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Dec 14
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Holiday Fulfillment Center

How 3PLs Work Year-Round for the Holiday Season

By Supply Chain Management

Starting in October, national media is focused on the parcel carriers and their efforts towards preparing for the busy holiday-shipping-season. However, we hear very little about the e-commerce fulfillment service providers (3PLs) and how they prepare for their busiest time of the year.

The consumer tends to assume that the e-commerce merchants fulfill their own online orders and have little understanding of how merchants, both large and small, work closely with 3rd party e-commerce order fulfilment service providers. The e-commerce specific 3PL plays a major role in warehousing, processing orders for shipment, and handing off those orders to the parcel carriers.

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Nov 30
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Micro-Fulfillment Facility

E-Commerce Forward Stocking Micro Fulfillment Solutions

By Shipping

The unabated growth of e-commerce is driving innovation across the supply chain, which is obviously a good thing.  Nevertheless, along with that innovation comes failure, as many of the new start-up supply chain solutions will flounder or fail.

However, you can’t have innovation without failure, so we are experiencing a natural course of events, with both successes and business failures. Some of the differences today versus legacy trends in supply chain innovation are the roles of the following 3 dominating and influencing forces:

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Nov 17
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Fulfillment Center Image

Best-In-Class E-commerce Order Fulfillment: A Focus on Both Pick & Pack and Shipping

By Shipping

E-commerce merchants in search of fulfillment vendors, do not necessarily look at a fulfillment solution in the context of both the pick & pack process and delivery solution. Sometimes, the solution is integrated and covers both primary functions of the fulfillment process. Other times, the merchant can be left to determine on their own, how they choose to distribute their product and which carriers and services to use once the products are picked and packed.

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Nov 03
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Multiple Sales Channels and One 3PL: Pallet, Parcel or Both?

By Shipping

The demise of the retail store model is being overplayed and over exaggerated.  The argument can be made that 15 years of store and retail chain closings is not just about consumers migrating in mass over to the e-commerce sales channel.  It can also be argued that many legacy model retail stores are failing because they deserved to fail by not responding to change in the retail marketplace and adjusting to different consumer buying habits. It was inevitable that retail had to shrink, but retail is not going away, and nor is the fulfillment model that supports the retail store.

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Sep 30
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Order Fulfillment 3PLs Are Still Processing Amazon Shipments

By Shipping

Here’s a quote frequently tied to Jeff Bezos with respect to focusing on the customer relationship:

“If there’s one reason we have done better than that of our peers in the Internet space over the last six years, it is because we have focused like a laser on the customer experience, and that really does matter, I think, in any business. It certainly matters online, where word-of-mouth is so very, very powerful.”

The Amazon founder’s commitment to the customer experience grew partially from a disastrous 2013 holiday shipping season Read More

Aug 25
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Fulfillment center

Merchants: How to Choose the Best Ecommerce Fulfillment Model for You

By Shipping

The growth of e-commerce has driven major change in the fulfillment center (FC) landscape with faster item-processing speeds and improved speed-to-market (delivery).  Additionally, enhanced electronic communication and notifications originating at the FC level are benefiting the merchant, carrier, and customer. However, it is still a challenge to find the FC that best serves a merchant’s unique requirements as one size does not fit all.

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Aug 20
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The Great E-commerce Fulfillment Center Squeeze

By Supply Chain Management

The pandemic has impacted nearly all parts of the global supply chain and e-commerce fulfillment is not immune to the condition.  Covid-19-driven consumer behavioral change has resulted in staggering e-commerce growth, which in turn, is putting tremendous pressure on e-commerce fulfillment centers (FCs).

The immediate impact has been FC demand almost exceeding capacity. The shortage of FCs is resulting in greater competition for limited capacity, which is driving increased rent. Labor and facility rent are the two most costly components of operating a fulfillment center.

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Aug 05
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23 Factors to Consider When Deciding to Outsource Order Fulfillment

By Shipping

The decision to outsource order fulfillment is a critical one for many growing e-commerce operations. Businesses have many order fulfillment service provider (SP) options. Each SP has a unique service offering and ways of conducting business. The steps below will help guide your decision-making process so your ecommerce company can outsource order fulfillment profitably and in line with customer needs and expectations.

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