Thu 16 Apr — The Midlands is building for 24-hour delivery. Are you?

Primary Audience: West Midlands DTC founder

Summary: Big brands build shiny new distribution centres to hit 24-hour delivery. Most founders try to do the same thing with the same processes they used at 50 orders a day. The gap isn’t your courier. It’s your cut-offs, stock accuracy, and returns flow.

Suggested Posting Day: Thursday (practical)

The Midlands is building for 24-hour delivery.

Are you?

I saw a piece this week about Sonas Bathrooms opening a 60,000 sq ft distribution centre in Redditch, West Midlands, aiming for targeted 24-hour delivery times.

Good for them.

But here’s the bit founders miss: you don’t need 60,000 sq ft to deliver like a grown-up.

You need grown-up habits.

Mini example: a Birmingham DTC brand I’ve worked with kept promising “next day” because competitors did. Their warehouse was fine. The problem was upstream.

No real cut-off time.

Stock that wasn’t accurate until the end of the week.

Returns that sat in a cage for 10 days, so bestsellers looked “out of stock” online when they were actually on site.

So the courier got blamed. Every time.

Practical takeaway: if you want 24-hour delivery to be reliable, pick three numbers and run your operation around them:

If you can’t measure those, you can’t promise next day without gambling.

Which one would improve your customer experience fastest right now: an earlier cut-off, better stock accuracy, or quicker returns processing?

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