Jack Betts

Profile

Operations leader with 15+ years in fulfilment, e-commerce and logistics. Most of that was running large automated fulfilment centres for ASOS (with XPO), Primark (with DHL) and House of Fraser. I was Senior Operations Manager at XPO on the ASOS contract, where the automated outbound ran on Dematic and Dürkopp systems, and later worked with TGW automation consulting for Urban Outfitters. For the last four years I've run end-to-end operations for Localised, a start-up cross-border merchant of record in the Peter Jones Investment Group. That covers payments, logistics and compliance for global brands selling into the UK, EU, US, Middle East and APAC.

I came up through large 3PL sites (ASOS with XPO, Primark with DHL) and then three high-growth start-ups (Cazoo, OOOOO, Localised). So I can run a 450-person P&L, and I can also build, or rebuild, the systems, processes and partner networks a scaling business needs.

I'm a systems thinker: I'd rather fix a process once than check its output every day. That's why automation runs through my whole career, from a labour-management tool I built in Excel and ASOS's fully automated outbound operation, to using AI today to analyse data, review contracts, write SOPs, and specify and test new tools.

Key achievements

• 3 peaksRecord-breaking peak volumes three years running as Senior Operations Manager at XPO on the ASOS contract.
• £15 → £4.50Average cost per customer contact at Localised, after I outsourced customer service in my first three months.
• 3m unitsMoved from the UK to ASOS's new Atlanta site in four months, set up end to end.
• 3.3×Cazoo deliveries in nine months (185 → 615 cars a week), with 9 → 19 hubs, 85 → 175 drivers and 96% on time.
• −95%Failed payment captures at Localised, from about £32k a year to £1.6k, by changing the process to capture payments earlier.
• RebuiltLocalised's operations after its move to the UK: old, broken platforms and processes turned into payments, logistics and compliance across 5 regions.
• 29 countriesA returns portal I specced and built with AI tools, reviewed and shipped by Localised's developers: live in 14 languages, with OMS sync and automatic DHL labels.

Experience

1. Head of Operations

   Localised · Cross-border merchant of record · Peter Jones Investment Group

   Oct 2022 – PresentHybrid, London

   I joined after the business had been through a restructure and moved its operations to the UK. The platforms and processes were there, but old and broken. I took on all post-purchase operations for global brands selling into the UK, EU, US, Middle East and APAC, and rebuilt them. I report to the executive team and run an in-house offshore ops team plus a network of carrier, payments and outsourced service partners.

   • Ops rebuilt after UK move
   • 5 regions
   • −95% failed payment captures
   • £15 → £4.50 per contact
   • Rebuilding the foundations: Rebuilt the roadmap, KPI reporting, OKRs and SOPs in my first six months. The KPIs — aged orders, click-to-deliver, exceptions, failed captures, refunds, service SLAs — became the function's daily management rhythm.
   • Payments: Own payment operations on Adyen, PayPal and Forter fraud screening: quarantine review, capture logic and chargebacks. Changed the process to capture payments earlier, removing points of failure: failed payment captures fell from about £32k a year to about £1.6k (around 95% less). Wrote the Shopify payments strategy across multiple territories, including local payment methods for Japan, Korea and the UAE.
   • Carrier network: Run hub and direct-ship models through SEKO, Asendia and DHL Express and eCommerce, fully DDP. Renegotiated US carrier rates for a 10% reduction, and led multi-carrier tariff benchmarking.
   • Cross-border models: Know the differences between merchant, seller, importer and exporter of record (MOR, SOR, IOR, EOR), the main import and export models, and the Incoterms behind them — and which fits a brand and a market.
   • AI in operations: Wrote the spec for a multi-brand returns portal and built it with AI coding tools (Lovable, Claude Code); Localised's developers reviewed the code and shipped it. Built in-house because off-the-shelf portals couldn't handle all the local currencies, payment methods and languages, and so clients could claim returned goods relief. Live in 29 countries and 14 languages, with live OMS lookup and sync, automatic DHL labels and online fee collection. Ran QA across every deploy (30 graded findings) and designed the permission model.
   • AI at work: Use Claude and Gemini daily for analysis, contract review, SOPs and exec papers, and have automated many routine tasks so I can run far more work in parallel.
   • Client launches: Own the operations workstream of the client activation playbook — a repeatable launch process for new brand storefronts — and design operating models for new propositions.
   • Customer service: Outsourced customer service in my first three months: selected, contracted and onboarded a multilingual partner (14 native-language agents) run against SLAs, taking the average cost per contact from about £15 to about £4.50 (around 70% less).

