Outsourcing Fulfillment: Is It Worth The Investment?

When it comes to outsourcing fulfillment for your company, there’s a lot you have to think about. For starters, all fulfillment services are not equal, you need to be aware of what you’re investing in. After all, fulfillment is a core pillar of your business.

Fulfillment Today

There’s a lot of moving pieces in the fulfillment process and likewise, having all of your fulfillment under one roof is just as important. In today’s technological world, outsourcing fulfillment means having software to optimize your systems and processes.

Here at Thill, we can understand your concerns. We’ve been doing fulfillment since 1959, no one else out there understands what you need more than us. It doesn’t matter if you’re needing to automate your fulfillment, lower your shipping cost or expand in new markets, Thill can help you make the best decisions for you and your company.

Logistics And Infrastructure

Logistics plays a big role in your fulfillment and in light of that Thill has the infrastructure to support your business. We have warehouse locations throughout the United States that are efficient and cost effective, providing a top tier service of logistics management.

As a merchant, you already have your hands full. With product development, customer service and marketing – outsourcing fulfillment to a trusted partner, gives you the time you need to focus on the other important areas of your business.

Here at Thill, we can help you with every aspect of your order fulfillment. We make sure your product is safely stocked at our strategically placed facilities, ensuring they are picked, packed and shipped properly. At Thill, we even manage your returns and help with customer service. With our order management system, we give you the ability to monitor your inventory in real-time. 24-7.

Our fulfillment centers even assist you with manufacturing. Thill has an extensive network of partners we use to support all of your fulfillment needs around the clock.

Outsourcing Fulfillment

In many ways, outsourcing your fulfillment is like a mix of self-fulfillment and drop-shipping. You choose a 3PL company (Third Party Logistics), you send your inventory to their warehouse for storage and you communicate your customer orders with them so they can be filled.

Should you outsource your fulfillment? That depends on the goals of your business.

Let’s talk about why companies choose to outsourcing fulfillment.

Save On Shipping Cost

Outsourcing fulfillment can help your company save a lot of money on shipping cost. Shipping cost can be an expensive burden on both Ecommerce and brick-and-mortar businesses. In short, shipping cost is often driven by volume, 3PL services can help take advantage of their economical freight charges.

No Manual Inventory Audits

If you’re using a 3PL, your inventory is likely located at an order fulfillment warehouse. Due to this, you won’t have to do manual audits on your inventory.

Time To Focus On Your Company

We all know fulfillment is a lot of work and to be effective, you need the processes and systems in place to do it well.

To summarize, by outsourcing fulfillment, you’re going to have more time to focus on other areas of your business. As a business owner, you can’t grow your business by focusing your time on your fulfillment. Having the opportunity to free up your time from fulfillment allows you to focus your attention, time and effort where your business needs you the most.

If you have to sustain your self fulfillment yourself, you’re spending your precious time working in your business and not working on your business. If you want your company to grow, if you want to start scaling, you have to take yourself out of the business.

Better Opportunity For Growth And Scaling

Outsourcing your fulfillment gives you more time to focus on growth and scaling your business. Not to mention, with your product safely stored, you don’t have to worry about finding space for product. As demand rises, it’s not going to be a burden for you, you’ll have the space you need as you grow.

A paid advertising campaign can bring immediate sales into your business. If you’re not ready for that growth, it can cripple your systems. You can launch a video and if that video goes viral, how will you keep up with the demand?

A lot of business owners think you need to outsource fulfillment when the demand rises. The truth of the matter, you should be thinking about outsourcing fulfillment now versus later. Here’s why: Let’s imagine a video goes viral and you get 500 orders one evening. You have the product but you have to fulfill all these orders. It takes you a few days to get the orders out and you notice 500 more orders come in. You can’t keep up. After a few weeks, you finally get all the orders out but customers are mad. They’re canceling orders, asking for refunds and they’re leaving you bad reviews. The opportunity has been wasted and with the bad reviews adding up, it destroys your brand name.

Yes, a little dramatic but it happens every day. Social media has changed everything and after spending years building your reputation, it can be tore down in an instant.

You need to be thinking about outsourcing your fulfillment now versus later. You do not want to wait until the last minute, it’s not worth the risk.

Premium Customer Support

While we can’t speak for others, here at Thill, we give you premium support. We’re much more than just an fulfillment company. We’re your partner. We help you make the best outsourcing fulfillment decisions for you, not for us.

All in all we understand outsourcing fulfillment for your company is a big decision and rightfully so, you should take every opportunity to weigh out your options. If you have questions, you can talk to one of our fulfillment experts, just use this link. 

You can also reach us at 1-920-967-9201.