In this interview, Rob Hodgson, interviews Founder and Director of Evolve Fulfilment, Nigel Keaveney – based in Kettering, UK.
Nigel recently took the leap of faith to start his own 3PL business, and has kindly agreed to join Rob to discuss his new business journey so far.
How did you decide to start your own 3PL business?
Nigel answered: “The idea originally came to me during COVID. I've always wanted to have my own business, it's always been playing in the back of my mind.
I wanted to take that step forward and run my own business and then during COVID, I started seeing the trend of online sales, it was just increasing and increasing and I noticed that when you go into high street, most of the shops seem to be closing, so I started doing a bit of investigating.
I was always following other fulfilment companies online and the seed just went into my mind and then it started growing from there.
In the UK, I think e-commerce is worth around about 80 billion a year. I think that's increasing around about 10% year on year and around about a third of that, about 25 billion of that is outsourced to 3PLs. So it just seems like a fantastic growing market. Something that I've wanted to test the water in and have a go at.
I've been in the industry since I was 18, I've got all of the contacts, and a lot of people who supported me on my journey. So from there, I decided I want to surround myself with like-minded people and take people on a nice growth journey with myself, so that's where the idea came from.
I decided to take the leap, it was quite a nerve wracking decision. It's easy to sit there and draw up a business plan, but then when it actually comes down to the crunk of it and actually making that leap and setting yourself up, it is very rewarding and very terrifying at the same time.”
Tell us a little about how your journey with Mintsoft began?
“A big part of my business plan was doing market research; you go out there and go on other people's websites and everybody talks about this market leading software that everybody's using, which is basically Mintsoft. Everybody knows about it and it is a fantastic bit of kit.
I wanted to make sure I got all my eggs in a row, and a WMS or software is a really big piece. Yeah, of course you can go out there and try and do everything on an Excel spreadsheet, but nobody wants that - it doesn't look very professional.
Then we've got premises, which was a big part that you need to look out for and then funding; and also rates with carriers - if you can't get some decent rates, then you don't really have a business anyway. I wanted to get everything lined up.
Speaking of you guys here, it's been fantastic support. You haven't really pushed for getting me on board and I think I've been speaking for, it was quite a few months - I think it was probably a good 6, 7, 8 months before I finally signed on the dotted line with lots of help from Miles talking me through it.
I kept phoning him up randomly, as a question popped into my brain I wasn't sure about and he would quite happily jump on a call for me and talk me through it, so the support's just been fantastic.”
Rob asked: “In terms of the ability for piece of software Mintsoft to help you attract new business; I've heard before people say, ‘well it's chicken or egg, I'm not going to buy something until I’ve won a contract or I can't win the contract because I haven't got the tools’; so what was your take on that in terms of that chicken or egg situation?”
Nigel explained: “Obviously there's a cost of everything and cashflow/cash is king, and cashflow is very tight for a new startup business. So I didn't really want to sign up until I got that first customer, but I kind of challenged you guys.
I've worked with Access Delta before and I've used Mintsoft for doing the final carrier integration piece, so I knew the functionality, I knew that I'd be able to get on with it pretty well.
I threw the challenge to you guys as I got my first customer, saying you've got two weeks to sign me up and get me on board, which you did, which is fantastic.
I was a bit nervous because the customer, my first customer who came on, wanted to be onboarded in two weeks as well, so I was just like crikey - they wanted to be onboard, ready for what was their peak. It was very nerve wracking, very challenging, but I had a relative amount of time, they were my first customer. I worked with your onboarding team and here we are and it is a fantastic system and really user friendly, really simple to use and my clients are loving it as much as I am, which is great.”
What were the first 3 things you did to start your business?
“The main thing is funding, you don't have the business without the cash. So it was kind of where do I get my funding from? To get funding, if you go private investment, then you need to have a good business plan. So the first thing was how do I get the funding? Where do I look for funding? I put together a good business plan; went and showed it to a few people to help me raise the finance. The more people I spoke to the more support and ideas I got, so funding was the first thing.