2. Head of E-Commerce Operations & Logistics

   OOOOO · Video Commerce Group · start-up

   Jan 2021 – Jun 2022Manchester / remote

   • Reported to the CEO
   • Marketplace + SaaS
   • 3PL decision-maker
   • Owned the marketplace in a live video-commerce app: onboarding and integrating brands including JD Sports, Boohoo, THG and Ann Summers, and prioritising platform UX and tech development.
   • Led marketplace growth and the roll-out of SaaS services to international clients QVC and B2W.
   • Built the UK e-commerce strategy, budgets and forecasts in line with investment rounds.
   • Ran the 3PL tender and was the decision-maker on appointing and managing the logistics provider.

3. Logistics Manager

   Cazoo · Start-up

   Mar 2020 – Jan 2021UK-wide

   • 185 → 615 cars a week
   • 85 → 175 drivers
   • 9 → 19 hubs
   • 96% on time
   • Scaled UK car home delivery through hypergrowth: drivers from 85 to 175, team leaders from 3 to 12, and 10 new delivery hubs opened (19 in total) in nine months.
   • Weekly volume grew from about 185 to 615 cars between March and November. Logistics-caused failures stayed under 1%, and around 96% of deliveries arrived inside the booked window.
   • Built the capacity plan that turned the weekly volume forecast into a hiring plan for each hub, and the daily delivery tracker that measured every delivery against a 98% target, by failure cause.
   • Led long-term logistics strategy and standardised processes across remote sites.
   • Built an 11-template employee-relations toolkit, negotiated the drug and alcohol testing contract, and rolled out new HR and logistics policies.

4. Site Operations Manager

   DHL Supply Chain · Primark contract

   Jul 2019 – Mar 2020Thrapston, Northamptonshire

   • 450 headcount
   • Open-book P&L
   • 193 stores
   • Ran one of Primark's UK distribution centres — 450 people — supplying all 193 UK and ROI stores.
   • Owned the open-book P&L, the client relationship and the contractual KPIs.

5. Senior Operations Manager / Duty Shift Manager

   XPO Logistics · ASOS contract

   Oct 2015 – Jul 2019Barnsley — 2.5m sq ft automated fulfilment centre

   • 2.5m sq ft
   • 6 shift managers
   • 25+ team leaders
   • Record peaks 3 years running
   • Led the automated outbound operation, running on Dematic and Dürkopp systems, through 6 shift managers and 25+ team leaders. Responsible for customer SLAs, peak planning, health and safety, and labour cost.
   • Peak: Delivered record-breaking peak volumes three years in a row.
   • UK → US: Set up and ran the end-to-end transfer of around 3 million units from Barnsley to ASOS's new site in Atlanta (Nov 2018 – Feb 2019): labour planning, budget modelling, legal requirements and start-up.
   • Built my own tool: As a shift manager, ran a time and motion study and built a performance model in Excel that scored every picker fairly for distance walked and pick difficulty, with leaderboards. Piloted on one shift, rolled out to all, KPIs improved — and XPO built it into a timed-performance platform in the OMS that paid the pick bonus.

6. Warehouse Team Manager and Team Leader

   Norbert Dentressangle · House of Fraser e-fulfilment

   2013 – 2015Milton Keynes

   • 353k units in 6 weeks
   • Promoted from team leader to team manager in April 2014.
   • Led the move of around 353,000 units between warehouses in six weeks to set up a new multi-site operation.

Earlier career

• Department Supervisor, Morrisons · 2008–2013

Side projects: built with AI

• Never Dakota: designed and built my band's full website with AI coding tools, including gig listings, a wedding and event booking flow with a date checker, a merch shop, a reviews system and the admin portals behind them.
• PJR Fire Design: a website for a friend's fire design business, built with AI coding tools.
• jackbetts.com: this site, specified by me and built with Claude Code.