Blackburn-based wallpaper manufacturer Graham and Brown has invested £3 million in a distribution warehouse dedicated to support its online growth.
The new 80,000 sq ft facility, which includes RF scanning technology and palletised distribution, will fulfil the growing volume of orders placed via the websites of its retailer partners such as Debenhams, Littlewoods, B&Q, Homebase and John Lewis.
Located alongside its 200,000 sq ft manufacturing, international design and marketing centre, it will also enable the business to fulfil orders placed directly on its own online platform, predominantly from overseas markets. In the past three years the company, which has a £100 million turnover, has increased overseas sales by 50 per cent.
The new warehouse will give the company the capability to service over 2,000 SKUs of wallpaper, wall art, paint and kids decoration products and allows room to expand to 4,000 products– three times as many lines as its current fulfilment operation – making it the biggest online product range from any global manufacturer.
The facility will also enable the business to provide next day deliveries.
Ian Brown, head of CSR and logistics at Graham & Brown, said: “Like every other area of retail, customer purchasing behaviour in the wall decoration sector is changing, with a growing number of people shopping online.
“Whilst we’ve had the capacity to fulfil online orders for many years, this investment recognises the increasing role that ecommerce is playing for our retail partners in the UK. It means we can offer them an unrivalled breadth of range across their online channel, with a high speed fulfilment operation that delivers on their customers’ needs.”
