Parcel2Go sees market for a parcels wholesaler
Parcel2Go, which wholesales parcel services over the web, plans an aggressive sales campaign to win traffic from carriers. And it’s keen to gain contracts from transport and distribution firms, provided they have at least ten parcels a day to ship from their depot.
Parcel2Go mostly uses DHL, with which it signed a five-year rate agreement in 2005, but other firms can be used, says founder and executive chairman Fil Adams-mercer. He is in talks with Nightfreight to fix rates for “ugly” freight.
Many firms are paying far too much for parcels services but only realise that when they are challenged to divide the amount they pay by the number of parcels sent, he says. Parcel2Go, and its parent firm FAM Logistics, offers clear and simple UK and international tariffs with no extras, Adam-Mercer says. Turnover is currently £5m.
The company has also just opened an international package service targeted at users of eBay in the US, where it is also looking at innovations in “pack and ship shops”.
Parcel2Go can compete because it has no borrowings, no overdraft and works from an old mil in Bolton where rates are just £1 a sqfoot; and because it is more reactive to customers and changes in the market than corporates, Adams-Mercer says. The firm uses advanced CRM software, designed in-house.
Fam does storage and package for some eBay “powersellers”, including one which has built up a £10m business in four years.
Adams-Mercer, an entrepreneur who built and then sold a chain of 100 video shops, started wholesaling parcels services in theearly1990s, after gaining a key rate with Securicor for distributing a video magazine. He sold the magazine but retained the parcels contract and got more parcels using his delivery rates plus a small margin.
