Inc. magazine published an interview with highly regarded e-commerce entrepreneur and Petflow founder, Alex Zhardanvosky, in which he discusses their 9 Key Principals.   We thought we’d share his thoughts on logistics, a focus on the customer, and the importance of being able to scale for growth..

Petflow's 9 Key Principles:

Never try to act “big"

“New” doesn’t have to mean “complicated"

What others do is irrelevant

Stick to your core competency

Take over when you have to

We started out using a third-party logistics (3PL) provider to handle fulfillment. The problem is that once you reach a certain growth rate it’s tough for a 3PL to grow with you. When our 3PL started to struggle—missing ship dates, shipping orders incorrectly, shipping to wrong addresses, etc.—we knew we were in trouble, because from a business owner’s standpoint there are only two things that matter: How many customers you have and how long you keep them.

So we stopped advertising in June, leased our own facilities, and jumped headfirst into warehousing and logistics, even though it’s something we knew nothing about. We thought we could use others to handle critical tasks but we were wrong.
As daunting it seemed, we got really smart people to help us. We found the best in breed software, found a staffing agency to help us hire great people, and already we’re more efficient than our 3PL had been.
Our business is highly dependent on scale and growth, and it’s really important that we deliver consistently... so core competency or not, we had to take over.

Delegate—and then delegate some more

Don’t micromanage

Find what matters and then excel

Let your customers drive your business

If you would like to read the full article, please click here.

Also, If you would like to know more about the system that is helping Petflow to succeed, please click here