Celebrating 10 years of resilience and growth since a fire completely destroyed our 50,000 sq. ft warehouse in 2014.
Ten years ago, an unexpected fire from a neighbouring business engulfed our 50,000 square foot warehouse, threatening to completely halt our operations. At 2am on 21st April 2014, one of the biggest blazes that Leeds had ever seen was quickly spreading to our warehouse and HQ. At this point, the office building wasn’t alight, allowing the Hazel team to pull together and salvage all they could, before the fire took hold.
Thanks to the remarkable work and fast response from the team, within 24 hours we were back up and running. Partnering with one of the UK’s leading logistics and transportation companies, we quickly had new warehouse facilities in place, allowing us to continue our operations. Our customers experienced no interruptions during this time, and we were able to streamline our operations and ensure they were well serviced. Rising resilient from the fire, our business didn’t just survive, but grew stronger. Our swift recovery from the fire mirrored our brand value of “Flawless Delivery”.
Embracing third-party logistics (3PL) warehousing was a move that led to a decade of success for Hazel 4D. By leveraging the expertise and infrastructure of specialised service providers, we were able to scale our operations with agility and efficiency. This approach allowed us to focus on core business activities, optimising our supply chain and providing exceptional service to our customers.
This partnership has provided us with unique insights from both sides of the equation; we’ve been serving as a significant customer of, and supplier to the 3PL sector. Having such a close relationship for this period of time in this format has been critical in gaining a true understanding of operational intricacies, communication preferences, and performance expectations. It has allowed us to tailor our service offering more effectively and develop our solutions to meet those requirements.
We now serve numerous big brands from multiple market sectors. Each brand often has unique requirements from product specifications to delivery timelines, which not only vary company-to-company, but also site-to-site. We’ve always been exceptionally proud of how our agility has allowed us to service so many varying needs. Moving forwards, we believe that we are even better placed to ensure each brand’s requirements are met efficiently and without disruption.
Our journey of growth is linked with that of our customers. As their needs have evolved, so too has our capacity to serve them. Adopting a customer-centric approach, we have continuously sought out ways to innovate and expand our products and solutions. Dedicated frictionless service and operational reliability we always go above and beyond to help them achieve success, this is what we call delivering the 4th dimension.
As we mark a decade since the fire, we’re embarking on a new chapter with the expansion to our warehouse at Velocity Point, Leeds. Our new facility is purpose built and in the perfect location to support both our UK and growing European distribution capabilities. This move marks a significant expansion and has been completed to ensure we can maintain our relentless commitment to personalised solutions for our customers.
As we reflect on the last 10 years, we’re extremely proud of how far we’ve come and the growth that we have achieved. It’s clear that the fire did not define us; rather our response did. The resilience and determination demonstrated by the Hazel 4D team in overcoming the challenges that we had to face, coupled with a decade of success through strategic partnerships and our customer-centric approach has led to where we are today and to an exciting future ahead.