I know we talked about the software, but the software was a big piece of it for me and then premises as well - if you don't have a premises, you don't have anywhere to send out from.
And then also the fourth thing is you need somewhere to market your product. You need a website, you need the logo, you need somewhere to attract your customers, whether it be warm or cold leads.
So I'd say they were the four main things, but starting in order, is funding - you need the money first, premises - where am I going to do it from, website - how am I going to get people on board, and then make sure that the WMS was there so that we can manage all the stock and get the customers on board.”
What was, and is your ideal client base?
“Every plan you have, they don't always go according to plan - the best laid plans and all that. So the original idea and still, which is kind of our ethos, is we want to take on new companies, people who potentially are still in the garage, they're doing 300-400 orders a month. They’ve got to the point where they want to make that move, get in their own warehouse, it's a really big step from doing it yourself and all the costs and outlay. So the idea was we want to attract those kind of customers.
Throughout my years of working in e-commerce, I've really dedicated and pride myself on customer retention and making sure that the end-customer gets the very best experience from monitoring FIFO scores and making sure that delivery instructions or delivery messaging online is always up-to-date and making sure that they get the best deal really, so I want to be able to use that knowledge, to help people evolve and grow.
Again, the ethos for the company and the name of the company is Evolve. We want to evolve and grow with small startup companies. I've got the experience there from big companies, so why not use that?
I want companies to almost see me as an extension to their own company. When I go out to customers and put together proposals, part of what I do is I go onto their website and have a look at what the current delivery messaging is and do a bit of a ‘comp shop’ and order some of their products from them.
I used to do comp shops in my previous roles, and it is to build my understanding of the whole experience and ultimately, I just want to evolve and grow with the smaller companies. A lot of the big players out there, I think they geared up to slightly bigger customers, or customers with that perfect size product, which is under three kilos.
We are happy to help with all different types of products really, we can’t take anything too big because it takes up a lot of warehouse space, but we're not going to limit customers based on product size etc. We've got all the carriers in place that can take all of the nice easy traffic or the big, bulky, ugly stuff. So we kind of want to be able to support as much as possible and just evolve and grow and go on a journey with new people and new clients or new partners, as we call them.”
Have you formed any relationships with people or businesses that have helped you along the way?
“100%. So quite luckily, I've got a friend who is a Business Development Director for quite a large company, so he's given me a lot of pointers and given me ideas of how I can get those warm leads on board. Then part of my early journey on LinkedIn, I reached out to a few smaller companies like myself, I thought why not just chance it and ask them simple questions like where do you get your leads from? It's an obvious question, but I'm an operations guy, so operations is my bread and butter, but the marketing side of things, that's all new. I'm learning as I’m going and I'm thoroughly enjoying it.
I've had a couple of leads that have come my way, which are just too big for me. And I've built a relationship with another 3PL company that had been established since 2017. So I just said, look, this guy's too big for me. Would you be interested? So passed them over and they won that contract, so they've now said, if we get anything that's not fit for us, we'll pass it your way.
It's amazing how many people you speak to, just how supportive and people could just turn around and say, why is he asking me questions? He's my competitor. it's not just in the industry, but just talking to like-minded business people or successful people, it's amazing how much support there is out there, which I'd probably be lost without, to be honest. One of the things I've probably learned the most is don't be afraid to ask questions. There's always someone out there that knows more than you and there's always someone out there that's willing to help.”
Tell us about how Evolve Fulfilment is progressing?
Rob went on to ask: “In terms of how things are going numbers wise, how many clients have you managed to attract and how many clients do you now support with and evolve their own businesses?”
Nigel responded: “So we are now in what, November? So this is our fourth month. And so we've got three clients on board now - two of them are using Mintsoft. The third one is they have a different sales channel, which is the QVC shopping channel, so I’m looking at how I can onboard them to utilise Mintsoft.
