Success for growth rooted in sustainable innovative logistics

To succeed in the ever-changing fashion industry, brands and retailers need to find the right balance between sustainability and innovation in their logistic operations. Finding the right end-to-end fashion logistic partner, who can offer seamless logistics and supply chain management, is crucial to boosting a brand’s success, from a fast-growing start-up to an established international fashion brand.

For Irish athleisure and lifestyle brand Gym+Coffee, which offers clothing through its e-commerce platforms in Europe, the UK, North America, Australia and New Zealand, as well as through its nine retail Clubhouses in Ireland and the UK, finding a partner who could assist it with its sustainable goals, while also ensuring reduced delivery times, increased reliability and better order tracking was a complex challenge.

Many fashion companies are struggling with how to make logistics sustainable, from minimising their environmental footprints to zero waste operations, while keeping customers happy across multiple international markets, especially important for a brand primed for growth and expansion.

To assist the athleisure brand with scaling up its operations, Gym+Coffee has partnered with Bleckmann, a fulfilment expert in Fashion in Lifestyle with sites in the Benelux, the UK and the USA, to help it deliver a better customer experience internationally and a smoother overall operation across its supply chain.

Diarmuid McSweeney, co-founder and chief marketing officer at Gym+Coffee, said: “As we continue to grow, it’s vitally important to have the right partners on board to ensure our brand values are protected and the promises we make to our community are upheld.

“By partnering with experts like Bleckmann we're excited to raise the bar in this arena and take giant strides forward in terms of our overall logistics process and commitment to sustainable practices. As a brand, we’re committed to carbon neutrality by 2022 and this partnership will help us get there.”

Gym+Coffee success and expansion boosted with world-class logistics

Gym+Coffee, founded in 2017, centres around the philosophy to ‘Make Life Richer’ by socialising around exercise, and as the brand grows it wants to ensure that sustainable practices and planning is woven into the brand. This ranges from introducing 100 percent recycled garments into its product range, pledging to have a minimum of 30 percent of products that are sustainably made and/or made from recycled materials by the end of 2021, and using recycled carry bags made from recycled fridges.

The athleisure retailer is committed to building a brand and community which focuses on the planet and profit. In January, Gym+Coffee has stated that it will submit its application to become a certified B-Corporation company. With only 5,000 companies in the world certified at this level of sustainability, it is evidently measuring itself quite high in terms of its impact on the world.

That sustainable ethos, combined with customer-centricity and an ambitious growth strategy is at the heart of its logistics. In partnership with Bleckmann, Gym+Coffee will reduce delivery times, increase reliability and better order tracking, while also optimising its returns process, by including free returns in Ireland, the UK, the USA, and parts of Europe.

McSweeney, added: “We visited the impressive distribution centre in Belgium recently and were blown away by the scale and efficiency of the operations. With 600,000 m2 of warehousing space across the business, the capacity to distribute 20 million packages every year and ongoing investment in research and development, we're primed for a big and bright future. The team there are solution-driven, focused on high performance and essentially an extension of the Gym+Coffee team.”

Bleckmann is also pledging to reduce its packaging and waste, with an ambition to have a recycling rate of 90 percent by 2023 by making source material out of what used to be waste.

Erik Janssen Steenberg, business development manager at Bleckmann, said: “It has been an absolute pleasure working with the Gym+Coffee team on laying a solid foundation for a strong and successful partnership. Right from the start, it became apparent that both the Bleckmann and Gym+Coffee teams had the same goals in mind; Customer Centricity, Sustainable Operations and Growth.

“As a result we are now successfully integrated in such a way that our systems are aligned, our communication lines are short and our execution is meeting and often surpassing the requirements. A partnership build on trust, while adding value every day and ready for the future.”

For more information, visit: www.bleckmann.com