Onlineshop.co.uk has opened a 20,500 sq. feet fulfilment centre in Harrogate, marking a milestone with the company, and demonstrating a strong commitment to the town.
- Online Shop (OnlineShop.co.uk) has been officially made Harrogate its permanent UK-base
- 20,500 sq. feet premises will help deliver products faster and more efficiently throughout the UK
- The new premises will support a mixture of functions including logistics, packaging, storage and offices
- Sharing office facilities with neighbouring company, White Horse Machinery (WHM), owned and operated by lead investor Robin Vauvelle
Online Shop originally co-founded by entrepreneurs Terry McGinnis and Joe Todd as an off-shoot of its sister website, Cozy.co.uk has seen immense success in the recent months since its marketplace launch.
Managing Director, Terry McGinnis said:
I went to Japan during the pandemic, and saw that many companies were struggling, we had big companies like Rakuten and Amazon, were putting a lot of smaller businesses out of business, essentially as they couldn’t trade on the big platforms as they wouldn’t allow it – only the wholesale sellars are allowed on the big platforms.
I created a small app that allowed anyone to create their own shop, they just needed to create their own domain and online shop came from that idea.
After I came back from Japan I was living in London, we signed up a lot of businesses to that App, and they started using it. But then what I was seeing then was that UK doesn’t really have its own online marketplace similar to Amazon or Ebay.
Anyone can have their own website with us, and it has evolved into a online marketplace for all.
We also saw a lot of hatred towards Amazon and eBay from many businesses, and found that blue chip companies wanted to sell through us, companies like Bosch.
Currently our focus is to onboard the bigger businesses to then attract the smaller businesses. If the larger companies believe in us then it gives confidence for the smaller ones to use us.
The business has now set up its base in Harrogate, on Hornbeam Park. It’s sharing a unit with White Horse Machinery, a business that buys and sells large printing machinery and the business owned by Robin Vauvelle, the lead investor.
Managing Director, Terry McGinnis said:
We have now moved the business to Harrogate and Robin Vauvelle has made a substantial investment along with clearing out his whole warehouse.
So we have developed a marketplace for businesses to easily sell, and are making Harrogate the hub, competing with the established marketplaces like Amazon.
We want to make it a UK-grown company, employing UK people, focusing on UK suppliers.
There’s a lot of confidence in British business, and the government wants to promote British business more and more.
This will be an amazing platform for British businesses to reach British customers.
In this building there is office space being made for us on the 3rd floor. We will soon being having goods coming in, and we have made partnerships with a number of delivery companies.
In Harrogate it will be a fulfilment centre, but sellers can ship products out themselves, and many do as they have very strict policies.
Onlineshop.co.uk has already signed some key brands to sell through their platform, but they are looking to work with more.
Managing Director, Terry McGinnis said:
Louis Vitton, many fashion brands, Philips are selling through us. But we do want to focus on British brands, and develop into a one-stop shop. In future the plans are also to move into food. So really if you want something, you can come to us.
It’s going well, a lot of people are loving it, people are buying products from us, but we want to get more businesses involved with us and to start employing people.
We don’t discriminate on the scale of the company, we would like to work with all. We have a boutique section on the website for companies that maybe only produce a few units a week.
During the pandemic, a lot of people lost their jobs, and turned hobbies into an income, and we want to help them.
Right now we are at the top of google and getting something like 11 million hits a month, that’s organically without any paid advertising – we are very happy with that!