I've got three other leads that I'm working with at the moment that, they're already partnered, but they're looking to change. So if I can win those over, as they’re on a three month notice period.
The goal was always, a lot of these things - your business plan and goals - it's a bit of a pluck it from the air, and the goal was always to get two new clients a month except for November, December because it's Q4 and peak, so we're not too far off that.
We’re super excited about January coming, I think that's when we probably see a lot more leads start coming through. People are either disgruntled with their existing partner over Q4 or people whose sales for their small little e-commerce businesses start picking up, and people get that new buzz of life in January, they start going to go to the gym, or say I’m going to set up my own business. So I am hoping to get back to the target of two clients a month starting in January/February time.”
What feedback about Mintsoft have you received from your clients?
“Yeah, super positive to be honest. So the first one, it was a bit nerve wracking for myself. They use Shopify, which is one of your standard integrations. They weren't that experienced on Shopify and I wasn't that experienced on the Mintsoft integration side of things, so we sat there together and worked through it together on Mintsoft.
You have the help guides and the onboarding team, so I printed off a list from the instructions from Mintsoft and basically just talked them through it. I think it was maybe 10 minutes and then everything was done. I popped back onto Mintsoft and just clicked to get the locations and then all of a sudden, boom, all of their stock was showing on Mintsoft and it was a wicked moment for me - it was real, now I've got some stock. And then talked them through loading the ASNs based on their POs and it blocks into your calendar. It's super simple for them, you can use the ASN for booking in stock, checking it, and then also for being able to bill your customer.
So they've used that and then just showed them some of the basic reporting, and I think they love the dashboard as well, it's super easy. They've got my main contact with them, two members of the customer service team and they've all got access and are quite happily plugging away at it.
And then the second customer, again, that was one of the premium integrations, which was with NetSuite, so they don't really need to use it too much. Theirs is for the Amazon FBA side of things, but they again, find it super easy. They put the ASNs in there, the POs come straight down from NetSuite, so they know that it's there if they want the reporting, but I think it's also nice for them to know that they don't really need to worry. It is great tool there if they want it and it's also great that if they're not touching it, it means we're doing something right.
So far it’s been very positive and potential client's coming on board, I show them little snippets of it as well, part of the sale, to sell to them, is that they get this lovely bit of software, they can look at it on their mobile phone, they can look it on their tablets, they can look at it wherever they want, and there's not a lot of hard work involved for them and just frees up themselves and their time to focus on growing their brand and getting the orders and sending them my way.”
How do you find the invoicing process at the end of the week?
“It's so easy. This was one of my concerns when I set it all up. I've not really done much more than the operational side of things, I've controlled budgets etc, but the financial side of things, it's a learning curve for myself.
You set your client up, you put in the charges that you put in your rate card to them, and then like you say, you can either do it weekly or monthly - currently we're doing weekly invoices. Once you’ve got everything set up, which is literally a 5-10 minute job, you just go on, click on invoices, create invoice, put your date range, and it is just there like that - it's super simple. So for me, I pick that up and drag and drop it into an Excel, put it into the invoice, create a PDF, send it to the customer, and away you go really; it's incredibly easy to use.”
What is the long term plan for Evolve Fulfilment?
“My 10 year goal is 10 years to 10 million. You've got to have your goals, you've got to have your ambitions. I'm sure it's going to be a challenge to get there and I'm sure I've already had no end of challenges and setbacks already. I'm just looking forward to all of the different challenges along the way, embracing them and surrounding myself with a good team. I'm super excited about it, to be honest. It's an exciting but yet nerve wracking journey. But yeah, super looking forward to it.”
Could your 3PL benefit from using Mintsoft?
Starting your own business is never easy, but as Nigel has mentioned, knowing which warehouse management software you’ll use when the cash begins to flow is one of the crucial areas to get aligned at the start of your new business venture.
If you’d like to see Mintsoft’s system for yourself, take a look at the 3PL software walkthrough, or speak to one of our team to get a personalised demo of the software.