January 2001

From hard times a few years ago, McIntyre & King has bounced back with a comprehensive range of fulfilment resources ­ all under one roof. Peter Rowlands gets a guided tour from executive chairman Bob Bischof

Some premises feel special even before you put a foot inside the door. McIntyre & King's head office is definitely one of them.

The converted warehouse building on Liverpool's busy Sefton Street has been fondly restored, and from the outside it looks as though it might just as easily be a restaurant complex as a fulfilment centre. And when you reach the second-floor reception area, you find the softly-lit exposed brick walls are adorned with turn-of-the-century timber notice boards reclaimed from the old docks ­ imprecations to warehousemen to keep the place tidy (some things, it seems, never change).

Further inside, the high-ceilinged call centre also has exposed brick walls under a pitched timber roof. Again, the air of informality and warmth is faintly reminiscent of a themed pub or restaurant ­ although the subdued hubbub of many telephone conversations shows that it is equally conducive to some pretty focused work.

Less immediately evident is the remarkable fact that this single building hosts not only the customer-facing components of the company's fulfilment service, but also the physical warehousing and despatch functions. Other contractors aspire to offering a one-stop shop service; this operation seems to be the living embodiment of it. All of which must be a matter of some pride for McIntyre & King, which back in the mid-1990s was in financial difficulty. It was founded in 1966, and had majored on classic mail-order fulfilment work. But the market was in decline, and extinction seemed to be looming.

Enter Bob Bischof, a German by origin who has made a home for himself in Britain for many years. For much of his earlier career he was associated with fork-lift truck manufacturer Jungheinrich, becoming non-executive chairman of its UK subsidiary in 1991. He also succeeded in becoming something of a celebrity, both in the UK and in his home country, and has advised successive governments in both countries on business affairs. He left Jungheinrich in 1996, but was ready for new challenges, and the following year he bought into McIntyre & King, of which he is now executive chairman. Under his guidance it has experienced a remarkable revival, and is emerging as a prime contender for the e-fulfilment market.

Not that Bischof has prompted any drastic change of direction for the company. But its services have been subtly enhanced and redirected to offer a comprehensive package for the new e-economy. For perhaps the best evidence of this, have a look at the company's attractive Web site, which now includes a demonstration of an interactive e-shop. The company doesn't actually want to sell to anybody direct; but it has set its stall out to attract e-tailers looking for a complete, hosted solution on online retailing.

However, that's the high-tech end of its services. In general, what McIntyre & King seems to have discovered, along with the big catalogue retailers themselves, is that success in these new markets is really a question of transferring existing skills to a new environment, not starting again from scratch.

Hence the company still handles customer services and fulfilment for many mail-order companies. "But we've concentrated on the smaller catalogues," Bischof says. "That sector is growing, whereas the bigger one is dying." Typical customers include French Connection, Healthy Living and House of Bath.

Interestingly, the customer list also includes big catalogue retailers such as GUS, N Brown and Littlewoods; but the company's work for these organisations is focused on specific services and product ranges, not fulfilment on a giant scale.

McIntyre & King can handle everything from inbound customer order-taking to transaction processing, warehousing, stock control, packing, labelling, despatch and returns management. Many of the physical functions are carried out in the warehouse space beneath the call centre and offices, and the company also has a substantial 10,000 sq m warehouse for bulk storage on the same site.

More recently, McIntyre has also been building up its outbound call-centre capability, and now offers telemarketing as one of its key services. It is using the latest predictive dialling techniques and multi-layer scripting to make its staff as adaptable as possible to varying customer responses.

Bob Bischof is clearly a strong believer in the benefits of being able to offer a comprehensive service to clients. "The logistics part of our offering is essential," he says. "You can only provide sensible replies to consumer enquiries if you've got an integrated tracking capability." He says this applies particularly to handling returns, "which are very much a part of daily life in this business."

He feels that fulfilment issues are similar, whether the channel to market is traditional catalogues or modern media such as the Internet or WAP telephones. "The processes are basically the same," he says. "The returns management is the same." Indeed, he says his company is actively encouraging customers to move to multi-channel selling, which he sees as a more reliable bet than sticking to a modern, single channel to market. "Whatever the route, we have the capability to handle it."

