There is something whimsical and romantic about starting a business within the confines of your garage, spare bedroom or even studio apartment.
Amazon did it. Apple did it. Even Disney did it.
But if you are serious about growing your business, handling fulfillment in-house can actually be a hindrance, preventing your business from reaching its full potential. Yes, that means it might be time to move out of your garage and consider fulfillment services.
When to use a fulfillment service
If you’re unable to focus on sales, marketing or product creation because you’re too busy packaging and shipping orders then you should consider outsourcing fulfillment.
That’s to say, it’s time to seek help with fulfillment when your time, not money becomes your limiting resource.
At some point, you might think you can continue to do it all (even if it means stretching yourself to capacity as your business continues to grow). That’s when you know it’s time to take the leap and outsource. If you stay at this standstill, you risk not only burnout, but you may be missing opportunities that will allow your company to truly take off.
Another sign that you will benefit from a fulfillment service is if your company is growing rapidly, and you don’t have the infrastructure to support that growth. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel and invest in said infrastructure yourself, especially if you have uneven sales throughout the year. And if that’s the case, it’s probably not worth your time or money to rent warehouse space.
Benefits of a fulfillment service
Besides freeing up your time to focus on the more creative aspects of your business, there are numerous benefits to using a fulfillment service.
- You don’t have to hire and manage employees to handle packaging and shipping, when you can hire a company — who you don’t have to manage — to do that for you.
- You might save money. Instead of paying for a warehouse, paying employees to manage the warehouse, paying for supplies and shipping, putting that cost toward a fulfillment service might save you money in the end. Because they handle such large orders from multiple companies, fulfillment services have access to bulk deals that are not available to smaller facilities.
- When customers order a product they (rightfully) expect the correct product or products to be shipped to them precisely and quickly. Sounds easy enough. But if you’re handling thousands of pieces of inventory, and don’t have the proper infrastructure to do so, that process can become messy fast. A fulfillment service has the resources available to track inventory and fill orders effectively and accurately (plus you’ll be able to do instant inventory checks whenever you see fit).
- Save yourself a headache by not dealing with the difficulty of returns (fulfillment services will do that for you).
- Keep your creativity. While some fulfillment services have rigid rules about how your product will be packaged, others allow you to keep your brand’s style (understanding that unboxing is part of marketing these days).
So, stop worrying about all that goes into tracking inventory, packaging and shipping your product. Your time is better spent growing your business.