Tag Archives: Amazon

Online Bathroom Specialist Targets UK Market Growth With €1M Investment Round

Top-rated Amazon retailer aims for eight-fold revenue increase by 2023 across €5bn marketplace

Crocket, Europe’s first digital native bathroom fittings retailer, is targeting major growth in the design-focused UK market and across key EU nations through a significant investment round. The company is seeking to raise €1m investment to help bolster B2C sales across Europe and grow its presence within the architecture and builder market.

Since launching in 2019, Crocket has expanded its offering to now include shower enclosures, bathroom fittings, counter tops, and mirrors. It has also developed an on-demand product sourcing model with multiple suppliers providing customers with 30,000 design combinations. In 2021, Crocket was ranked as the top bathroom fittings brand in the shower trays category on Amazon Europe where the company received more than one thousand 5-star reviews from verified purchases.

With the exception of the UK, where it holds stock via Amazon warehouses, Crocket outsources all of its production enabling it to operate on minimal overheads with customers paying upfront for their purchases. By selling directly to consumers and businesses and eliminating any middlemen in the process, the company is able to sell its high-quality Spanish-manufactured products at prices that are typically 20% lower than competitors.

The company was founded by Victor de Hita, a sales and digital eco-system specialist who spent two years at Amazon Marketplace Europe as strategic account manager working within the UK market. His brother and the company’s Chief Operating Officer, Xavier de Hita, is a successful entrepreneur who spent four years as CEO of a successful travel agency which he co-founded in Colombia. The senior management team also includes three vice presidents who are highly regarded in their specialist fields of design, operations and finance.

Crocket plans to use the investment round proceeds to build its team with 21 new hires planned in the next year. It will also invest in e-commerce and website business growth and in new product development. The company is forecasting revenues to more than double to over €2.6m in this financial year and then to increase to around €9.8m by 2023.

Along with its UK customer base, Crocket is also focused on Germany, France, Spain and Italy where the combined bathrooms market is valued at €5.24bn.

Crocket founder and CEO, Victor de Hita, said: “After establishing Crocket as an EU marketplace brand leader through our shower tray product offering and then diversifying our range, we now see a major opportunity to take the company to a significantly higher level.

“The bathroom market is booming across Europe and is currently worth more than €5bn in our five core national sales markets alone. Through D2C and trade sales, there is an opportunity to grow our market share across Europe, especially in the UK where design-focused consumers are looking for a unique, high-quality offering at a competitive price.

“This investment round will help support our growth ambitions by giving the business additional resources to invest in great people and build our e-commerce channels. While growing B2C sales, we will also channel additional funds into supporting the brand’s growth across the trade market by targeting architects and builders.”

UK fulfilment company expands operations with North East warehouse

Order preparation and fulfilment company, Systemise Fulfilment have expanded their UK operations once again with the launch of a new warehouse facility in the North East, creating a number of new jobs in the region. This follows a period of fast growth for the company, which has seen them open six warehouse facilities in the UK, US and Europe over the last two years.

The latest facility which opened on 1st April 2022 is managed by Marc Dady founder and director of successful North East based company, 365 Fulfilment Ltd. Marc and his team have joined Systemise Fulfilment as a Licensee Partner to support other eCommerce and Amazon Marketplace businesses with all their prep and order fulfilment needs. 

Marc Dady speaking about the opening of the new warehouse shared: “I’ve seen the journey Systemise Fulfilment has gone through since starting out in 2016. They’ve grown rapidly and established not only a UK but globally recognised brand thanks to the exceptional service they deliver. When the opportunity came up to work alongside the team at Systemise Fulfilment, to establish their presence in the North East, it was a no-brainer. 

“We’re excited to be working alongside Kev and Kylie, founders and directors and their team at the HQ in Scunthorpe to assist and support more UK based eCommerce companies to scale up and optimise their businesses. 

“The amount of support and training the team in Scunthorpe has already provided has been absolutely top-notch. They’ve gone above and beyond, even outside of office hours to help us get everything set up, so we were prepared for partner shipments straight away. 

“We’ve already gained a highly experienced warehouse team, who are backed by the Systemise Fulfilment unique processing streams system, focused on speed of shipping, quality control and excellent communication. Since launching, we’ve begun shipping our first pallets for great new partners who’ve already commented how they are loving the clear communication and speed of processing. We are looking forward to onboarding multiple more partners throughout the year and assisting them in growing their individual businesses.” 

The new warehouse facility has created a number of new jobs in the region and is set to continue to offer more opportunities as the business grows. Currently, the company is looking for new team members of all abilities including, apprentices and graduates in both their North East and Scunthorpe locations. 

Kevin Blackburn, Co-founder and director of Systemise Fulfilment added: “We’re so happy to have Marc and his team join us on our mission to help support and fuel the growth of eCommerce businesses across the globe. We believe in building a strong network of prep services and order fulfilment warehouses, that are managed by passionate, experienced, proven and knowledgeable teams that give our partners the platform to grow and achieve their goals. Building our global network allows our customers to expand internationally, throughout the UK, USA and Europe to help meet the increasing demand in the eCommerce industry.

“The continued growth in Scunthorpe and now opening the warehouse in the North East means we’re hiring for roles across multiple disciplines including warehouse operations, business development, sales and marketing, customer support, human resources, technical support, software engineers to continue to evolve our technologies and systems.”

To find out more about the open roles and future opportunities at Systemise Fulfilment, visit their careers page here: www.systemisefulfilment.co.uk/careers 

MYCOM OSI supports Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (Amazon EKS) for its suite of Service Assurance applications

LONDON, UK – Apr 19th, 2022 – MYCOM OSI, a leading independent provider of Assurance, Automation and Analytics solutions to Communications Service Providers (CSPs) announced today that it has implemented support for Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (Amazon EKS) as the foundational service for its EAA (Experience Assurance and Analytics) suite of Service Assurance applications. With this enhancement, MYCOM OSI can improve the efficiency and flexibility of its EAA Cloud Service SaaS platform and bring-your-own-cloud (BYOC) option.

CSPs require support for choice of multiple SaaS platform vendors and the flexibility to select different compute options. They require support in improving cost-efficiencies while maintaining existing investments and skillsets with multiple platform vendors.

Amazon EKS foundational service for Service Assurance applications offers several benefits to CSPs. It provides higher platform vendor flexibility for BYOC customers. By enabling Amazon EKS support for SaaS tenants, it unlocks efficiencies by supporting a broader array of Amazon EC2 instance types by using software from a vast open-source ecosystem. Amazon EKS serves as a key building block of the MYCOM OSI EAA SaaS platform, providing a production-grade managed Kubernetes service that reduces the operational overhead of running Kubernetes.

“MYCOM OSI is delighted to enhance its Service Assurance offering through the support of Amazon EKS,” said Mounir Ladki, CTO at MYCOM OSI. “Amazon EKS is in high demand by the CSPs, as it offers a broad capability set. After building application support for EKS, MYCOM OSI can provide an environment for co-innovation with its customers and support them in their strategic objectives for automation and delivery of digital services on 5G.”

To arrange a discussion with MYCOM OSI and find out more about its offerings, click here: https://mycom-osi.com/contact/ or contact the team at info@mycom-osi.com.