As an example of this approach, in the past year the company has taken pains to equip itself to handle online ordering over WAP telephones. It can already provide WAP access to retail Web sites, although it is advising customers that there are still security issues connected with WAP-based credit-card transactions. But as new encryption standards come in, the company is determined to be ahead of the game in adopting them. Ironically, WAP technology has not taken off as quickly as predicted, but Bob Bischof is philosophical. Looking at the e-commerce market as a whole, he says: "I feel it has been over-hyped, then under-hyped. " He concludes: "I hope the e-commerce business will grow in spite of recent setbacks ­ in fact I believe it will. But expansion will be at a lower rate than was predicted a year or two ago.

One way McIntyre & King aims to help customers is by offering them facilities to monitor and evaluate market trends. Its database handling resource now represents a whole division in its own right. "Businesses need to know who is buying from them, and with mail order it is not always easy," Bischof says. "Knowledge can be a powerful weapon." As an example, he cites the instance where a catalogue retailer might reduce the print run on a catalogue simply by distributing it only to customers who are known to be likely targets.

The company's database services now include pre-campaign analysis and processing; address cleaning, validating and de-duplicating; format conversion; and response management. A separate operation also handles direct mailing campaigns.

Recently McIntyre & King has been transferring its focus to international markets ­ partly in recognition of the fact that e-commerce inevitably crosses borders. Bischof's aim is to establish a continental base from which to handle fulfilment locally. "You might be able to fulfil small orders to foreign customers from Britain, but if you want to do it on a large scale, you have to have a presence on the ground in your target market."

As an example, he cites the German market, where cash on delivery is the norm, and some buyers expect to pay on invoice two weeks after delivery. "You can't manage that from Britain. You need to handle payment and returns processing locally." When e.logistics Magazine visited the company it was in talks with a business it planned to acquire in Basle, Switzerland. "From there we can handle three countries," Bischof says ­ "Switzerland itself, plus Austria and Germany." Alicante in Spain represents a second key location for the company.

Bischof aims to build up this international capability gradually. "Initially we'll just do the returns and payment processing over there. Later we'll pick and pack in Britain, despatch in bulk and distribute locally. Eventually we'll actually ship in bulk and do the rest over there."

Several customers on the horizon seem likely to support this expansion, including the American-based Hosiery International Corporation, for which McIntyre & King is handling direct mail of the Silkies tights range.

One field which Bischof considers fundamental to success in fulfilment for these emerging markets is information technology. During the past 18 months the company has spent more than £1 million on the EuroMACS software system, which is one of the market-leading suites in the field of direct sales automation. It is based on the MACS (Mail order And Cataloging System) from Florida-based developer Smith-Gardner, which has just changed its name to Ecometry.

EuroMACS handles a wide range of interactive front-end ordering, transaction processing and payment functions, integrating with a warehouse management module. It links with McIntyre & King's bespoke AS/400-based system. McIntyre also runs two other systems for specific customers, and interfaces with an Inland Revenue computer for work it handles for that organisation.

Where does the company go from here? Bischof sees steady growth in both conventional catalogue markets and emerging markets such as WAP phones and interactive television. He says he is prepared to be flexible about how to handle such expansion. "We might partner with a third-party logistics company to offer services that include last-mile fulfilment," he says. "We've already been approached by some of them."

Alternatively, he says the company might outsource some of the logistics functions ­ especially if its on-site warehousing facilities reach capacity.

McIntyre & King has grown rapidly in the past three years, increasing its headcount from 400 in 1997-8 to nearly 1,000 now. Its current turnover is £17 million.

Key product areas are home shopping for catalogue and e-commerce companies, including transaction processing and same-day despatch; fulfilment; direct mail; database management; and telemarketing.

Apart from those mentioned in the main article, customers include Argos, Computershare, Everton Football Club, Janbo Trading (a long-standing client), Media Ventures, PDSA, Radio Times, Sky Magazine and Staples.

The company has a 200-seat call centre and a 300-seat multilingual telemarketing centre at its Liverpool headquarters. It says it can handle 40,000 incoming calls a day, shipping 30,000 parcels and processing 35,000 coupons.

Most functions are handled on site at Liverpool, although the company has a separate data processing operation at Salford, Greater Manchester. Deliveries are handled by external carriers such as White Arrow (now Reality).

Executive chairman Bob Bischof has written and broadcast extensively, both in Britain and in his native Germany, and in 1998 was presented with Germany's Federal Order of Merit for his contribution to Anglo-German relations.