Handle with care: How Harry & Kit protects its reputation in transit

The photo showed the parcel had been delivered to the front door. The customer just didn’t recognise the door.

A first-time customer had ordered from regional homewares and furniture retailer Harry & Kit, and their parcel hadn't arrived. Founder Lillie Holcombe's team jumped on it straight away, contacting the courier and passing on the delivery confirmation photo to the customer.

The customer's reply was immediate: “That isn't my address. That is not my door.”

While Harry & Kit worked through the carrier's claims process, the customer left a one-star review, and rallied friends to comment on it too. “It really did feel personal,” Lillie says. “As a small business, I think so many other business owners can relate to that. It does feel like a personal attack on you.”

The order was eventually refunded, and the shipping reimbursed. But the damage, Lillie says, had already been done.

It's exactly the kind of scenario that prompted Harry & Kit to bring us on board, and exactly the kind of scenario Parcel Protect was built to help prevent.

Key takeaways

Delivery problems often hit differently for small businesses. For independent retailers, a single bad experience can do lasting damage to hard-won customer relationships.
Regional logistics can add risk at every step. Shipping fragile, one-of-a-kind pieces across long distances, with limited courier options and no room for error on packaging, means every order carries real exposure. Harry & Kit had to get smart about balancing cost, reliability and safety, with no margin for mistakes.
Time is the ‘hidden’ cost of delivery issues. For Lillie and her team, the refund was never the real problem. Chasing couriers and managing upset customers pulled the team away from running the business. Parcel Protect helped give them that time back.

Far from home

What started in a tin shed in regional Queensland is now a destination retail brand. Harry & Kit has been operating for seven years, with brick-and-mortar stores in Goondiwindi and Toowoomba and a fast-growing online presence. The business curates one-of-a-kind furniture, homewares, fashion and jewellery sourced by Lillie from artisans around the world.

“I find unique antique pieces from all different countries, and I get to bring them back to Australia and offer something that's not really available anywhere else,” she says. “To see customers walk into my store and be absolutely wowed by the products we have just keeps me going every single day.”

But that distinctive product range is also what makes delivery so complicated. Many of the items Harry & Kit sells are fragile, bespoke, and often irreplaceable. And unlike retailers shipping standard-sized stock in branded boxes, Harry & Kit's pieces don't always arrive ready for transit.

“They don't come in a perfect box from our suppliers overseas,” Lillie explains, “so we have to repackage for a lot of our online orders. We make sure each piece is packed safely, but also as compactly as possible to keep shipping costs reasonable.”

Operating from regional Queensland adds another layer of difficulty. Harry & Kit's customers are spread across Australia, often hundreds or even thousands of kilometres from the stores they're ordering from. More time in transit means more opportunities for things to go wrong, and finding the right courier for each order is its own challenge.

“We've learnt which couriers are good to work with and which are more difficult,” she says. “At the end of the day, our customer doesn't want to spend too much on shipping, so we always have to take that into consideration.”

Harry & Kit may be a small business, but its customers expect the same standard of delivery they'd get from a major retailer. For Lillie, every order represents trust, and the delivery experience is a key part of building and maintaining strong customer relationships.

“I think everyone expects the same thing when they're buying online,” she says. “They want what they've bought to arrive safely, and they want to be happy with the experience.”

For Lillie, that expectation shapes every decision from packaging to courier selection. “It's so important to us that the customer experience from start to finish is as seamless as it can possibly be,” she says. “That their parcel is packaged as beautifully as it can be, and that when they open their order at home, it's just a nice, memorable moment.”

Lose that moment, she says, and you've likely lost the customer. “It's really hard to win them back.”

Behind the scenes, ahead of the problem

When something does go wrong in transit, Lillie says the biggest problem isn't the refund. “The biggest challenge is time,” she says. “My time, or my staff's time. Delivery issues pull us away from the jobs we should be doing to keep the business moving.”

We now handle that process in the background. When something goes wrong, Harry & Kit customers lodge a claim through the portal and we take it from there; verifying the issue and organising a replacement order, refund or store credit.

No courier claims for Lillie's team to chase. No paperwork. No customers left in limbo.

Lillie says the difference has been immediate.

“Having Parcel Protect on board to handle our lost, damaged or stolen parcels has freed our team up to focus on growing the business,” she says. “It's like having an extra employee, but at a fraction of the cost.”

Now, when a delivery issue arises, we’re handling the resolution behind the scenes, before it ever has the chance to become a one-star review.

“It's so great that Parcel Protect takes care of it now,” Lillie says. “I'm not there having to personally worry about it. To have them resolve it without me or my team being involved is a real weight off our shoulders.”

With our team helping to protect her deliveries, Lillie can spend more time doing what she loves, travelling the world for the next piece that'll stop a customer in their tracks.

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