PRESS RELEASE – MARCH 7
A scalable 5 fulfilment center strategy localized for growth
Karo Healthcare – formerly known as Karo Pharma – selected Salesupply to completely take over their European multi-brand e-commerce fulfilment operations. Together with Karo Healthcare, Salesupply has designed a scalable Pan-European multi-fulfilment center approach to optimise for international growth by reducing delivery times & – fees and incorporating local preferences.
Karo Healthcare is a Swedish pharmaceutical producer of consumer brands such as Alpha Foods and Nutravita (food supplements & health nutrition), Remescar (skincare), and Satin Natural (skincare). The company has a digital-first focus selling first- and foremost online.
Before partnering with Salesupply, Karo Healthcare had its fulfilment decentralized per brand and sometimes even per market, resulting in a complex, inefficient setup. This approach did not match their ambitions for international expansion and growth.
International expansion
“We were actively searching for a fulfilment partner that could identify with our strong ambition for international expansion and growth” says Pieter-Jan Priem – Head of Digital Commerce at Karo Healthcare. “Salesupply has ecommerce fulfilment centers in all the markets that we are active in at the moment as well as in the markets that we are aiming to expand into. In addition, Salesupply offers an integrated fulfilment platform that enables us to have an all-in-one overview for daily management and reporting to reduce overall complexity.”
Competing like a local
As a cross-border ecommerce enabler, Salesupply is always searching for the optimal mix between a centralized and a decentralized fulfilment approach. “When Karo Healthcare contacted us, it was clear that there was a lot of room for improvement both in efficiency and complexity reduction”, says Ludo Verlinden, Global Sales Manager at Salesupply.
Together with Karo Healthcare, Salesupply designed a fulfilment strategy that utilizes fulfilment centers in the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Italy, and Spain in order to optimize delivery rates and times while taking into account local preferences. An important local preference, in this case, was the Italian – ( and to a lesser extent) Spanish preference for Cash-on-Delivery (COD). “It was clear that offering COD as a delivery option would play a big role in growing within the Italian market,” says Ludo. “However COD comes with quite an administrative burden. That’s why we offered Karo Healthcare to our COD Management as a value-added service. As result, they are already seeing a big uplift in sales in Italy due to COD orders.”
Reduced complexity
Because all warehouses are connected to the Salesupply efulfilment platform, Karo doesn’t have to deal with 5 different fulfilment centers that work, report, and invoice in different ways. Instead, all fulfilment centers have the same way of working, Karo Healthcare has one point of contact and one invoicing overview.