How the Veeqo API took ADDIS Housewares from 1K to 10K orders a day
4 min
- Horia Hirica
The ever-looming question about scalability: Where should a business look when they want to scale fulfilment and increase their sales? ADDIS Housewares answered it with one free API that enabled Amazon Prime, turning faster delivery and higher visibility into a 60% sales uplift.
The seller
ADDIS Housewares is a British heritage brand, selling kitchen and home products across major UK retailers like Tesco, Sainsbury's, and Dunelm. When COVID-19 drove a surge in B2C Amazon orders, IT Manager Jeremy Price knew their systems had to evolve fast.
"Once all these orders started coming through, we had to try and come up with a way of being able to process them quicker." — Jeremy Price, IT Manager, ADDIS Housewares
Challenges before the Veeqo API
As Amazon orders ramped up, ADDIS Housewares tried every fix they could find. They started by manually printing orders from Seller Central (SC) and walking them to the warehouse floor. Then they built a basic program to generate pick lists sorted by product type. Finally, they built their own integrations with the Selling Partner API (SP-API) and direct carrier APIs from Evri and DPD to automate label generation.
It worked, but only to a point. Their third-party automation couldn’t handle more than 1K orders a day.
"We could do about 1K orders a day, and you just couldn't see how it could do any more. I'd be up in the middle of the night thinking the thing's not going to run for ... the morning."
The limitations weren't just technical. Their automation relied on a third-party system costing up to £15K per year in licensing and maintenance, with upcoming SP-API charges of £1.4K+ annually on top. And every additional API call added to the bill.
Then there was the question of Seller Fulfilled Prime (SFP). Without the Amazon Prime badge, ADDIS Housewares risked falling behind competitors, but Jeremy couldn't see a way to get there. Their system wasn't scalable or reliable, and had no headroom for the volume increase SFP would bring.
"The first thing that hit me was: This has to be scalable. It has to be easy to fix."
With scalability and cost in mind, Jeremy started looking for a new system.
Discovering and testing the Veeqo API
Jeremy had already spotted Veeqo on Seller Central (SC). As Amazon's free shipping software, Veeqo felt like the natural choice for a business gearing up for Amazon Prime. The Veeqo API could sync orders directly into their Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system, automating fulfilment without disrupting the workflows ADDIS Housewares had already built.
So with their existing system no longer fit for purpose, he enquired about the Veeqo API for enterprise shipping, and within 2 days a sales representative was in touch with them to get started.
Once they felt ready to transition, the team connected the Veeqo API directly into their ERP system. Orders now flow in every 30 minutes, labels generate automatically, and pick lists print in product zone order, ready for the warehouse floor.
The results
The Veeqo API didn't just solve one problem. It wrapped protection around the entire business.
Naturally cautious after his experience with their previous setup, Jeremy wanted to see the integration perform under pressure before going live. He tested across multiple shipping scenarios, and nothing broke. Labels were accurate, error handling was solid, and the system ran without a hitch.
The results speak for themselves:
10X order capacity: From 1K orders per day to 10K, with architecture in place to scale even further.
£15K+ in annual savings: Eliminated third-party automation licensing and maintenance costs and avoided £1.4K per year in upcoming SP-API fees.
60% sales increase: Within 1 month of going live on Amazon Prime, ADDIS Housewares had 50% of their catalogue listed and saw a 60% sales uplift on those products.
Near-zero error rates: Dropped to approximately 1 in 1K orders, with built-in retry logic and access to the whole Veeqo software as a manual backup.
Simpler development: The company’s developer found the Veeqo API "so much easier to work with" than the Selling Partner API.
What’s next
For ADDIS Housewares, scaling into new channels no longer means rebuilding their tech stack from scratch. They plan to integrate eBay and other channels through the Veeqo API, centralising inventory across every sales channel from one place.
‘Before, we could only do 1K orders at best. Now, with the Veeqo API, we can do up to 10K orders a day. We have the scalability we need.‘
Because Veeqo’s API allows third-party applications to manage account data, they can connect new sales channels, accounting tools, and warehouse software as they grow, without outgrowing their infrastructure. And the Veeqo software sits behind it all as a manual fallback. If anything needs attention, there's a visual interface to catch it. It's a safety net ADDIS Housewares never had before.
With half their catalogue already on Amazon Prime and savings being reinvested in the business, ADDIS Housewares are steadily converting the rest of their range.
For a 246-year-old business, the future is powered by an API that took just 1 month to implement.
Want to see what the Veeqo API can do for your business?
Scale faster at zero extra cost with Amazon's free shipping software.
