From Bedroom to Warehouse: How Silver Mushroom Inspired CK Fulfilment
Growing an ecommerce business is no easy feat. To put it plainly, it is gruelling, emotionally taxing and bloody hard work and we take our hats off to all business owners out there. The sacrificed social events, total lack of personal time and complete and utter daily exhaustion are just a few of the norms when it comes to the life of a business owner. We know this all too well at CK Fulfilment. Not only do we deal with many incredible business owners through our warehousing work, but we also have our own e-com business, Silver Mushroom.
To an outsider looking at Silver Mushroom for the first time, you may think how lovely things seem and how well founder Rebecca has done to grow the company to the respectable level that it is at today. But what you don’t see is potentially the most important element of the company's timeline; how Rebecca painstakingly transitioned the business from her back bedroom to the state-of-the art 10,000 square foot warehouse it now resides in.
So how is this relevant to CK Fulfilment? We’ve spoken a lot over on our sister site, silvermushroom.com about growing the business, but it feels equally important to tell you our story here, on CK Fulfilment. Grab yourself a coffee and get comfy, this might be the most candid blog we write this year.
When partnering with a company like ours to handle your operations, whether you have ten orders a week or 10,000, you want to know that we understand. Not just how to pack your items and send them out on time, but that we understand the magnitude of each and every order and just how important every customer is to you, as well as the finer details of your products and branding that took hours and hours to perfect. Our experience of growing Silver Mushroom gives us a unique perspective that not many third party fulfilment companies can genuinely appreciate.
There will always come an inflection point when growing a business, where you must take a leap of faith and choose to give everything to your business; the ‘all or nothing’ point. This usually comes once the business has been steadily trading for a while. To take it to the next level it will need undivided attention or else it will turn stale and sales will eventually tail off. This decision will be one of the key moments in the scaling of your business.
For Rebecca, Silver Mushroom reached the ‘inflection point’ when the pandemic hit in 2020. After steadily growing for almost a decade, Silver Mushroom was comfortably operating entirely out of a 1000 square foot office space with a few bays of racking for our stock and just 5 staff members, including Rebecca herself. Lockdown hit and overnight Silver Mushroom’s sales saw upwards of 1000% growth. This was unprecedented and Rebecca had to make a decision there and then, dedicate everything to the business or switch the website off for good.
Sacrificing precious time with her baby, Rebecca put one year old Charlotte into the local nursery and decided to jump in to the business head first. The risks for the previously small family-run business were astronomical. We had to rent a warehouse more than double the size of our previous premises, we hired over 30 new employees and placed stock orders that to us, looked like something a large department store would be ordering!
As with any reward there is a looming storm-cloud of immense risk that threatens to strike at any moment. What if the sales drop off and you can’t afford your new rent payments? What if trends change and all of your cash is tied up in the pallets of stock you invested in? What if your new employees don’t care about the business enough to meet your expectations and standards slip?
After taking the leap of faith, Rebecca began to see cracks appearing in the business. The wheels were beginning to fall off. After meeting with a business consultant Rebecca made the decision to hand over the operations of Silver Mushroom to a third party fulfilment centre. As many of you may have experienced yourselves, she was promised the earth, but unfortunately, when things seem too good to be true, they often are. Our initial price ‘per order’ soon quadrupled (nope, you did not read that wrong), orders were going missing daily and Rebecca was slapped with stealth costs left and right. The problem with being a small fish in a big fulfilment pond is that the bigger fish will always get fed first. The exciting move to outsource our fulfilment to solve all of our headaches had created the largest headache of all.
Overwhelmed and exhausted, Rebecca had come to the final fork in the road. The only route out of the quagmire we found the company in, was to solve the problems ourselves at huge detrimental costs to the business, or to give up and shut down Silver Mushroom altogether, losing over a decade of progress and hard work. Stuck at a crossroads where neither path was particularly satisfying, Rebecca had an idea: what if she could solve not only the needs of her own company but other small to medium businesses in the process? After all, it was becoming increasingly apparent that our experience was not a one-off, rather the experience a lot of small business owners might expect when moving to a 3PL.
With a wealth of experience behind her, Rebecca hired an incredibly talented and passionate operations director, Tony Barnes, and founded CK Fulfilment, her own third party fulfilment centre with a difference. The final leap of faith. The idea behind the new start up? Good, honest fulfilment, where every business matters, no matter what the size. Little by little, marketing and business owners began to notice CK Fulfilment. Our transparency and experience set us apart. What we went through with Silver Mushroom enabled us to know exactly what we didn’t want our partners to go through when entrusting us with their businesses. And little by little, our conscientious business model began to grow, its roots founded in honest pricing, attention to detail for every partner, and a caring attitude that means we treat every partner's business with the same thoughtful approach that we treat our own.
We want you to know that when we say we know what you’re going through, we really mean it. At CK Fulfilment we know what it takes to make a positive difference and to help you and your business reach new heights. We know your business is not just another name in our warehouse management system, but something you have poured your heart and soul into to get to where you are, something that will be very difficult for you to hand over to somebody else. We see you, we know how you feel and we're here for you, to be your eyes when you can't see your stock, to discuss best practises for all your logistical needs and to take care of the time consuming practical side of business, leaving you to grow and flourish. We can provide your business with the precise formula it needs to reach the next level, be it more space, skilled staff or just a sounding board to bounce new ideas off. We partner with new clients on terms that suit not just our business model, but primarily theirs.
Since founding the business last year we have eight incredible partners who have entrusted us with their stock and their operations, from mobile phones to luxury home items and baby goods. There isn’t a one size fits all solution in fulfilment, so we don’t have an automatic quote generator for you to pop figures into, but we’d love to talk things through over a good cuppa and thrash out a plan that works for you.
Get in touch via the contact us page or drop us an email at hello@ckfulfilment.com, or if you’d rather pick up the phone, our lines are open from Monday to Friday 8am - 5pm on 01772356673.
