HomeScapes Europa Ltd is a leading, UK-based company who retail on a worldwide scale. They provide quality, ethically made, department store quality home furnishings. Built on traditional family values and a strong entrepreneurial spirit, HomeScapes Europa Ltd is a close-knit community of people with our customer at the heart of all that they do. They are a significant retailer in the UK, with a substantial footprint across Europe served from warehousing in Germany. 

Phil Wright is the Founder and Managing Director of HomeScapes Europa Ltd. We caught up with him to learn how Linnworks has enhanced their international ecommerce business.

Life before Linnworks

Phil recalls the logistical challenges they faced early on.

“Originally, [our biggest challenges were] with the allocation of picking,” he said. “For example, in the UK we have two different locations. The courier would only pick up from one, and we would send a vehicle up to our other location and pick anything that was required from there to bring it back and then fulfill it. But obviously we needed to identify what we needed to go and pick up,” Phil recounts, underlining the need for a more efficient system.

Embracing efficiency

The introduction of Linnworks marked a significant shift in their operations.

“Linnworks has streamlined everything…everything’s a lot more slick now,” Phil explained. The company moved from manual processes to electronic ones, like using pickwaves. “We just press a button and it automatically sends the orders now to the pickers,” he said.

This transition has allowed them to streamline the entire order fulfillment process.

Saying goodbye to painful overselling

For any business, overselling can lead to lost customers.

Phil acknowledged this, stating, “Any order where you’ve sold it twice and you can’t fulfill it is now a lost customer.”

He emphasized the importance of fulfilling every order accurately to ensure customer satisfaction. “Our premise even today is “promise a little, deliver a lot”,” he shared.

With Linnworks, HomeScapes Europa Ltd was able to uphold this promise as they scaled their operations.

“Our premise is to “promise a little, deliver a lot.” Linnworks has helped us ensure great customer service as we’ve scaled.”

— Phil Wright, Co-founder and Managing Director, HomeScapes Europa Ltd.

Powerful integrations — for every step of the journey

“Perhaps the biggest benefit Linnworks has had on our business is the slickness of the integrations,” Phil highlights. He continues, “It’s automated a hell of a lot and it’s in real time. If a customer buys something at two o’clock in the morning, I don’t need somebody sitting here going, “we’ve got to update our inventory.”

Not only does Linnworks change the stock, it also changes the stock on all sales platforms — at any time of the day or night.”

“Perhaps the biggest benefit Linnworks has had on our business is the slickness of the integrations”

— Phil Wright, Co-founder and Managing Director, HomeScapes Europa Ltd.

Reliable Volume Handling with Linnworks

HomeScapes Europa Ltd handles a significant volume of orders daily. “We average about 1500 parcels per day. On a very good day, we probably get about 2,000 parcels out the door; we have put out over 4,000 during the Christmas period,” Phil shared.

As they continue to grow, the reliability of their systems becomes even more critical. Phil praised Linnworks for its uptime, saying, “A main benefit of Linnworks is uptime. It’s very rare that your system goes down.” This reliability has been instrumental in helping them manage their increasing order volumes efficiently.