In this edition of Meet The Member we speak to William Martin of Littledart Fulfilment, a GCA Supplier member.
What’s the name of your company?
Littledart Fulfilment Limited
When was the company first set up?
2021
Where is your business based?
Witheridge, Devon, The West Country
Who set up the company and why?
Oli and I grew up in the e-commerce world, our parents started their first online shop in 2004! With this background, in 2019/20 Oli started to use technology to try to solve problems facing most online businesses today; Marketplace management, managing inventory and of course packing the orders.
Fast forward to 2021.
The final lockdown was in force and Oli’s system was now managing orders for not only our parents’ business but a greetings card company as well. Will was in London, working as an outsourcing consultant but once the system was explained it dawned on Oli and Will that there was an opportunity to offer a service that was more than the fulfilment market currently offered.
Six months later, 10 clients in the warehouse and a second warehouse in the pipeline (we are now onto warehouses 3, 4 and 5 :), Littledart Fulfilment was born.
Then, one of our card clients asked whether we would take on the folding and outwork of her cards. Being rather naïve (we had no idea of the size of the market, or, that most greetings cards are folded and finished by hand) we said yes!
We now have Gemma, our outwork manager and the 12 outworkers folding up to 15,000 cards a week. We would love to grow this!
As a team we have a strong sense of holistic sustainability, that’s social sustainability as well as environmental. When we started Littledart we wanted to bring change to our rural Devon village we wanted to bring opportunity. Card folding and outwork allow us to offer contracts to a myriad of people who want to work flexibly, at home but still want fair pay.
If we can bring more opportunity and fair employment into our village then we see a success. We just need more cards to fold – and maybe you can help with that.
What is the Unique Selling Point of your business? What makes your products particularly special?
We are a bespoke fulfilment provider specialising in card folding and finishing. We have a team of dedicated outworkers who fold from their homes allowing us to scale rapidly and turnover cards very quickly.
Not only will we fold and finish the cards, but once finished we can store them in our specially designed warehouse, connect digitally with card publishers’ sales channels, manage their inventory across these channels and ship the orders to end customers whether this be B2B or B2C.
We go even further in our B2C shipment, we are not a brown box fulfilment house! We can wrap, personalize, and pack to your bespoke specifications. Ensuring that whilst publishers get the benefit of fulfilment – they don’t lose any of the personality that is so important in the greetings card market.
Tell us about one of your best-selling services?
Our bestselling service is the full end to end fulfilment service! By this I mean flat stock and components arrive with us and the next time they leave the cards are finished (cello’d, stickered, banded however you want the cards presented) and on their way to the end customer.
How do you sell your products?
We offer our clients a multitude of integrations, whether they are selling cards on NOTS, Etsy, their own website or even (dare I say it) Amazon. We connect via API or webhook to all the above ensuring seamless inventory management and fulfilment.
What do you like most about the industry?
The people!
Is there anything else you would like to add?
We are a bespoke fulfilment house and would love to talk to anyone. We see fulfilment as a partnership and with the greetings card market this couldn’t be more accurate which is why we like it so much.
You can contact Littledart Fulfilment via the GCA directory or on the LittleDart Fulfilment website.
