Autumn 2006

A brand new e-fulfilment venture called e-logistic has been launched by a north London based group called Interactive Ideas, which distributes computer software, peripherals and what it calls "gadgets".

The company is offering the full gamut of fulfilment resources, from transactional web site design to stockholding, picking and despatch. It already has a selection of customers for the service, including Digital Blue, linuxplay.com and magictouchscreens.co.uk.

Interactive Ideas itself has been around for twelve years. It turns over £10 million, and has a large portfolio of blue-chip customers to its name. It sells parts of its product range directly through its own web site.

Through the e-logistic operation it is offering a wide range of mainstream fulfilment resources, including fully computerised stock control and order processing, an EDI capability, multi-currency accounting and online consignment tracking. Much of this activity is handled at its base in Enfield, where it has modern warehousing and office premises. The carriers it mentions as regulars are UPS and Royal Mail.

The new service is targeting clients for whom online retailing is a non-core activity, or who don't have the resources or inclination to run such an operation in-house. All the functions it offers are being provided by the group in-house, apart from credit card processing, which is managed through VISA.

The hosted service includes a customised web storefront site, based on a range of templates. You pay just £500 for the customised setup, and after that all costs are variable.

Managing director Mike Trupp says the business is happy to work with "any type of product/business as long at it sells, can be shipped and makes sense for vendor, us and customers."

* We should emphasise that there is no connection between e-logistic and Fulfilment & e.logistics, nor with the online trading specialist eLogistics, which featured regularly in our publication a few years ago.