How Joseph Joseph is designing a next-generation approach to supply chain services

Delivering products to retailers in a timely fashion is always a challenge. Retailers are eager to avoid holding inventory and require their suppliers to deliver products to shorter lead times. That was true of houseware manufacturer Joseph Joseph.

Sacha Vaughan, Chief Supply Chain Officer at Joseph Joseph, joined the company in early 2025 and one of her priorities was to ensure the organization had a reliable third-party logistics provider in the UK.  While Vaughan was eager to ensure the business could deal with this challenge, she wanted to avoid the costs and complexities involved in managing logistics internally.

To find a new partner, Vaughan’s team completed a full tender process. The tender began in February 2025, and the end-to-end logistics service with XPO became operational in July. By partnering with XPO, Vaughan says Joseph Joseph ensures its resources are focused on its core activities:

I want to free up people's time to manage exceptional things, and not the housekeeping of systems or the data transfer between touchpoints in the supply chain. That process should be controlled through technology, and we should use people for the exceptional situations, rather than the day-to-day tasks.

Boosting customer service

Joseph Joseph ships stock to XPO Logistics’ third-party distribution center in Rugby, where the firm manages omnichannel fulfilment, warehousing, pre-retailing, and distribution services.

Houseware goods are stored securely in the Rugby facility. As orders from retailers and consumers arrive, Vaughan’s team passes information to XPO directly via Application Programming Interfaces (APIs). The logistics specialist ships products to retail customers and individual consumers who order from Joseph Joseph’s e-commerce site.

Any inventory move within the Rugby facility is picked up by Joseph Joseph’s SAP ERP system. The XPO team picks and packs the order in a manner that complies with the retailer’s requirements. Orders are shipped to the retailer in a one-hour window on a specific day, and the product dispatch notice triggers an invoice to the customer.

Vaughan says that XPO’s digitally enabled e-fulfilment hub in Rugby provides a flexible solution that can be tailored to Joseph Joseph’s demands. APIs and effective data links between Joseph Joseph’s head office in London and XPO’s facility means the partnership has already had an impact on customer service:

We’ve been able to extend our cut-off period and guarantee next-day delivery, which we couldn’t before. Now, because we have a 5pm cut-off time, we've been able to extend the time frame to our customers, which is helpful for customers who buy last-minute gifts.

Joseph Joseph now has a fulfilment solution that helps the company improve multi-channel experiences and provides a data-enabled platform to ensure the efficient and effective delivery of products to UK customers. According to Vaughn:

There are always service level agreements that focus on how quickly you react to certain things. But with XPO, it feels a little bit more like the spirit of the agreement rather than the letter of the agreement. A KPI is just a number. If something goes wrong, you still want the attention. It's the closest we can get to having the responsiveness of our own distribution center, but not the cost of our own.

Pulling strategic levers

Vaughan says transforming supply chain operations involves a significant shift. A crucial element of her organization’s successful transition to XPO Logistics has been a change management process with support from senior stakeholders:

We were able to sell the dream of what the relationship would do for our business. Of course, when you're doing that selling, it's all words, right? But the business believed in our approach. And the key thing is that the partnership has delivered on those promises very quickly, very visibly, and that success has built credibility.

When it comes to long-term plans for the partnership, Vaughan is eager to explore ways to extend the benefits across disparate elements of supply chain operations, such as transportation and other regional activities. She says the objective is to provide end-to-end visibility across the supply chain.

Vaughan’s advice for other digital and business leaders considering the implementation of this type of technology partnership in their supply chain processes is to develop a strong sense of core business activities. Understand where you want to focus your time, energy, and money as an organization and work with a trusted partner to turn the last mile of deliveries into a competitive advantage rather than a hindrance:

If something goes wrong, it's always the fault of the last step in the chain before it gets to the customer, and, therefore, supply chain and tech leaders can be dragged into that issue and spend all their time focusing on those concerns, rather than on the strategic levers that are going to grow and enhance the business. If you get the right partner, the supply chain process is invisible to everyone.

Vaughan says her aim of transforming Joseph Joseph’s supply chain activities must be set within the context of volatile macro-economic and geo-political conditions. She refers to key incidents, such as the pandemic, Brexit, and threats of tariff wars, that have created supply chain disruptions. While these disruptions bring challenges, the good news is that many boards now recognize they must take an interest in the supply chain:

The supply chain officers who are successful will have a commercial lens. Success is not about optimizing a supply chain systemically with technology for the sake of the process. It's about providing value to the customer.