Pictured: Krista McAllister, Seed Room Manager at Nickys
Nursery
Award winning, online garden company Nickys Nursery is expanding
its business throughout the UK and into Europe with next day parcel
deliveries from APC Overnight. Growing demand is quickly fulfilled
with assistance from the local APC depot based near Ramsgate, Kent,
which collects and despatches millions of seeds and thousands of
giant garden games each year via the APC Overnight nationwide
network and its international partners.
"We are an online business, with customers buying online or from
our mail order catalogue; therefore we use the best available
courier service for next day deliveries to provide a high quality
service. The APC service has helped us grow the business and has
continued to support the expansion of the business. We find APC
Overnight to be dependable as well as flexible; working with the
local depot that understands our business needs is a big plus. We
know that when we say we will deliver our orders they will arrive
with the customer on time and intact," says Nicky Lee, Director of
Nickys Nursery.
Nickys Nursery has a wide range of customers ranging from
individuals to larger organisations, including schools, higher and
further education establishments, councils and companies. The
number and size of orders is variable depending on the season -
seasonality being a key feature of the horticultural industry.
Regardless of the order volume, APC is able to meet the company's
needs with flexible collection times. In addition, it has installed
an online parcel booking and tracking system (NetDespatch) to help
expedite fulfilment.
"Booking collections is quick and easy. As soon as the day's
invoices are processed, we book the collections over the web and
this builds our manifest for the day. This saves a lot of time and
we can update it very easily. The system also allows us to track
deliveries and provides full information about the depots local to
our customers who will make the deliveries as well as providing us
with full proof of delivery," says Nicky Lee.
Nicky Lee set up Nickys Nursery in 1992 as a horticultural
business growing its own plants, shrubs and vegetables. The company
was relaunched in 1999 as an online business, selling a huge range
of seeds, garden games and sundries. The winner of two consecutive
annual awards from Which? magazine for seed quality, the company
adds more than 200 new varieties to its catalogue each year.