Skip to main content
Category

Shipping

Jan 31
Love0
Delivery 2 Day

Long Live 2-day Ground E-Commerce Distribution

By Shipping

Everything related to e-commerce is constantly experiencing monumental change.  Some of the “change trends” include:

  • New Service providers and improved service offerings directed at the consumer seem to be announced daily and you can’t deny that new technology and seemingly unlimited investment dollars are driving most of the change.
  • Going vertical with the intent of controlling all parts of the e-commerce customer experience is driving competitors to enter-into services where they have limited or no direct expertise.
  • Merchants, fulfillment, and delivery service providers suggesting that consumers are demanding ultra-fast solutions—such as 15-minute to 2-hour same-day delivery. This is about differentiating their offering to survive in the marketplace. However, the question begs, how practical are some of these service offerings that drive increased cost and seemingly endless losses for most of the new, VC-funded providers?
  • Recent reports are telling us that, generally, e-commerce merchant profitability is trending downwards. While part of that condition is the result of intense competition, it is also driven by costly new service offerings that the consumer is not necessarily demanding.

Read More

Jan 18
Love0

Fulfillment 3PLs: The New Product Managers of Global Commerce

By Shipping

We know that technology is making the world a smaller place.  Today, any e-commerce merchant in virtually any country can sell their products in other countries across the globe, without possessing a physical presence in those countries.

Formerly domestic-only merchants can now directly offer their products for sale in numerous other countries via the support of e-commerce platforms like Shopify Plus, which can localize the customer’s online buying experience for the country of the merchant’s choice. Domestic online marketplaces like Newegg also offer support to international merchants to provide a near-seamless buying experience for the international consumer. While borders are not disappearing, they are getting easier to navigate for both the international merchant and consumer.

Read More

Nov 30
Love0
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:

Read More

Nov 17
Love0
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.

Read More

Nov 03
Love0

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.

Read More

Sep 30
Love0

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
Love0
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.

Read More

Aug 05
Love0

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.

Read More