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In 1981, Hermes started working for one of its most loyal third-party customers, the Hanseatische Wein & Sekt Kontor Hawesko. From the outset, its sensitive goods (wine and sparkling wine) required different processes to textiles or furniture, for example.

The constantly low damage rate of around 0.5% proves, however, that Hermes knows what it’s doing as a transporter of champagne and the like. Hermes has in the meantime even introduced various innovations in this sector. For example, in cooperation with packaging experts, it has developed cardboard packaging which is every bit as secure as it is cheap. Bottles – the boxes can hold between three and eighteen of them in multiples of three – are separated using paperboard, cotton grass or polystyrene. The handling of the goods has also long been tailored to the fragile goods in question. Special conveyer belts are used at reduced speed, complex anti-collision functions prevent the goods from colliding with heavy packages, and the space between the different packages is automatically increased as soon as an item categorised as “soft” has entered the overall system.

Up to 1980, Hermes had delivered packages on working days from Tuesday to Saturday. Since fewer and fewer professions were working on Saturday and the ordering conduct of customers had changed, the company decided to adapt its delivery days. From 1980, deliveries started to be made from Monday to Friday.

At the same time, however, a separate Saturday shift was introduced in order to maintain the level of service and indeed increase it.

The “bunch of flowers campaign” has gone down in the company’s annals: On the initiative of Hermes staff, the OTTO mail order company distributed a fresh bunch of flowers to its regular customers through the company in order to say sorry for problems that had occurred in processing orders during the Easter rush.

This shows in detail what a logistics company is required to do because every day depot managers went to the local flower shop to buy the requisite number of bunches which they then gave to their customer assistants to be delivered on their rounds. Ever more consignments, ever more depots, ever faster delivery – up to the 1980s, Hermes grew above all in spatial and quantitative terms. Although customer satisfaction was the company’s fundamental driving force, the subject of better service took centre stage in 1985. Ideas were developed at meetings but were implemented through training. A series of new services included, for example, the fact that from 1986 Hermes started to deliver postal consignments such as catalogues in order to offer OTTO customers “everything from a single source”. In the same year, the handling of valuable consignments was introduced, as was a service for holidaymakers: consignments would, at the customer’s request, be stored by Hermes at the depot until they returned from their travels. Not all innovations got past the test phase. The idea of welcoming new customers by offering a piccolo bottle of sparkling wine (together with an advertising flyer) when customer assistants delivered their first order was quickly shelved. The official reason: it was too expensive.

Cool not dull: from 1988, Hermes introduced new gear. The existing outfit worn by customer assistants – often a blue lab-coat-like garment such as worn by electricians – was replaced by a more fashionable company-specific collection of summer shirts, bomber jackets and winter jackets in order to guarantee a more uniform and friendly image.

The vehicle fleet was also upgraded. In 1988, Hermes started using a total of five thousand leased vehicles and its fleet now included 1,200 Ford Transit vans and Mercedes Benz 207 Ds.