Award winning travel, prize and fulfilment agency Cloud Nine Incentives is growing its full service
offering with the appointment of Emma Coleman, Director of Events.
Joining from BCD Meetings & Events, Emma will harness her experience across multiple sectors
to drive Cloud Nine’s events division forward; an important strategic pillar for the agency.
Founder and Director Michael Chambers says, “As Cloud Nine Incentives enters its 13th year,
it’s critical we continue to innovate and deliver excellent service. Growing our events team means
we can offer a ‘one stop shop’ to clients.
I am delighted to welcome Emma to the Cloud Nine team. Her wealth of events experience and
passion for exceptional service levels will help steer the agency into its next chapter.”
With an amplified prize and promotions capability, brands will receive seamless, end to end
campaign management, with their customers at the heart of the journey.

Emma Coleman, “I am delighted to join Cloud Nine Incentives, a leader in their field working with
some fantastic brands. Their ethos of curating standout experiences alongside providing
excellent customer service aligns perfectly with my own passion for events. My role, leading the
strategy and development of the events offering, sparks a new chapter for Cloud Nine and I’m
delighted to be involved at the beginning of this exciting journey.”

The post Cloud Nine Incentives Announces New Appointment as it Grows Full Service Travel Offering appeared first on IPM Bitesize.

Fiona Strong, Managing Director at Ark-H Handling, explores how Black Friday can be both a blessing and a curse for retailers and fulfilment houses.

Introduced from the USA several years ago, the Black Friday phenomenon, like so many American imports, has had positive and negative effects on the UK market in almost equal measure.

Initially the new concept in sales promotion led to a massive rise in on-line sales, as internet retailers rushed to capitalise on this frenzy of armchair bargain-hunting.  Sales spiked, web-sites crashed and the shopping world went Black Friday mad. The high-street trembled as the statistics for year-on-year on-line shopping sales shot through the roof and the world of fulfilment and distribution was caught on the hop.

As time has gone by the Black Friday effect has begun to diminish somewhat, although this is still the busiest period for sales, both on-line and on the high street. Designed to ‘kick-off’ the holiday season (Thanksgiving) in the US, Black Friday has, to a marked extent, become the starting pistol for pre-Christmas sales in the UK.

Mainstream retail has caught up with on-line, with stores building television campaigns designed to capture both on-line and footfall sales. Shoppers looking for bargains still flock to find the best deals, in the ether or on the pavement, but the one-day pressure has eased.  Many retailers have sought to up-stage the Black Friday event with earlier offer days with Amazon Prime day being a ‘prime’ example.

The on-line shopping bonanza continues to grow and flourish and it is now expected that sales will rise and rise. It is the rush to discount that has slowed slightly, with retailers of all descriptions recognising that this is more of a rush to bottom than a race to the top. The benefits to consumers remain and special deals abound but no longer in the staggering proportions of a few years ago.

On-line fulfilment services too have adjusted to meet demand and it is no longer so difficult for companies to fulfil the peak in demand. Gone are the days when neither websites nor warehouses could cope with the Black Friday effect.

Predictions for 2018 suggest that the average Brit will spend about £220 on Black Friday. This is significantly less than last year but it is also predicted that many more people will take part. So the overall spend on the Black Friday weekend will still probably top out at over 7 billion pounds.

The Black Friday phenomenon is both a blessing and a curse for retailers and fulfilment houses alike but, given the need for them to keep the customers satisfied and sales rising now that everyone has got the hang of the idea, on aggregate they are probably better off with it than without it.

Ark-H Handling has over 28 years of proven expertise in delivering a comprehensive range of handling & fulfilment solutions. They provide unparalleled levels of service and expertise delivered through industry leading systems & facilities, combined with outstanding staff and a commitment to quality.

The post Black Friday – bane or benefit? appeared first on IPM Bitesize.

Marketing distribution specialist mda has been acquired by European logistics business Staci for an undisclosed sum. Staci says the acquisition creates the first pan-European marketing logistics business for brands and retailers.

Creating, storing, distributing and activating point of sale and marketing materials for the world’s biggest brands including Heineken, Coca-Cola, Mars, Unilever, Diageo and Mercedes-Benz, mda, which recently celebrated 30 years of business, becomes part of a £250m Europe-wide fulfilment group with operations across France, Spain, Germany, Italy, Poland, BeNeLux and now the UK.

Wayne Chapman, mda Managing Director, says: “This is genuinely fantastic news for our clients and teams and we’re extremely excited about the years ahead. We’ve operated from the UK for 30 years, but in the last 24 months we’ve seen clients’ desire to operate facilities in multiple European territories under a single contract significantly increase.”

Mda, which currently has turnover of £5m a year, has 350 employees at five fulfilment centres across the UK.

Staci is the European leader in the B2B retail logistics segment for a large group of networks: retail, GMS and GSS, oil companies, agribusiness, hotel and restaurant chains, banks, insurance companies, operators telephone companies, car manufacturers, the pharmaceutical and cosmetics industry and the public sector.

Prior to the mda acquisition, Staci had 35 sites in Germany, Belgium, Spain, France, Italy and the Netherlands with a workforce of 1,550 employees.

The post Fulfilment house mda acquired by European logistics specialist Staci appeared first on IPM Bitesize.