Lorrene Jalina about the Ikea order

Here’s the interview that was held with Lorrene:

Which order is it?
The project involved the end customer IKEA Deutschland GmbH and a prospect customer PBS Deutschland GmbH (#11879).
The customer, IKEA, asked for employee gifts with a budget of €40. The number of employees in Germany was 23,000.
The items were unprinted an had to be delivered before Christmas.

Has there ever been such a big order before? (Or what was the biggest before?)
I think this was the largest order in history. The total turnover of this order is € 535,254.00 in one order.

How did the selection of the articles come about?
The end customer always offers his employees gifts in 5 different categories and I have made a selection for all 5 categories. In the end they chose 3 of the items I offered to them.

I did offer a variety of items from our own stock and external items.
Box 1: Combination of a fleece blanket from Giving + a Sound box from Fresh ‘N Rebel.

Box 2: Combination of Solar Powerbank + Jute bag from Giving and a backpack from PBS.

Box 3: Combination of Bamboo Cutting board with a knife + spice grinder and oil & vinegar set.

Why did the customer choose us?
We offered better options for the money and we offered full checkout service!

What did Sales have to do to make the order possible?
As a first step we chose the articles. In addition, Sales had to work with Logistics, Purchasing, IT and Finance to ensure we could handle this large order.

Who helped us get this order?
Before I made a quote, I discussed this request with Arno to look at the possibilities. He allowed me to examine the items and then I worked with purchase to get the items from the suppliers.

Finance helped with the financial request and the limits of the customers to fulfill the payment terms.

Logistics focused on organizing the boxes, handling the products in the boxes and getting the best transportation in our advantages to deliver the goods to Germany.

How was/is winning the order celebrated?
It was of course a big surprise, combined with happiness and of course relief that after all the effort we put in there we succeeded. But it was also scary because with such an amount it also means a great responsibility to handle such a request properly.

Anything else to say?
I think with this order we opened a door to new opportunities for Sales in getting and also how we can win these orders for Giving. Whenever we have this kind of request, we call it a project and we can handle these requests with more focus and also make other departments aware of it. That helps a lot in the process.