Empowering your global online business

For eCommerce businesses, the time to ship is a key factor in customer satisfaction. Browsing through an online store and adding that highly coveted pair of sneakers to your cart can be quite exciting. From that moment, the anticipation keeps rising until you actually have them in your possession. With countless logistical challenges to navigate, getting an item to the customer is not a direct line. SSENSE is a leader in eCommerce luxury fashion, currently serving over 150 countries, so it was essential for the team to streamline their global logistics strategy by establishing a local infrastructure in Europe, allowing them to better serve their European clientele.

Kuehne+Nagel has been working with SSENSE for a while, with our Air Logistics team handling their inbound freight, mostly out of Europe. Since they are based in Canada, shipments had to travel a long way to reach their European customers. To ease the process of deliveries and returns for these customers, SSENSE reached out to our Air Logistics Canada team to explore the possibility of having a central warehouse location in Europe.

After numerous discussions, Belgium was selected as the ideal location for the hub. With the location settled, we had two major tasks to finish by the end of the year; completing the construction of the brand-new Fulfilment Centre, and ensuring that SSENSE could go live in Europe at the same time.

Recognising the relatively short timeline, we swung quickly into action arranging multiple meetings with the SSENSE teams to understand all their requirements. Normally, our teams would have visited their site and conduct face-to-face workshops on processes and design. However, due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, all of these crucial meetings had to be done remotely, while being mindful of the different time zones. To overcome any communication barriers, we found creative ways to connect including conducting regular virtual video tours of the work in progress and hosting collaborative online whiteboarding sessions.

Another major feat was shifting a significant portion of their European logistics solution from North America to Europe, including the introduction of cross docking. Cross docking means that instead of loading the shipment directly from a supplier, we use the Fulfilment Centre to consolidate shipments from multiple suppliers, effectively reducing their footprint. Furthermore, SSENSE is expanding exponentially, which means that their numbers and volumes will keep growing along the way. To accommodate their evolving needs, we kept the processes dynamic and flexible, allowing for a quick re-design of the solution when needed, ultimately leading to smoother operations.

Thanks to the outstanding efforts of everyone involved in the project, SSENSE went live with its European operations in December 2020. Today, they are using the state-of-the-art Fulfilment Centre in Belgium to consolidate their international shipments, reducing the wait time for their customers. By June this year, they will also begin using the Fulfilment Centre to complete outbound deliveries in Europe and Rest of World.  

The success of the entire operation lies in the enhanced service SSENSE can now provide for its European clientele. Today, those new sneakers are at your doorstep in the shortest time possible.