It’s an exciting time for your business, your fans and followers want your merchandise – and they want it as fast as they can get it. You already know, printing merch is only half of the process, you also have to manage your ecommerce fulfillment for your online merch store. This is where a 3PL can help you streamline merchandise order fulfillment for faster shipping and happier fans.
Merchandise Order Fulfillment
Merchandise order fulfillment refers to how you process, pick, pack, and ship merchandise orders to followers and fans. From CDs, posters, and cups to t-shirts, jackets, and hats, efficient and affordable merchandise fulfillment plays a key role in building your company, brand, and following.
If you’re searching merchandise fulfillment, you’ve likely heard of the term “3PL,” or third-party-logistics. Or you at least have some idea what a 3PL is and can do as it pertains to fulfillment. If not, that’s fine, you’ll learn about it below.
Here’s a common question that is asked.
Can A 3PL Help Your Merchandise Fulfillment?
If you want to make sure merchandise fulfillment goes as planned and you’re never limited in your growth, you should consider outsourcing to a 3PL – they can help you with your merchandise ecommerce fulfillment. As you’ll learn below, there’s a number of different reasons why you consider a merchandise order fulfillment partner.
Here are some questions that can help you determine if a 3PL is right solution for your merchandise fulfillment.
(1) How Many Merchandise Orders Are You Shipping Every Month?
This is the very first question you should be asking yourself. If you’re only shipping out a few pieces per month, it makes the most sense to continue fulfilling orders in-house. If you’re seeing more than 100-200 orders come in each month, this is when it becomes time to really consider outsourcing fulfillment. Keep in mind, that’s an estimate – but you should know when your merch fulfillment begins to feel overwhelming. When it gets to that point, you have to start considering outsourcing.
Important – if your merchandise is starting to gain popularity, you don’t want to hesitate moving to that next level. If you’re not sure, you can always reach out to a 3PL to ask questions. We’d be more than happy to answering any questions you have – you can reach out to us here.
Here’s another important question.
(2) How Much Time Is Involved In fulfilling Your Merch?
Time is an asset you’re never going to get back – so you always want to use your time wisely. If most of your time is consumed with fulfilling merchandise orders, it may be time to outsource to a 3PL merchandise fulfillment partner.
If you’re spending countless hours fulfilling merch orders, there’s a much better, efficient way to get out of this cycle.
This would be a great time to start working with a 3PL can help take operational tasks like inventory management, packing orders, and shipping off your plate — giving you more time back in your day to focus on what you do best. At some point, you’re going to have to step away from merch order fulfillment to focus on the growth of your brand.
(3) How Big Of A Following Do You Have?
You likely know how your followers are trending over the weeks, months, past year. For those of that growing at a fast pace, this is the time to start to considering outsourcing your order fulfillment.
As you’re likely seeing now, when your following grows, your merch sales will also. Partnering with a 3PL now can help you keep up with an increase in orders — without having to worry about a backlog in the event of overnight success.
Benefits Of Using Thill Inc. To Fulfill Your Merchandise
There’s a long laundry list of benefits you’re going to get when you partner with Thill Inc.
After reading this, we hope you see the value of partnering with a 3PL for your merchandise fulfillment. Thill is a modern 3PL that offers simple, fast, and affordable retail fulfillment for ecommerce brands. With a 3PL company like Thill, you can streamline your merch fulfillment and take it next level.
Here’s a few of the most important benefits.
(1) Shipping New inventory To Thill’s Fulfillment Centers
Here at Thill, we have our fulfillment centers strategically placed all over the country, there’s a reason we do this. As soon as your merch printing is done, you can ship it out directly from the manufacturer to one of Thill’s fulfillment center locations across the U.S. This makes it fast and easy to start shipping new merch as soon as it’s ready, so your fans don’t have to wait.
The faster you can get your merch to fans, the better.
(2) Distributing Your Inventory
If you have fans all across the country, your merch fulfillment should be spread out to. With fulfillment centers strategically placed across the country, Thill Inc. can help you split inventory across multiple warehouses. With your merchandise close to customers, you’re going to be able to reach them quicker. Distributing inventory across multiple locations can help reduce shipping costs and transit times – which means your fans get your merch faster and at a better price.
(3) Manage Inventory Easily
You likely already know it can be a challenge keeping track of your merch when you don’t have the right tools. This is why Thill Inc. offers real-time inventory management features, it gives you the ability to track inventory levels and forecast demand from our easy to use dashboard. You’ll also have the ability to track stock levels you have available at each of Thill’s fulfillment centers. When you need to re-order merch, you’ll receive automatic notifications – just one of many perks for partnering with Thill Inc. fulfillment.
(4) Handle Customer Returns
It doesn’t matter how loyal your fans are, returns will always be a part of selling merchandise online. While there’s very little you can do about returns, you can do something about managing them efficiently. Thill can help ecommerce merchants automate the returns process, making a often difficult process more simple and streamlined.
When a customer returns an order, Thill Inc. will process the return and restock or dispose of the item depending on your preferences. This makes the process easier for both you and your customers; you won’t have to handle returns in-house, and customers can easily track the status of their return shipment.
(5) Real-Time Data And Analytics
Our powerful order management software suite can integrate with your ecommerce platform – allowing you to get real-time data and analytics back.
For example, if you have a Shopify store, Ebay store, or Amazon store, you’ll be able to integrate your store with our OMS to get real-time inventory tracking. We have dozens of ecommerce integrations, also including Magento, WooCommerce, Cratejoy, and many others.
This data is priceless as it allows you to see sales, inventory, etc.
Do you want a better merchandise fulfillment solution? Request a quote from Thill Inc. and learn how we can help you save and grow.
