Big CE Brands Cuddle Up To Linfox Ahead Of Amazon Roll Out

A major player in the food and pharmacy markets, Australian logistics Company Linfox, is now moving into the consumer electronics market having signed up both Belkin and Sennheiser as customers.

The Company has recently expanded their NSW operation and is now offering consumer electronics Companies a direct connection to their customers whether it be a retailer, B2B organisation of a consumer.

The move comes as several brands move to sell direct as opposed to via a distributor, it also comes as several big brands move to expand their own online sales operation.

According to John Pucek General Manager – Operations Development FMCG at Linfox the Company is Initially targeting Companies tha sell between $120M and $300M worth of goods in Australia.

He believes that with the Australian eCommerce market set to reach $15,439m by 2021 and continue growing at over 10% that a move into consumer electronics and appliances will deliver growth for Companies in this category.

With a model like Amazon who has not yet set up their operation in Australia, Linfox can immediately deliver a portal that allows their customers to track all elements of their eCommerce, fulfilment, delivery, and customer service while also delivering analytics on their sales and returns.

As part of their offering Linfox is offering to set up and manage the online store operation of brands” taking care of all their content and promotions in Australia” said Pucek.

As part of their offering package brands like Belkin and Sennheiser get a choice of a full online store and backend operations, they can track orders easily as well manage B2B pricing and digital marketing.

They even offer customised packaging and personalisation.

“We’ll pick and pack a customer’s order as well as do reverse logistics. We also deliver Q&A, a repair service as well as refurbishment” said Pucek.

He said “We believe that in Australia the logistics industry has to come together as one network within the next few years as the market is set to change with the arrival of Amazon. For example, Linfox can offer BYO carriers for multiple services, from a premium same day service to a next day service. To achieve this, we are delivering jobs to multiple carriers who are best suited to delivering this service to locations across Australia”.

He cited partners such as Toll, StarTrack and TNT as organisations who will benefit from the new Linfox service while customers are able to track performance and KPI tracking.

When it comes to their customer service offering Linfox is now offering phone, email and chat for CE vendors as well as a “proactive” outbound service. Customers can easily rate the service.

With their analytics analysis, their customers get Google Analytics, sales and conversion rates, digital marketing effectiveness reports as well as information on their carrier’s performance. When it comes to payments the manufacturer remains the merchant of record with Linfox managing the entire transaction process.

Revenue less charges and bank fees are deposited directly into a vendors account.

According to Pucek “Having a relationship with Linfox allows our customers to not only bring down costs, but better control costs. We can partner with customers who want to operate within the Amazon marketplace. We are not here to compete with Amazon. We are an enterprise operation that can work with Amazon or eBay customers, we are a direct partnership offering customers a direct channel to markets whether it be a retailer, B2B business or a consumer who has ordered online”.

A senior Sennheiser global logistic executive who recently inspected the Linfox offering told ChannelNews that the Linfox offering “is as good as any we have seen around the world”.

Sennheiser is a global headphone brand that runs logistic operations in several Countries worldwide.