If you want to go fast, go together

The Background: Europe’s transport revolution

Environmental consciousness, healthier living choices, better infrastructure, and the belief that transport can be both convenient and low cost, are driving people across Europe to look for alternative ways to travel.

Leading this change is Adam Norris, who launched Pure Electric in 2018 with a very clear mission – to lower air pollution and congestion in urban spaces. In two short years, Pure Electric has become the fastest-growing retailer in the UK and has been voted by LinkedIn as a Top 3 Start Up UK Business. In 2020 alone, they opened 17 new stores in the UK and are now ready to take their e-bikes and e-scooters into mainland Europe starting with about 10 stores in France and Spain.

The Challenge: Making sure growth doesn’t hurt

Pure Electric is experiencing exponential growth. With this growth comes increased supply chain complexity and the need to overcome the consequent challenges. More so because Pure Electric promises its customers the highest quality customer service.

As a result, their business needs a logistics partner to:

• Handle their manufacturing partners to ensure products are ready to ship on time.
• Coordinate transportation with a single point of contact to ensure accurate and timely freight bookings, including execution and management of downstream tasks.
• Avoid unnecessary delays or costs by handling all compliance, regulations and customs processes.
• Manage hybrid fulfilment and deconsolidation, inventory control and returns.
• Handle last-mile deliveries to the end consumer.
• Provide end-to-end visibility from factory to home.
• Constantly improve supply chain processes and practices.

The Solution: Working backwards from the end consumer

The shared value of putting the customer experience first brought Pure Electric and Maersk together. Our first objective as their logistics partner was to manage their business-to-consumer supply chain in a manner that satisfied demanding digital-first customers. Our e-fulfilment solution provides pre-retail checks, customisation and quality assurance prior to dispatch. But no e-commerce solution is complete without reverse logistics, so we also leveraged our existing assets and digital capabilities to manage returns as well.

With Maersk’s growing warehousing footprint, not only in the UK but across Europe, we are able to provide tailor-made solutions for our customers, with none of the compromises we would have otherwise faced if we would have continued to use third-party vendors. “As far as being the Integrator is concerned, we can look after our customers and be a one-stop-shop all the way from the origin to end-user.” John Williams, UK Head of Warehousing and Distribution, Maersk.

Our solutions helped Pure Electric provide a seamless e-commerce offering across Europe, leading to an expanding omnichannel approach on the continent. Here too, we helped them deliver on their promise of superior customer service by speeding up the movement of their cargo across borders with our Customs Services and expertise.

Today, Pure Electric’s growth strategy requires the support of a nimble supply chain that can scale with speed and control – a goal they are achieving with the help of Maersk Flow. Designed for businesses like Pure Electric, this cost-effective digital platform has a purely web-based interface that allowed us to implement it quickly. On its implementation, we worked with vendors at origin so that Pure Electric could start running their supply chain like a well-oiled machine.

Maersk Flow has improved speed to market by reducing manual tasks, empowering Pure Electric’s teams with access to performance data, and enabling the right action at the right time with end-to-end visibility.

The Results: Achieving growth through integration

Contrary to the proverb: ‘if you want to go fast, go alone…’, Pure Electric has leveraged its partnership with Maersk to accelerate its expansion into new European markets. Backed by our vast network and expertise, they have integrated all modes of transportation across Ocean, Customs, and Inland to:

• Increase speed to consumer
• Decrease out-of-stock scenarios
• Achieve increased visibility throughout their supply chain
• Deliver pan-European distribution with ease
• Make reverse logistics as simple as forward logistics

By handing the responsibility of global logistics to Maersk, Pure Electric has been able to focus on their customers and their continued expansion plans across the UK and Europe. “In Maersk, we have found one partner from factory to front door.” Tom Carroll, Chief Operating Officer, Pure Electric.

Together, we work as one agile team – identifying issues, resolving them, sharing insights, co-creating solutions and constantly finding new ways to supercharge business.