Tru Tension is a UK-based ecommerce business specializing in the development of high-quality tools and products for the motorcycle and bicycle markets. The company has evolved from manual processing to embracing automation with Linnworks.

We caught up with James Rogers, Business Operations Manager at Tru Tension, to find out more about their ecommerce journey — and the role Linnworks has played in it. 

Life before Linnworks: Manual processes and growing pains

“I’ve been with the business for five years now and we’ve just gone from strength to strength in terms of expanding our SKU count, our customer order rate,” explains Rogers. He continues, “[Before Linnworks] everything we did, from managing inventory and our space, we were processing everything manually from the start.”

Team capacity was limiting growth

As Tru Tension continued to grow, this soon became unmanageable. Rogers describes, “I think we were at our maximum capacity for a member of staff to produce 100 postage labels a day and that was it. And that was sitting at their desk 9 to 5, with a 30 minute break. It just wasn’t sustainable to do it like that anymore. As you can imagine, we did 10,000 orders in March this year alone — so you can see just how unsustainable that would have been if we were doing it manually.” 

“[Before Linnworks] everything we did, from managing inventory and our space, we were processing everything manually from the start.”

International shipping complexity 

With continued growth came complexity for Tru Tension’s operations — especially when it comes to shipping. Rogers explains, “It also started getting very complicated because certain products go through certain postage providers, so we ship to the USA, we ship internationally, we ship domestically through three or four different couriers as well as into Europe with three or four different couriers. It gets quite messy for people to remember shipping rules.” 

Unscalable inventory management

“We were running our inventory management off of a spreadsheet — which was designed to knock off SKUs every time we would dispatch,” Rogers highlights. He continues, “So we would sum up a day and go “we’ve done 25 of X, 25 of Y”, and it would work out our stock levels.” 

Rogers soon recognised the shortcomings of Tru Tension’s inventory management processes. He explains, “This way of working is fine if you’re in a five by five meter warehouse. But we’ve got thousands of square feet of warehousing now, and it wouldn’t have been sustainable to keep going like that. So that’s why we’re looking for a solution to help automate and build efficiency into our processes.”

Rogers decided to implement Linnworks to unlock greater growth for Tru Tension — and overcome the pains of growing. 

Saving time and money thanks to Linnworks 

The decision to implement Linnworks was rooted in the need for greater scalability and efficiency for a range of processes, and our solution didn’t disappoint. Rogers comments, “I’m a massive advocate. I really like Linnworks. I recommend it regularly.” He continues, “The shipping rules, the automation of it, was a really big appeal from my side — as the person who had to arrange everything. It managed all the shipping roles, so that’s really good.” 

Linnworks has helped unlock growth for Tru Tension — and save precious resources along the way. Rogers confirms this, commenting, “We’re averaging 500 orders a day. One person can process 100 orders at a time. So, thanks to Linnworks, I’m saving three people’s worth of employment — if not more. An average of say $20,000 pounds a year. I’m also saving money by making sure the rules are right at the time. I’m probably saving £100,000+ a year.” 

“The shipping rules, the automation of it, was a really big appeal from my side — as the person who had to arrange everything. It managed all the shipping roles, so that’s really good.” 

“At the end of the day, it all comes down to the bottom line,” Rogers explains. He continues, “If by spending several thousand pounds a year on a software means I can save tens of thousands of pounds in staffing, job done. We’re definitely getting a positive ROI, 100%.” 

Rogers concludes, “And I might only be using Linnworks to 50 percent of its capacity. There’s so many features that I haven’t got a clue what some of them do. I need to read up on them a lot more!” 

If you’d like to learn how Linnworks can help your ecommerce business to scale profitably, book a free demo today.