Before sending your inventory to a distribution center, you will need to load all of your items onto a pallet (or skid) and prepare it for transport. If your supplier is sending your products directly to the fulfillment center for you, make sure they are packing your pallets correctly and consider sending them this article as a reference. Packing and wrapping a pallet may seem like a small step, but if done incorrectly, you risk damage or loss of expensive inventory and a potential delay in your overall fulfillment cycle. 

You have just made the plunge and sent your entire product lineup to a 3PL. You may have SKUs scattered across the country at multiple distribution centers, or perhaps you’ve decided to store your complete inventory list at one centralized location. Setup and integrations are complete, and orders are rolling in like there’s no tomorrow. Now what?

You may be wondering how much day-to-day work there is for you (communication, organization and coordination) in terms of managing your outsourced order fulfillment operations. Should you check your inventory levels on a daily basis? Are you tracking your shipments like a hound? Do you wait to see a “shipped” status on every order and do a happy dance? 

If you are running an ecommerce store, it is likely that you have heard about fulfillment as an answer to your logistics and inventory management issues as your company scales. While order fulfillment from your main facilities is an inexpensive way to launch, volume sales require infrastructure and overhead that makes it difficult to keep up without dedicated staff or a service provider. Fulfillment is simply the service that handles the “pick, pack, ship” process for your customers.