Growth: Making It or Breaking It?

E-commerce as a business category is itself a champion of growth. The world e-commerce market, valued at $6 trillion in 2024, is predicted to grow by 31% to $8 trillion by 2028. Despite a tapering off immediately post-Covid, e-commerce is back on a steady growth trajectory, driven by wider access to the internet and smartphones, slicker logistics and online payments and a growing consumer preference for shopping online.

E-Comm: Fuelled for Growth

Why is e-commerce such a growth-fuelled sector? We all know the Covid pandemic accelerated an upward trend in buying online and habituated millions of consumers to continue shopping via websites after high street retail bounced back. It also motivated thousands of entrepreneurs to breathe life into their own online businesses, tempted by low start-up costs, access to customers 24-7-365, and the ease of selling via established marketplaces like Amazon, Ebay and Etsy. All this plus the rise of m-commerce and creator-driven content on social platforms has given e-commerce brands even greater reach to engage new buyer audiences.

Potential Brakes on Growth

Despite these advantages, it’s sobering that 80 to 90% of start-up e-comm businesses crash within months of their first sale. Even for those that thrive early on, many go on to suffer growing pains later in their development. Sustained growth relies on not just acquiring new customers and making more sales, but also continually building brand trust to lock-in loyalty, drive repeat purchase and boost positive reviews and referrals. Delivering a consistent and rewarding buying experience to customers is essential, and this hinges on a web of moving parts working together flawlessly, from technology, marketing and financing to manufacture, logistics and human talent. Letting any of these factors slip can quickly impact service delivery, dissatisfy customers and impede growth.

Customer-Centric is Healthy Growth

Successful e-comm brands find a way of consistently creating purchase experiences which are fully tuned to the personal needs and wants of their customers. From brand discovery to shopping, checkout, delivery and unboxing, the process is engineered to satisfy the buyer’s motivations, likes, habits, preferences and expectations. All this end-to-end customer-centricity helps fuel growth by feeding brand obsession and driving repeat purchase. But extra demand can be a double-edged sword, great for top-line growth but more stress for the people, technologies, supply chain and processes working hard behind the scenes to get the right orders to the right customers on time and in the best condition.  

Managing Spikes and Dips

At ILG some of our largest fulfillment customers are internationally renowned brands that ship thousands of orders per day, accounts that started with us years ago as very young e-comm businesses posting a few hundred orders per month. But, far from being a smooth upward line on a growth chart, the spectacular expansion of many of these companies over time often appears as a series of spikes and dips in customer demand, driven by factors such as seasonal buying, market forces, product launches, creator endorsement, marketing campaigns and entry into new markets or geographies. Whilst these demand catalysts are very welcome income drivers, some are completely unpredictable and can sometimes stretch operational capability to the limit.

Short-Term Scale-Up

So how do brands safeguard their customer experience at times of steeply-growing demand without making a huge investment in extra capacity that could remain unused at times of lower order volume?

Outsourced fulfillment providers like ILG offer brands the aircover they need to give their customers consistently high levels of brand experience and service, irrespective of how many orders they receive. An example is Black Friday Peak, the year’s traditional high-season for e-comm brands and fulfillment providers alike. No one can predict exactly how seasonal promotions will translate into Black Friday order growth. But by consulting with brands to agree promotional timetables and volume forecasts many months in advance, ILG operations teams are best prepared to minimize the risk of being challenged by unexpected surges in demand.

Meeting Peak Demand

Planning for Peak covers the receiving and checking of stock and optimizing the location of specific SKUs within the warehouse to enable faster, more efficient picking. ILG adjusts its staffing levels in anticipation of Peak forecasts by recruiting extra people, running additional training and arranging more shifts. Co-ordination with carriers and other supply chain partners ensures synchronicity of operations throughout the Peak period. Meanwhile, stocks of product packaging, packing and labelling materials are topped up and automation and personalization equipment are stress-tested in advance. We also run a Peak Incentives programme for all our colleagues to keep morale high as the workload ramps up during November and December.

As Peak proceeds this allows us to pivot our resources to meet our SLAs as order volumes fluctuate and reinforce support to brands with the broadest needs. During Peak and other periods of volatile demand, this gives brands the ability to scale delivery of their customer promise consistently and cost-efficiently.

Supporting Longer-Term Growth

As well as helping e-comm brands get the most from shorter activity spikes, customer-focused fulfillment partners can help them plan for more strategic growth too. ILG supports the growth strategies of e-comm companies of all ages and sizes, from nascent start-ups and up-scalers to well-established brands backed by decades of trading.

For many younger brands we are their first experience of outsourced fulfillment, a significant step for business owners accustomed to running their own storage, picking, packing, delivery and returns operations. It takes a leap of faith and trust for owners to relinquish hands-on control, but outsourcing to ILG soon yields growth-friendly benefits like flexible and sustainable warehouse capacity, highly trained teams that easily resize to match demand, value-added services, improved carrier rates, international networks and activity-based pricing.

We work closely with more established customers too, helping them realize their global growth ambitions by relocating operations to new geographies, investing in new equipment and technology to up-spec facilities or recruiting and training new fulfillment talent to support the launch of new product lines or service offers.

At ILG we run 12 fulfillment centers across the UK and EU, from smaller 28,000 sq ft facilities to state-of-the-art 400,000sq ft warehouses. Our 40-strong customer service team can also scale the support it gives individual e-commerce brands as they grow and diversify. All this offers our customers fully flexible fulfilment solutions that can stay one step ahead of their growth well into the future.

If you’re an upscaling e-comm business, we can help you through your growth challenges.