How To Find The 'Best' Fulfilment Company
Be aware that not all fulfilment companies serve small businesses
Most fulfilment companies prefer to serve online sellers who can produce a lot of orders.
Nearly all fulfilment companies will charge set up fees and have monthly costs to cover their overheads
And sadly most fulfilment companies still charge storage by the pallet (which is unfair & lazy)
Choose a partner that already serves businesses similar to yours
Be wary of companies who just say yes to everything you ask
We’ve put a list of questions together to help you assess the many fulfilment service providers out there. Questions that will help you assess one fulfilment company against another in the context of your business.
✚ Do They Already Serve Clients Similar to You?
Ideally, you don’t want to be the smallest or the largest client of any fulfilment company.
Most fulfilment companies only make money from clients with high volumes so check that your order profile is similar to the clients they currently serve.
myWarehouse cater for low order volume clients from anything up to around 2000 a month
✚ Are There Minimum Charges Per Month?
Unless a fulfilment company employs a system that can operate efficiently at very low order levels per client, they will have to charge additional fees to cover their overheads.
Typically this can be a minimum charge if orders are below a certain quantity. But also, monthly charges like account management fees and data processing costs are frequently applied.
myWarehouse don’t charge fixed fees and do not insist on minimum order volumes
✚ Can They Guarantee Picking Accuracy?
This is a big one! Your customers MUST receive a great service every time.
Happy customers buy again and are likely to say good things about your business. Unhappy ones don’t do either.
So ask specific questions about the picking and packing processes employed by the fulfilment company. Mistakes do happen, but what process is in place to stop these going out to your customers?
myWarehouse scan the barcodes of products throughout the picking and packing process
✚ What Happens on Busy Days?
Apart from the obvious busy periods of Christmas and Black Friday events etc, there are always times during the year when order volumes peak and often this can happen without warning.
What does the fulfilment company do when this happens?
Can they guarantee you a minimum daily despatch volume?
myWarehouse offer a maximum 200% uplift on daily order volumes, based on a rolling 6 week average
✚ Do They Charge Storage by the Pallet?
To be clear: fulfilment companies do not pick from pallets. It is time consuming and extremely inefficient.
The most efficient way to pick products is by distributing them throughout the picking area.
So why do so many fulfilment companies charge storage by the pallet? Because it is easy to do and completely unaccountable.
The fairest way to charge is simply the volume of space occupied by all your products.
myWarehouse and Amazon FBA charge storage by the cubic foot, per month