A North Carolina fulfillment center can be a very cost-effective choice for growing eTailers.
Doing business in an eCommerce world provides numerous opportunities for entrepreneurs and established businesses that never existed before. You can sell goods to a large and widespread customer base, no longer limited to the people within your city. Add to that the benefit of not having to have a brick and mortar store and it's clear that an eTailer has more selling potential with less overhead.
Unfortunately, eCommerce cannot remove all of a seller’s overhead; the cost of storing and shipping goods to customers can add up fast. Here are 5 ways to reduce eCommerce costs using a North Carolina fulfillment center.
Reduce Labor
Your largest fulfillment warehouse expense is labor. The cost of the people you employ to pack and ship your boxes is huge. Make sure you work with a fulfillment partner with the ability to design a layout and picking process that best fits your needs and will minimize labor costs. Inefficient design means you’ll need more workers than are required for the volume. The right warehouse technology can also help by automating otherwise manual tasks.
Minimize Inventory Investments
Many third party logistics companies focus on either pallet shipments to retailers or individual unit shipments to consumers. Find a partner who can manage both your B2B and B2C fulfillment center requirements from the same location. This will reduce your inventory and overhead costs.
Right Size Fulfillment Center Operations
It is important that the size of your operation match the size of your business. Look for a way to start small and then expand as your business grows within a variable cost environment. That’s tough to do if you operate your own facility. At Kanban’s North Carolina fulfillment center, we help growing companies scale up as needed, paying only for the space and services they require based on sales volume.
Choose a Central Warehouse Location
For eTailers, it doesn't matter how close or far you are from customers when they hit the BUY NOW button. The location of your warehouse, however, is a different matter. You want a centrally located warehouse to minimize shipping time and costs. Our North Carolina fulfillment center is halfway between Boston and Miami with an ability to hit major East Coast population centers in a day.
Look for a Single Source
It is to your advantage to find one place that can handle all of your fulfillment needs. For instance, you may require value-added warehouse services such as packaging and returns processing. You don’t want to incur the time and expense of sending your products elsewhere for these services. Choose a provider capable of the full range of services you may need. For one specialty foods client, Kanban builds holiday gift baskets for sale. We store goods in our temperature controlled warehouse, use an assembly line process to build the baskets, finalize the packaging and ship them out.
Kanban Logistics provides all five of these cost saving benefits. As an ISO 9001:2008-certified operation, we give you the process discipline, quality execution, and continuous improvement you need for fulfillment center operations. Contact us for more information on how we can keep your storage and shipping costs low while delivering accurate, on-time orders to keep your customers happy.
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