HSE24 and Deutsche Post agree on long-term partnership

DHL, the express and logistics company from Deutsche Post World Net, and the shopping channel HSE24 (Home Shopping Europe) signed on to a far-reaching alliance today. Konrad Hilbers, Chairman of the HSE24 Board and Peter Kruse, Deutsche Post World Net board member, sealed the deal by signing an agreement in the presence of North Rhine-Westphalia Undersecretary Miriam Meckel in Düsseldorf. DHL Fulfilment will take over HSE24’s entire logistics beginning in 2006 and will be constructing a new logistics center in Greven as a result. DHL’s Euro 35 million investment, going up in the immediate vicinity of an already existing parcel center, will create some 250 new jobs. HSE24 customers will benefit from even faster and more reliable delivery service.
“Connecting the new logistics center in Greven with the parcel center allows us to offer HSE24 customers a completely integrated service that is especially designed to meet the needs particular to the teleshopping business,” explains Deutsche Post Board Member Kruse. Receiving incoming goods and quality control, warehousing and order picking as well as customer delivery and returns management are all part of the package. “We’re talking up to 40,000 parcels a day,” says Kruse, “and it’s more than likely to increase. The teleshopping business is however driven to a great degree by impulse buying, making planning in terms of daily volumes a real challenge; customer expectations are also quite high in the areas of response and delivery time. Our logistics infrastructure will be designed with all this in mind.”
The actual operational partnership will begin in 2006. “We’re investing in the future,” says HSE24 Chairman Konrad Hilbers. “And we’ve designed our own logistics strategy to meet the demands particular to the teleshopping industry, which is more or less based on impulse buying. When it came to the question of actual implementation, we did an extensive market analysis looking for the highest performing service out there; we chose DHL Fulfilment. This is our way of offering our customers even better service, especially when it comes to speed, reliability and flexibility.” Both the expectations of its teleshoppers as well as its own growth moved HSE24 to take this step. A specially-designed full-commissioning service must be able to answer to the shopping program’s flexible “live” business operations, that is at the heart of the HSE24 plan.
As far as location in concerned Greven was not only an ideal choice due to the infrastructure already in place there but because of its proximity to one of Germany’s most populated regions, namely the areas along the Rhine, Ruhr and Main Rivers. It is also conveniently located along transport lines to northern Germany’s more densely populated areas. The Undersecretary of North Rhine-Westphalia, Miriam Meckel, is behind the alliance: “The decision on the part of DHL and HSE24 not only reaffirms North Rhine-Westphalia’s enduring appeal as a business location, but underscores its significance as a media center. It’s an important signal with consequences that go far beyond regional boundaries.”