iForce, one of the UK's leading e-fulfilment and returns logistics businesses, offering end-toend solutions to their clients' business challenges, has announced another highly successful year, continuing its strong growth path as the company continues to lead the way in providing online retail fulfilment (known as e-fulfilment) and returns processing for its clients. It also provides encouraging news for the high street because of the 6.2 million orders despatched by iForce throughout 2011 (a 4 per cent increase on 2010), some 2 million were 'collect from store' orders - that's 38 per cent higher than last year, indicating that online retail can also increase footfall in the high street store.

"This year saw increased emphasis and focus on stock availability and customer convenience as can be seen from the 38% increase in collect from store orders being handled," said Mark Hewitt, CEO of iForce. During the Christmas peak's busiest week (the week beginning Monday 14 December 2011), iForce despatched 317,000 orders (a 4 per cent increase on 2010), which comprised 1.1 million items.

The busiest day of the entire Christmas peak period (1 October to 31 December) was actually Boxing Day, unlike 2010 when 7 December saw the most online shopping activity. "The fact that more orders were received on Boxing Day than any other day in the year shows that people are looking and waiting for what they see as a keen offer or real bargain," reports Mark Hewitt. "In relation to Christmas trading, peak activity came later than in 2010 and when it arrived it was bigger and more challenging over a shorter period. Some of our facilities saw a tenfold increase in activities when compared to outside-peak levels," he added.