German e-commerce and fulfillment startup Hive has launched in the UK.
The company has confirmed it will initially partner with fulfillment providers using Hive’s proprietary software and operational processes and installing its own employees at each partner site – to help UK-based D2C brands ship products to customers in the UK and Europe.
The move, which adds the UK to Hive’s growing European operations, aims to generate 200 UK jobs in the next two years and provide sellers on Shopify, WooCommerce and other e-commerce sites with two-day delivery windows for all European customers. With more than 156,000 online stores on Shopify alone in the UK, Hive plans to capitalize on a rapidly growing UK market and make it easier for those merchants to sell to customers in Europe, post-Brexit.
Founded in May 2020, Hive provides end-to-end logistics and fulfillment software to growing D2C brands in addition to running its own fulfillment centers. With a model that charges brands on a per-order basis, Hive has expanded across Germany, France, Italy and Spain in the past two years, and is now taking the opportunity to bring European market access and fulfillment to UK businesses.
Peter-Paul Brenninkmeijer, vice president of expansion and UK general manager at Hive, said, “As you’d expect in warehouses or fulfillment centers, it’s hard to get a real understanding of how to improve operations if you haven’t had to deal with the realities on the ground. In every case, we’ve done as much as we can to build on our knowledge and experience operating at these sites – and that makes it much easier for us to create solutions that improve it. The information we see from our own centers, for example, means our software is much more reliable at anticipating and managing returns, navigating customs requirements, and negotiating shipping terms on our customer’s behalf.”
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