is key.
- Differentiation: All e-retailers experience these commercial peaks simultaneously. Finding a differentiating factor is, therefore, essential!
- Customer Satisfaction and Loyalty: A satisfied and loyal customer is one who will return to make future purchases with you.
At Octopia we are aware of the challenges and issues facing our customers and we are committed to making the shopping season a success for all.
How do we anticipate and prepare for this busy end of year at Octopia Fulfillment?
Preparing for a successful shopping season starts well before the launch of the promotions. Anticipation is crucial. The Octopia Fulfillment teams support and advise each merchant throughout the year to anticipate and manage order peaks and find the best level of service to stay ahead of the competition. Discover all the advantages of opting for a fulfilment solution in our dedicated article.
Careful consultation between partner marketplaces, merchants and the Octopia Fulfillment teams enables offers to be identified and sales volumes to be forecasted. This ensures that the range on offer on D-Day is sufficiently broad and representative of consumer needs.
Our procurement teams play an essential role in this preparation phase. They support merchants in increasing stock levels, offering inbound transport solutions to ensure a robust, fluid and fast supply chain from the point of production to our logistics warehouses across Europe.
To cope with the expected peak in orders, our logistics partners prepare several months in advance by recruiting and training additional teams. Warehouses are also extending their opening times (at night and at weekends, for example), to ensure they are ready to meet demand.
What do we do when the sales season kicks off?
The long-awaited moment finally arrives. The offers appear online on the websites of our merchants and on our partner marketplaces. Customers flock to the site and the first orders are placed. Octopia Fulfillment’s logistics teams are busy preparing, packing and dispatching the products.
Responsiveness is essential at this stage. Octopia Fulfillment’s coordination teams work in tandem with the warehouses to monitor and control activities. Last-minute receipts for flagship products are put into stock in record time, enabling products to be dispatched quickly. Our support teams are also on hand to answer any questions you may have, ensuring that every customer receives their product as quickly as possible.
Estelle Georges, Fulfillment Head of Sales, tells us: “The peak season is obviously the momentum for e-tailers, but also for our teams. We spend 9 months of the year convincing them to entrust us with one of the most important links in their sales cycle: delivery to the end customer, training them to use the interface perfectly and finally preparing the stock on the right products to cope with all the forecasts. Seeing the number of orders soar, the flagship product of one of our customers break records and so on, generates excitement but also pride. Pride because sometimes the path has been strewn with pitfalls, no one on earth would tell you without lying that there are no problems in logistics, but the Octopia teams and the merchant have found solutions every time. The success of the peak season for our clients is, therefore, an opportunity to congratulate ourselves and take a deep breath until next year.”
How do you review the shopping season at the end?
After each intense shopping period, a review is essential. At Octopia Fulfillment, we gather feedback from our customers and analyse the commercial results of each event in detail. This analysis enables us to identify strengths and areas for improvement, so that we can continue to offer the best logistics solutions.
All the preparation and commitment of our teams enabled us to dispatch 1.8 million parcels over the months of November and December 2023, while guaranteeing a quality service with a dispatch rate on time of over 99% over this same period.
“Thanks to Octopia Fulfillment, we were able to ship more than 600 orders during the sales period; we would not have had the in-house capacity to achieve such a performance”. Saoudi Samhar, Country Manager at Mamabrum.
Conclusion
Periods such as Back to School, French Days, Black Friday and Christmas are all opportunities for e-tailers to increase their sales and build customer loyalty. However, making a success of these high points requires meticulous preparation and solid logistics. By opting for Octopia Fulfillment, e-tailers have all the tools they need to manage order peaks efficiently and guarantee their customers an impeccable service. With more than 10 years’ experience in e-commerce logistics in Europe, we support more than 3,000 customers throughout the year to make every sales peak a success. Our fulfilment solution allows e-tailers to focus on what really matters: their offer and their customer relationships, while we take care of the logistics.
Would you like more information about our service? We’ll get back to you.
