Karel Leijssen about KM.Store and why they chose BME as their logistics partner
As a retailer, online entrepreneurship is certainly one of the possibilities. KM.Store is a good example to prove that online entrepreneurship is a good decision to make. From their hairdressing salon, Karel Leijssen and Monique Elliott developed an omni-channel approach for the sale of Kevin Murphy hair products, which had been a great success with customers in the salon for several years.
BME: “Hello Karel, who is KM.Store?”
Karel: “KM.Store is an independent retailer of Kevin Murphy hair products. The web shop was opened in 2012 as part of ELLIOTT Hair & Make-up, a progressive hairdressing salon in Pelt. In just a few years, we have grown into one of the largest Kevin Murphy retailers in Belgium and the Netherlands. Thanks to our hands-on experience with these products in the salon, combined with in-depth product knowledge and a high-performance web shop, we make the difference for our customers.”
BME: “Why were you looking for a logistics partner last year? “
Karel: “The growth made it impossible for us to continue to organize the logistics ourselves. We were increasingly more often confronted with the limitations of our own logistics operation. We were confronted with a lack of space, too much dependence on a too small staff and we offered ourselves too limited cut-off time.”
“You could then decide to fix all these points step by step yourself and make the necessary investments, but we thought it would be more logical to look for the right 3PL service provider. It was also very important to put the available space in the salon back at the service of our customers.”
BME: “What were your main decision criteria? “
Karel: “It was important to address the above points, but as an ERP business consultant, I still paid a lot of attention to the IT possibilities and how these were translated into the process.”
“From the conversations we had with Chris, it soon became clear that the IT solutions were very flexible and that a link with Lightspeed was familiar territory. During the tour we also noticed that the resulting processes were in line with our needs and that we could even add our own wishes to it. For example, we make intensive use of VAL (value added logistics) reports in the packing process to add gifts to the orders.”
BME: “How did the integration go, especially with your knowledge of IT?“
Karel: “In 3 weeks’ time, we succeeded together in establishing the link between the WMS of BME and the Lightspeed web shop of KM.Store, moving the goods and processing the first orders. The whole process ran almost without any problems and the typical teething problems were worked out quickly and professionally.”
BME: “A year on, what are the most important advantages for you?“
Karel: The importance of each benefit will be different for everyone, but for us the benefits are numerous:
- Outsourcing our logistics gives us more time to focus on our core business. This results in double digit growth figures.
- The support department of BME is really good at communicating clearly in case of any problems and in fixing them very quickly.
- The cut-off time of 19 hours gives us a higher service level.
- Thanks to the way of working and the IT link, the stock positions are very accurate.
- BME also monitors all communication with the PostNL and BPost couriers in the event of lost or delayed shipments.
BME: “Finally, Karel, what are your ambitions?”
Karel: “We are currently working on 11store.be. With this web shop we distribute products from ELEVEN Australia. In addition, we want to increase our service by, for example, integrating international pickup points into our web shop. In this way, we continue to increase our service level and work on our growth without being limited by our logistics operations.”
Are you searching for a logistics solution? Don’t hesitate to contact us. Or do you want to see the webshop of KM.Store? Discover their offer Kevin Murphy hair products.
