James Hyde, Co-founder and CEO, James and James Fulfilment- Your Fulfilment Partner For The Long Haul

James Hyde is an engineering graduate from the University of Cambridge. After a spell as an angel investor’s apprentice, he spotted the chance to modernize eCommerce fulfillment, while working with an online honey seller. With friend and fellow Cambridge graduate, James Strachan, he founded James and James Fulfilment in 2010. The company provides outsourced fulfillment services to independent retailers, based on its unique technology and processes. With a love of pondering problems and improving things, James has led the company to become one of the UK’s fastest-growing organizations.

In an exclusive interview with AsiaTechDaily, James says:

It’s very easy to look at a global market and think that you can enter it as you did the domestic market. The time, costs, and effort required are generally higher than people think, and many businesses fail to make significant inroads before they run out of cash.

Focus on the people. When you have a small startup, almost everything falls to the founders to do, and you get used to making all the decisions. With a bigger business, you need to let go and empower the team to make those decisions for you.

Communicating a clear vision and creating a healthy culture become the new focus, to ensure that the business stays true to its roots.

Read on to know more about James Hyde and his journey.

Please tell me about your personal background, and what are you working on currently? (* What motivated you to get started with your company?)

James Hyde: Our story began in 2010 when I was working for an eCommerce business with my friend and fellow University of Cambridge graduate, James Strachan. We couldn’t find the right order fulfillment service for the company. Faced with messy warehouses running on out-dated systems, we decided to build our own.

Since then, we’ve dragged a traditional industry into the 21st century, with our award-winning, cloud-based order fulfillment software. Today, our mission is to challenge the industry, create change for the better, and deliver 100 million orders to happy customers.

What is your current main product, and (If there is any) can you share any product pivot story from founding to the current product?

James Hyde: We originally started the company to provide a SaaS solution to fulfillment companies and online retailers. To prove the concept, we rented a small area of a warehouse and built up a small client base. The more we tried to sell software purely, the more it became apparent that the market was mostly made up of smaller, free platforms, or large players such as SAP and Oracle. There was little demand for anything in the middle, but there was a strong demand for outsourcing the entire process, so our model became a technology-based operating business.

Only now, 10 years later, are we again looking at providing a SaaS platform for use in clients’ warehouses.

How much money (funding) have you raised in total so far? When was the recent funding round?

James Hyde: We’ve never raised capital – the company was grown organically and without debt for the first 10 years. Last month, we had our first investment from LDC for £11M.

How have you attracted users and grown your company from the start? And Which were your marketing strategies to grow your business?

James Hyde: 10 years ago, the fulfillment industry wasn’t very tech-savvy. We built a website ourselves and had it on page one of Google within a couple of months.

I would spend as much of every afternoon building lists and cold calling as I could cope with, and slowly we started to close some business. The majority of it was coming to us, though, and for the company’s entire history, inbound web leads have been the largest source of new business for us.

Which is the best marketing tool for the growth of your startup, and why?

James Hyde: Online retailers seem to look online when they are buying services for themselves, so having a webpage and an online presence is all it’s really taken.

What do most startups get wrong about marketing in general?

James Hyde: Messaging. This has evolved so many times for us, and I’m still not sure we have it right. Every month we find out something new about our potential clients, and global changes such as Covid-19 can throw all of that out of the window and leave you starting from scratch again with a new type of client.

What were the internal decision processes in determining when to begin fund-raising, and what were the logistics for this?

James Hyde: We wanted to grow the company faster and recognized it had now got to the size where we needed additional expertise and experience to do that. The right investor wouldn’t only provide cash but would help build the right board, bring in expert consultants, and provide advice.

We started because of the above and were in no rush. We could have done this a year later, and it wouldn’t have made a huge difference – it wasn’t about a cash runway. We brought in a corporate finance advisor to run the process.

And how many investors have you met so far, and how did you meet these investors and which channels worked best for you?

James Hyde: Several investors have approached us over the years, simply due to our financial performance. Still, when we wanted to start a process, we met with several corporate finance advisory firms and also with a handful of investors.

Once we’d chosen an advisor, we invited back the investors we liked most, plus a few others that were recommended to join a formal process.

What are the biggest challenges you’ve faced and obstacles in the process of fund-raising? If you had to start over, what would you do differently? (Your insight or advice on this would be very helpful for startups)

James Hyde: The biggest challenge for me was the bureaucracy. You are dealing with a lot of advisors and due diligence processes, and they can often suck you into a vortex of the minutia because they don’t understand your business. You end up spending days on areas you know are not material to the deal.

While I’d like to say that, having had the experience of fund-raising, I’d do it differently next time. I suspect that the overbearing weight of advisors would mean I’d still have very little influence to make the process more efficient. I would try to get all of the lawyers in one room, though. That is an area where a lot of energy can be wasted.

What are your milestones for the next round? And what are your goals for the future?

James Hyde: We set out a five-year plan, and we aim to achieve as much of that as possible. We have some financial and strategic objectives to position the company for the next investor. However, they still need shaping, and I wouldn’t want to tell anyone external what they are anyway.

How do you plan to expand globally?

James Hyde: Our current focus is on our main existing sites in the UK and the USA. However, our strategy will include looking at new locations, territories, and partnerships internationally when we feel the time is right.

What are the most common mistakes companies make with global marketing?

James Hyde: They are taking on too much. It’s very easy to look at a global market and think that you can enter it as you did the domestic market. The time, costs, and effort required are generally higher than people think, and many businesses fail to make significant inroads before they run out of cash.

How do you handle this COVID-19 outbreak situation for your company’s survival in the future?

James Hyde: We plan every day and every week to make the best of it that we can. Online retail, especially the delivery of essential products, saw a positive trend following the outbreak in China. We work heavily in the health, wellness, and organic foods sectors, so we’re more protected than many other industries. It would be a very different story if all of our business came from the fashion and leisure industries.

What are the most common mistakes founders make when they start a company? (or What should all first-time startup founders know before they start their business?)

James Hyde: I can only really talk about the mistakes we made. Looking back, we didn’t invest enough in marketing, messaging, or sales (though that’s not to say that we weren’t lucky and grew regardless).

If we could do it again, we’d have outsourced more of the non-core parts of the business, such as maintenance, and would have spent more money on expertise.

What’s the best advice you’ve ever received? And What advice do you have for someone who is interested in doing similar things like yours or in a similar direction?

James Hyde: Focus on the people. When you have a small startup, almost everything falls to the founders to do, and you get used to making all the decisions. With a bigger business, you need to let go and empower the team to make those decisions for you.

Communicating a clear vision and creating a healthy culture become the new focus, to ensure that the business stays true to its roots.

What are the one or two things that you would do differently to improve your life (or what kind of personal habits would you improved?) if you could go back to 10 years ago? 

James Hyde: Some of the best life improvements I’ve made in the last year have been some of the smallest.

• I stopped reading emails on holiday. I tell everyone I’m going away and that I won’t read their emails, but if it’s urgent, then they can call me any time. That stops the worry, or the need to keep informed. And the reality is 99% of the problems get dealt with without you anyway.
• I turned off email notifications and moved to ‘inbox zero.’ Without notifications, I get to choose when I answer emails, and they become less disruptive to the day. It lets you get more done and removes the tie to your desk or phone. You allow yourself to switch off from work entirely when you want to.

You can follow James Hyde here.

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