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Oh boy (and girl), what a year 2021 has been. If there is one word that describes our year best, it is growth. Growth not only in the sense that revenues, the number of fulfilled orders, and other important business metrics grew. Oh no, there was much more that relates to growth. Most notably, our team grew and we can confidently say that every single one of our employees grew with the challenges they’ve faced.
You'll have to believe us when we say that we had an abundance of challenges this year. Be it added complexity due to COVID-19 measures, overheated international supply chains, or just managing and coordinating a team that has more than doubled within the last 12 months. And yes, we are extremely proud to look back at this year and say, that with dedication, creativity, flexibility, and enthusiasm, we did not only grow as a company, but more importantly, we grew as a team.
What happened at byrd in 2021?
Growth
At the beginning of summer 2021, we were extremely excited to announce our new Series B investment round of €16M, led by our new investor Mouro Capital, accompanied by Speedinvest, Verve Ventures, Rider Global, and VentureFriends. The pandemic was - and still is - hard for everyone. But what we’ve learned is that there is a huge need for flexible and digital e-commerce fulfillment solutions. With parcel volumes up 3x compared to 2020, and hundreds of thousands of parcels handled per month, we, at byrd, also needed to scale up in order to secure our position as the leading pan-European fulfillment platform for e-commerce.
In addition to recruiting additional talent for our team and improving our products and services - which we will talk about later - we have also worked on expanding our fulfillment network. What does that mean concretely?
- 10 new warehouses were added to our network to accelerate our international expansion
- 8 new carriers joined our partner network to provide our customers and their customers the best shipping condition and online shopping experience
Product achievements
To stay on top and continue to provide the best products and services on the market, constant improvements, updates, and background work are key. This is why our product team made some great progress this year to take the usability and performance of our all-in-one logistics software to the next level. Here is a quick summary of what we did:
- Returns portal: we have launched our own returns portal to help save valuable time and enable customers to initiate their returns via byrd's seamless self-service returns portal; available to our customers who are shipping from Germany and the UK.
- Shopify App: we have launched byrd app on the Shopify marketplace, so e-merchants that use Shopify can easily find us and seamlessly integrate their shop with byrd in just a few clicks.
- Shopware App: we have also launched byrd app on the Shopware app marketplace, enabling all Shopware users to easily find our scalable and fully digital fulfillment solution and connect their shops with just a few clicks.
- Address validation: by integrating the address validation feature into our Customer Dashboard, we made sure that your products always reach their destination.
- Last but not least, we also added tons of new features such as Amazon marketplaces, stock levels for product bundles, order data validation, and plenty of functional updates and bug fixes for our Customer Dashboard.
Team
As stated in our philosophy and values, we are team-oriented and to us, people matter more than anything. We care about those we work with and those we serve. Team comes first, everything else second. Going forward, stronger than ever, we will do our best to live up to these values also in the future.
Well, remember last year when we said we doubled the size of the company, going from 40 to almost 80 employees? Buckle up because we did it again! Our beloved Human Resources department once again did an amazing job to take us through this incredible milestone: 200 byrdies! HR, Sales, Product, Logistics, Customer Care, Account Management, Finance, Marketing, etc. each department at byrd added amazing new talent to an already incredible team. Our new joiners will help us grow and spread all around Europe in the next month (btw, if you want to be part of the adventure, you can check out our vacant positions here).
Expansion and big plans for the future also mean having a solid financial structure and someone that can impersonate that domain. This is why, right after summer, we were thrilled to welcome our new CFO, freshly coming from Paris, Chris Bourdeu. After several years of thriving in the French FinTech industry, Chris joined us to help us fulfill our potential as the number one e-commerce fulfillment platform in Europe.
Last but not least, in the last 5 years, byrd has truly grown up.… Yes, you heard it well, this year we also celebrated our 5th anniversary! For this occasion, the whole team bundled together in Berlin, where we celebrated our past achievements and brainstormed what is coming next. Wise words from our CEO Alex, a magic show from our beloved Director of Pricing and Procurement Michael, amazing venue, good food (and drinks) all united for one of the company's biggest highlights ever. We also literally welcomed new joiners on board (we celebrated on a boat) and, after what seemed like forever, our teams could all finally meet up in person.
Social responsibility
Generally speaking, rapid growth translates to business success and is an achievement worth celebrating. However, it can also have a "bad" connotation of putting progress over values, especially in the e-commerce industry where, in many cases, sales numbers are the most important KPI. At byrd, we don’t want to make compromises - we want to do both. This is why in 2021, we started and expanded various social responsibility activities with the aim to revolutionize in every way possible our environment and network.
In that matter, we have taken part in different projects:
- Launch of our Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion team which is working on 3 different levels to improve our hiring process and HR practices, educate and raise awareness in our company, and finally get us more involved within our environment
- Give back to mother nature by compensating for our and our customers’ carbon footprint. This is why we have, for the third consecutive year in a row, partnered with OneTreePlanted and took part in the reforestation efforts in Portugal by planting 1643 trees
- Support local communities: 2021 has also been a year during which inequalities and differences in terms of Human Rights conditions have been drastically exposed. This is why we also decided to support and help various communities by raising money for LGBTQ+ people in Afghanistan and joining forces with the Austrian Government to bolster the call for non-discriminatory practices when it comes to blood donations and LGBTQ+ groups
Growth, product achievements, team development, we were on all fronts. And we didn’t even talk about all the content we’ve created such as the Masterclass Series, our Cross-border e-book, or even the relaunch of our blog website. 2021 was a challenging year for all of us, but building a solid sustainable network and joining forces together makes 2022 full of promises and opportunities.
What to expect in 2022?
As you could read, calling 2021 exciting would be an understatement. And you know what, we’re nowhere near planning to slow down. We feel prepared for big challenges to come and we are confident that we can get better at supporting or taking over our customers in every step of the order fulfillment process.
To enable an even smoother process for cross-border fulfillment and international shipping, we will add additional warehouses and carrier partners in Italy, Spain, and a handful more countries in the East and North of Europe in 2022. This way, we combine the best of both worlds; we grow so that our customers can grow together with us, and we are not saying this just because it sounds good. After all, we are not entirely selfless in this respect. When our customers grow, we profit directly from it too.
If cross-border fulfillment is one of the major opportunities in terms of business development, B2B logistics and fulfillment has also proven to be a decisive factor for online retailers looking for growth potential across new channels, such as selling their products via retailers. This is why we have started and we will improve in 2022, the B2B fulfillment process to give merchants the opportunity to manage their whole logistics with just one tool and be in a position to not only ship directly to end customers, but also deliver inventory to retailers.
Going forward, byrd will also keep on focusing on adding experienced employees and new talent to our flock of byrdies, as well as pushing and supporting existing employees to become even better at what they do. At the same time, we will do whatever it takes to keep a positive, team-oriented, collaboration-based, and open-minded team. The open-arms mentality has always been a part of our culture and we’ll make sure that this doesn’t change.
It also goes without saying that we will make another step towards even greener and environmentally friendlier operations. We also commit to raising awareness of wrongdoings in our communities and we will, in 2022, stick to our values to commit to projects that are doing good for people.
With this being said, we want to say thank you to all of our great partners, our ambitious customers, and our awesome employees.
Here’s to overcoming challenges.
Here’s to building new relationships.
Here’s to whatever the new year brings.
Here’s to 2022!