How Hive’s Pan-EU program helps Crack List reduce delivery fees by 60% and delivery time by 2 days
Categories, letters, and speed. We all have those childhood memories from playing “the categories game” in school, at home, with friends and with family. The keyword here being childhood – what if there was an equivalent of this game to play at all ages? Enter Crack List, created by the Faucon family to reimagine the popular game from our childhood into an original card game.
After first launching Crack List in France, the Faucon family experienced tremendous success thanks to their disruptive and innovative business model. Now they plan on conquering the German, Italian, and other European markets in the same way.
“Our 5-year goal is to position ourselves in the Top 5 Global Publishers of Nomadic-Travel board games.” explains Ambre, marketing manager at Crack List.
In order to reach these goals, Crack List needed some support. To be able to focus on the creation and marketing of their board games, the Faucon family decided it was best to leave operations and logistics into the hands of experts. This is where Hive comes into play.
Joining forces with Hive
“We chose to work with Hive because it’s a logistics company that operates in numerous European markets, therefore satisfying our needs for expansion”, explains Ambre.
But the international aspect was not the only reason the Faucon family chose to work with Hive. They especially appreciated the simplicity they found with Hive. As Ambre explains, “the ease of integration between our website and Hive’s warehouse was a deciding factor for us”.
Easy integration makes cross border logistics a breeze
With the hopes of becoming one of the top 5 global board game publishers, expanding to other markets is crucial. After conquering the French market, it was time to move on to the next step: translate the game and expand to more European countries.
Cross-border selling can typically be a time consuming and highly stressful operation. However, facilitated by Hive’s pan-European set-up, the team was able to seamlessly enter both German and Italian markets.
“Hive streamlined our development plans thanks to its warehouses located in each country. This allowed us to properly and simply penetrate both the German and Italian markets” says Ambre.
Hive Pan-EU allows Crack List to save 60% per order
The Crack List team was always aware of the high delivery fees that would come with cross-border selling. In order to avoid these, they wanted to use Hive’s Pan-EU solution so as to help cut these additional costs.
Hive Pan-EU facilitates cross-border selling by stocking inventories in Hive’s warehouses around Europe. This solution allows Crack List to send out German orders directly from Germany, and Italian orders directly from Italy, without having to go through the warehouse in France.
This solution has been a tremendous cost cutter for the Faucon family. As Ambre explains “Pan-EU helps us cut costs because we work directly with local actors in Germany and Italy rather than French ones, hence reducing our delivery fees.”
By fulfilling and delivering German orders directly from their German fulfillment center, Crack List saves nearly 4€ per German order and nearly 6€ per Italian order. In fact, their delivery fees are nearly 60% cheaper than if they were delivering from France to Germany or France to Italy.
Hive Pan-EU helps Crack List reduce delivery times by 2 days
In addition to saving costs on delivery fees, the Pan-EU solution helps reduce delivery times for Crack List orders coming from Germany and Italy.
As explained by Ambre, “Thanks to Pan-EU, our delivery times are really short: 2 to 3 days maximum. The Pan-EU solution allowed us to reduce delivery times by 2 days”.
This allows Crack List to create a positive customer experience which therefore increases customer satisfaction for the brand.
The Hive App’s simplicity makes it a big favorite for the Faucon family
Being able to rely on the Pan-EU solution to grow the brand internationally is not the only benefit that Crack List found in working with Hive. “Due to the intuitive user experience, the Hive App makes it super easy to upload our different SKUs” explains Ambre.
The Hive App has enabled the Crack List team to save time and efforts in their growth plans.
“The restocking function is one of the simplest features to use. In just a few clicks we are able to plan a new restocking shipment. Once it’s prepared in the Hive App, we simply need to coordinate with our production center and it’s all done” – Ambre.
In addition, Ambre especially likes the ‘inventory’ feature as “it gives us a global and direct view of our stock levels. This allows us to plan our restocking shipments and to be highly reactive”. This feature facilitates inventory management so as to avoid out-of-stock issues.
Hive enables simple B2B order fulfillment with efficiency
In addition to D2C orders, a major sales channel for board games is to sell through bigger retail stores, such as la Fnac, (especially in France). To be able to differentiate between both B2B and D2C orders was therefore an essential criteria for Crack List’s 3PL as this can save both time and money.
Hive has implemented a solution to fulfill both types of orders separately. “The creation of B2B or B2C orders has been one of the most user-friendly features of the Hive App.” – Ambre.
As Ambre explains, this streamlined process “allows us to easily prepare for large B2B orders which are then processed within one day and ready to be shipped. This allows us to save a lot of time on a day-to-day basis.”
A partnership focused on growth
For the near future, Crack List plans to keep growing in the German and Italian markets and is examining the possibility of growing elsewhere in Europe. However, these are not the only plans.
The ambitious Faucon family is planning on releasing a new game: “Crack Word”, first in France. They expect to follow the same roadmap as their Crack List game, and start selling Crack Word in other European countries, namely Germany and Italy, by 2024.
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