Doddle is now part of Blue Yonder
Our mission to be the best first- and last-mile technology partner in ecommerce takes a new step, as part of the global supply chain technology leader.
Blue Yonder CEO, Duncan Angrove“Doddle’s differentiated solution to logistics and reverse logistics challenges is the perfect complement to Blue Yonder’s existing suite of services. With our expanded offerings, including Doddle’s self-service kiosks and pick-up, drop-off (PUDO) networks, we are able to offer retailers and logistics providers enhanced growth potential and superior experiences for their own customers.”
FAQs
What’s Blue Yonder?
Blue Yonder supports some of the biggest companies in the world as they modernize their supply chain and commerce operations using the cloud, artificial intelligence, and machine learning.Blue Yonder’s supply chain solutions orchestrate and optimize inventory, orders, logistics, fulfillment, and resources from end-to-end in real-time while creating amazing consumer experiences.
What’s Doddle?
Doddle is a London-based technology business specialising in the first and final mile of ecommerce – delivery and returns. Founded by Tim Robinson and Sir Lloyd Dorfman in 2014, the business has had major retail and logistics partnerships from its infancy, and has developed market-leading technology to enable more profitable and sustainable ecommerce deliveries and returns.
Why is Blue Yonder acquiring Doddle?
Blue Yonder is acquiring Doddle to enhance their first and last mile capabilities, particularly in regard to returns management. With Doddle’s technology and expertise, Blue Yonder will be able to offer a complete end-to-end returns management system (RMS) alongside its existing Order Management, Transport Management and Warehouse Management solutions.
Doddle Founder and CEO, Tim RobinsonFor Sir Lloyd and the business it wasn’t just about exiting, but how we exited and where we exited to, and what that would mean for the business and its people. In short it was important to find the right buyer. Blue Yonder were firmly top of my list. Despite the fact that they have been established for over 40 years they are still growing with turnover up year on year. They’re working at the scale you need to be, in order to make a big difference in logistics and supply chain.
Our journey – an interview with Doddle CEO, Tim Robinson
Doddle started up over 10 years ago – can you talk us though its journey from start up to acquisition?
While the business has evolved over the past 10 years, Doddle has always had the same mission: to make e-commerce seamless, sustainable and profitable through a better first and last mile. We started life as a joint venture with Network Rail to tackle the inefficiencies in home delivery with the UK’s first tech-enabled pick-up, drop-off (PUDO) network. Our strategy was to have parcel collection shops at railway stations. We then branched out from the railways into high streets and handled millions of parcels for Britain’s biggest retailers through our network. Customer experience and digital technology was at the heart of our offering and over time we decided that our core value was empowering carriers and retailers through this technology.
Q: Why do you think Doddle was such a good fit?
Blue Yonder is on a mission to build the “supply chain operating system for the world” and we clearly fit well into that as we strive to be “the most sought-after delivery partner in e-commerce”. Prior to this acquisition Blue Yonder had some product gaps where it came to returns management and final-mile delivery. With Doddle, they fill those gaps and are able to close the loop on being able to manage the full lifecycle of an online order. No-one else has that broad capability at scale. And as is often the case, timing was a factor. The issue of returns is fast reaching a crunch point for both retailers and carriers. It’s a hot space at the moment as currently, for every US$1bn in sales, retailers incur US$165m in returns.
Q: What has been the response from your customers?
We already share several clients with Blue Yonder and are selling to many of the same businesses. The response from our clients has been really positive, particularly once they have been reassured that they will be dealing with the same people. In reality, all of our clients took a bit of a punt on us – particularly in the early days when we were small and unproven. What we do is very prominent and public facing with consumers interacting with our software at checkouts and on the returns pages of over 1,000 web stores. The new backing from Blue Yonder kind of validates their earlier decision and provides an extra layer of reassurance around our long-term viability, ambition and capability.
20M+
Transactions processed
1000+
Merchant sites
93%
Customer satisfaction