Filamentive: Handing Over Fulfilment Without Handing Over Your Standards

Turning 3D printing green

Ravi started the business in 2015, while he was still studying Environment and Business at Leeds and doing a bit of importing on the side. He'd noticed that 3D printing was taking off, that the filament feeding all those printers was shipped in from the Far East, and that nobody was making it from recycled content. So he did. Sustainable filament, no compromise on quality. That principle still runs through everything the company does.

When dispatch became a risk

Fulfilment, in the beginning, was just him. As Filamentive grew he brought in a dedicated person to run dispatch from their own warehouse unit, and for a while that held. Then two things happened close together. The business started pressing against the limits of the space it had, and the person who ran dispatch handed in his notice.

"Every hour spent packing orders was an hour not spent on sales, marketing, or growing the business. I was working in the business rather than on it."
Ravi Toor, Founder, Filamentive

The exit was amicable, but it left Ravi exposed. He had a couple of trainees in through the post-COVID Kickstart scheme, and not much confidence in his own ability to recruit, train and keep someone new in a role the whole operation leaned on. Key-man risk, sitting right on the critical path. That was the moment outsourcing stopped being a someday idea.

A partner, not a supplier

What mattered to him first wasn't price. It was reputation and approachability. He'd not worked with a 3PL before, and a lot of them are big and faceless, which was the opposite of what a business his size wanted.

"We wanted a genuine partnership, not just another supplier."
Ravi Toor, Founder, Filamentive

He met Josh at a business conference in Farnborough, where Cloud9 were exhibiting as a sponsor. Right place, right time. He was just starting to look at his options, and Josh was there to talk them through. Ravi's honest that there wasn't really anyone else in the running. When Josh talked through the growing pains Ravi was facing, the kind of good problems that are still problems, it felt like a fit. It came down to trusting Josh as a person, and through him, Cloud9.

One thing he was watching more closely than anything else.

"It would be a contradiction to obsess over the environmental credentials of our products and then ignore what happens once they leave the warehouse."
Ravi Toor, Founder, Filamentive

Handing over packing and dispatch meant handing over the part of the journey a sustainability-led brand cares about most. What that means in practice: cardboard rather than single-use plastic, and couriers picked with the carbon footprint of delivery in mind. Those standards now had to be held by someone else, and that was the real test.

Overcoming the growing pains

Going live wasn't smooth, and it's worth being straight about that. The timeline from losing the dispatch manager to switching over was tight, Ravi was away for part of it, and there were problems getting his WooCommerce site talking to our platform. Frustrating at the time. What carried it through was that the phone always got answered. Even when things went wrong, Ravi says he was always confident they'd get back on track. Four years later, they're still working together.

The best description of the setup now is Ravi's own: you tend not to notice it, he says, and he means that in the best possible way.

His WooCommerce store syncs straight into Helm, so orders cross over the moment they're placed. Filamentive runs just under 200 active SKUs, including the spoolless ReFill formats, across fast-pick shelving for the quick lines and pallet storage for the bulk. The customer mix is broad. Single-spool makers at one end; schools, universities and businesses ordering in the thousands at the other. Large orders palletise on rules Ravi set once and now leaves alone. Everything else ships through Royal Mail or DPD.

When something does go wrong, a courier mislays a parcel or a return comes back, it goes to Sam and her team, and Ravi usually has a full answer to pass to his customer inside 24 hours. He describes it as feeling like an extension of his own customer service rather than a supplier he has to chase.

Drive growth by letting go

The headline change is simple. He got his time back. A couple of hours a week at least, moved off dispatch decisions and onto the work that actually grows the business. Filamentive runs leaner, launches products faster, and takes on new lines without Ravi first having to work out whether there's physical room for them. By his own count, order volumes are up at least 20%, with over 99% order accuracy held across the last couple of years.

The plan from here is more range, a bigger B2B presence, more international selling. More SKUs, higher stock, more orders. None of it worries him on the fulfilment side, and he's clear that as volumes keep climbing he has no concerns about Cloud9 keeping pace.

For a founder who built a company on getting the materials right, the relief is being able to stop thinking about the bit at the end. The orders go out the way he'd send them himself. He just doesn't have to be the one sending them.

"Over the years, we've watched Filamentive go from strength to strength. As their business continues to grow and evolve, Cloud9 has been there every step of the way. Honestly, that's one of my favourite parts of running a 3PL: taking a business with massive potential, partnering with an ambitious founder, and supporting them through their scaling journey. We have been partners for several years now, and I look forward to continuing this journey for many more to come."
Josh, CEO, Cloud9 Fulfilment