What is a fulfillment center and do you need one?

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Have you thought about a fulfillment center for your eCommerce business?

It does seem like a logical way to free up time, increase sales, keep customers happy and save

on shipping costs.

However, let’s back up a little first and understand what is a fulfillment center and does your

business need to have a fulfillment house taking care of its warehousing and shipping?

What Is A Fulfillment Center and Does

Your Business Need One? A fulfillment center is the ideal solution for small and medium-sized eCommerce businesses

that want to scale, add more products, increase sales and at the same time, keep costs low.

A fulfillment center takes care of all your warehousing and shipping worries, ensuring that

customers get their products on time, leaving you plenty of time to source new products, get

publicity and other things that usually are put on the back burner because you’re so tired trying

to get products out the door.

A fulfillment center is ideal for online store

owners who:

1. Lack space for additional products If you want to scale by adding more inventory, but lack the physical space to do so or the

budget to get a brick-and-mortar store or warehouse, a fulfillment service will do the trick.

They’ll give you the space you need for additional products at a cost that’s easy on the pocket.

2. Want to reach newer markets Do you want to expand your reach and increase your sales by targeting say, the Australian

market?

A fulfillment service located in Australie can help you do that. They take care of the shipping

and other regulations while you can simply slap on a “We ship to Australia” banner on the site!

It’s that simple.

3. Are keen to free up time and focus on core

strengths Does shipping and packaging make you want to curl up in a corner and die? Do you often find

yourself dropping the ball on sending the orders out leading to unhappy customers?

You aren’t alone. Most product-based business owners find the greatest joy in sourcing

products, creating new products, or strategizing how to scale or even, pitching the press. But

shipping… not so much!

That’s where a fulfillment house can step in and ease your workload while helping you to do

what you do best.

You can rest easy knowing that orders are going out nice and easy without you having to lose

your mind over it!

When I was two years into my t-shirt business and received a HUGE order from Whole Foods, I

spent almost an entire week just packing and shipping. I wasn’t able to focus on sales,

marketing, customer service or anything else. That’s when I knew that I outgrew my current

system of packing and shipping everything myself and decided it was time to outsource it to a

fulfillment center.

4. Need to reduce costs What happens when you decide to add more products to your range? You need to hire

additional hands to help you with packaging, inventory management or shipping.

Not just that, say you decide to rent your own warehouse? Can you imagine the annual cost for

that, especially when you think about slow seasons? And honestly, every business has a slow

season. Would you want to pay for the warehouse rental, electricity and other expenses when

you aren’t really making much? I think not.

Using a fulfillment service helps you reduce those costs and gives you the flexibility you need

with your payments.

How to Choose a Fulfillment Center that

Meets Your Needs Like with all things in business, I recommend you do your research and check important details

like:

• Location

• Credit ratings

• Years in business

• Customer testimonials or industry reputation

• Price/costs

Besides these important details, I recommend you also dig deeper and look at fulfillment

houses that cater to your industry or niche. These fulfillment houses will know the intricacies of

your industry and be sensitized to any special requirements that need attention.

Here are some questions you can ask as you are interviewing prospective fulfillment centers:

– can you integrate with my backorder ecommerce system and provide real-time inventory

updates?

– can you give me three references from current or past clients that I can call?

– how soon do you ship an order after it comes in?

– what type of packaging is included?

– do you have a minimum monthly fee?

– can you handle large orders?

– do you partner with any shipping carriers to get discounts on shipping?

– what are your monthly storage fees and other fees?

– how do you handle the receiving process?

– how do you handle returns?

– how are the packages branded when they go out?

– can you handle international shipping?

I also recommend asking fellow business owners for their recommendations for fulfillment

services that they may have personal experience with. You can also do this when you have a

shortlist of fulfillment houses and ask for feedback on them.

Our exclusive FB group for online store owners will be a good place to start. If you become a

member (which is FREE), I’m happy to share with you the fulfillment center I used for both my

soap and my t-shirt business.

Keep in mind that when you start using a fulfillment center, you’ll have to pay a fee for each

order they send out, on top of the actual shipping costs, so you might have to build this into

your product pricing.

What Fulfillment Houses Can You Start

With? Looking for a ready-to-use list of fulfillment centers you can start checking out and bid goodbye

to your packaging and shipping stress?

You’re in luck.