The Company
Looking to work from home, Kevin Cochrane started selling on eBay in 2010. Since then he’s developed a successful retail business, Retro Parts, that sells classic car parts across eBay, Amazon and his own website built on Magento. It’s gone from strength to strength, moving from his home to a bigger unit, to allow for an expanding product range.
The Challenge
As the business took off it split into different brands with separate eBay and Amazon accounts; Kevin had his work cut out for him, managing a number of sales channels.
They started off using stamps, and then as orders increased, set up a Royal Mail Online Business Account (OBA) and Despatch Manager Online (DMO). The day to day process for getting orders out the door, required them to download all the orders details from each eBay and Amazon account, then upload the address into DMO to print shipping labels. Invoices and picking lists were printed separately.
Plus, as their product range expanded, Kevin found they needed to ship bigger and heavier products, as well as some specialist chemicals, that couldn’t be sent through Royal Mail.
The time spent logging into each sales channel, sorting out address labels and invoices, combined with the limitations of using one courier, pushed Kevin to look for a solution.
The Solution
Kevin looked at a few different options; he wanted something that would reliably import his orders from each sales channel, and speed up the process of dispatching them with multiple couriers - Zenstores was an ideal fit for his business.
“Zenstores makes shipping orders simple and quick and easy”
The daily routine at Retro Parts has been simplified, freeing up valuable time. They now log into Zenstores, view all of the orders in the dashboard, select the ones they want to dispatch and print integrated labels. With the orders printed off in chronological order, and the label and invoice together on one sheet, less mistakes are made during the picking and packing process.
With his Royal Mail OBA account connected to Zenstores, Kevin started to investigate other couriers he could use to dispatch bulky items or liquids. Looking to utilise Zenstores’ integrations, Kevin set up accounts with APC and DPD, which has given him easy access to different shipping services suitable for each product being sent.
Kevin has also recently started using Zenstores’ Parcel2Go integration to compare prices and save money on larger parcels. He finds it simple to offer express, next day delivery to his customer’s now that he’s able to use multiple couriers through Zenstores.
The Retro Parts team also uses Zenstores’ flagging feature to highlight certain orders, keeping them organised according to their status. This is useful when customers have been refunded or an item is returned.
The Outcome
Using Zenstores has saved Retro Parts around 3-4 hours per day - valuable time that Kevin has been able to put back into the business.
Before he felt he was spreading himself too thin, trying to do too many things with not enough hours; Zenstores gave him the breathing room to take a step back and refocus on the bigger picture. Kevin’s now looking to increase sales and grow the business bit by bit to keep increasing revenue.
