Meet Petra Dobrocka, Founder & CCO at E-Fulfillment Company: byrd

Petra Dobrocka

byrd is a tech-driven third-party logistics and fulfillment company that provides scalable fulfillment services for e-commerce businesses and fast-growing d2c (direct-to-consumer) brands. By using its cloud-based fulfillment software, retailers can access byrd’s diverse international fulfillment network, enabling them to unlock expedited shipping for their customers and efficiently grow their business.

byrd is Europe’s only fulfillment provider that allows retailers to manage and improve their e-commerce logistics with one single tool across multiple warehouses. This is achieved through the seamless interconnectivity of all warehouses in the network, giving the customers the possibility to implement smart rules that define which orders or products should be dispatched from which warehouse location. As a result, merchants can improve delivery speed, reduce logistics costs and ameliorate product availability.
 
 
File:Byrd technologies.png - Wikimedia Commons
 

How did you come up with the idea for the company?

 
Alex Leichter, CEO & founder of byrd, had the initial idea of making e-commerce logistics more accessible to retailers when he was studying and earning money as an ebay power seller. His biggest pain point was always the shipping process of the products he sold online and had to be delivered to the buyer, so he decided to start working on a logistics solution for e-commerce businesses.

When byrd started servicing the first customers in Austria, the team soon realised that most e-commerce companies that were growing quickly would benefit from warehouse locations in other international markets as well. For Austrian shops the first obvious international market was Germany and shipping from Austria was more than double the price of national shipping within Germany. This pushed the team to set up its first warehouse in Germany, a major step on our exciting growth story.
 

 

How has the company evolved during the pandemic?

 
When the pandemic hit, we saw a tremendous rise in the number of requests for fulfillment services from retailers adapting to online sales and looking for a solution to deliver the products to their customers. In fact, we had an increase in demand of +400% YoY in Q2 2020.

COVID-19 has shown how important it is to have a diversified, flexible and resilient supply chain. The closure of borders, increased online demand and COVID-related regulations had a big impact on operational efficiency for many businesses. Thanks to our warehouse network, we could allocate the inventory across multiple warehouses, thereby avoiding costly delays for our customers. Whenever certain parcel delivery providers experienced bottle-necks in their supply chain we were also able to easily switch between couriers maintaining a smoother fulfillment process.
 

What can we hope to see from byrd in the future?

We’ve got an exceptional team and a fantastic product that brands love, so we’re setting our sights high – byrd’s goal is to build the leading e-commerce fulfillment platform in Europe and to facilitate scalable e-commerce fulfillment for fast-growing companies.

We’re determined to do this in what we feel is the right way, which means that as well as giving our customers a totally transparent, zero-hassle experience, we want to be a pioneer when it comes to sustainable fulfillment solutions. We want to go beyond reducing and offsetting our activities, but also by providing a wide range of sustainable packaging and shipping solutions.