So, it’s time to scale your business to maximise your sales, and you need the established infrastructure and tried and tested processes of a fulfilment centre to take you to the next level. – You’re in the right place.
As a 3PL partner with two fulfilment facilities (one in the UK and one in the EU), we know a thing or two about the importance of these centres and the skilled logistics professionals inside them.
Read on to discover what a fulfilment facility is, what typically happens in them, their benefits to ecommerce businesses like yours, how Delamode’s two facilities work and more.
What Exactly IS a Fulfilment Centre?
A fulfilment centre plays a critical role in the supply chain. It’s where goods are stored, inventory is managed, and products are prepared to be shipped to customers.
Fulfilment facilities vary from provider to provider. Some are dedicated to ecommerce fulfilment, while other fulfilment warehouses like ours facilitate fulfilment for direct-to-consumer businesses, live online shopping/TV shopping brands, and household name brands selling their products through a huge range of retailers.
Without a trusted 3PL partner, and these fully equipped and established fulfilment centres, ecommerce businesses would be left to store and manage their own inventory, prepare and ship orders, develop transport networks, arrange shipping package-by-package with couriers, manage returns, and raise the funds to harness the space, equipment and staff to conduct these processes.
What Exactly Happens in These Facilities?
The following activities are typically conducted within a fulfilment centre:
- Goods are received, unloaded, and scanned for inventory verification at the warehouse.
- Products are categorised and stored, and tracking methods are applied to support inventory management.
- Orders are picked, packed and labelled.
- Internal transport, cross-docking and handling is conducted to move goods to the “outbound” part of the facility.
- Shipping is arranged and customs management handled.
- Goods are loaded onto outbound vehicles and dispatched for shipping
- Reverse logistics (or returns) are managed.
The Benefits of Fulfilment Centre Capabilities
Fulfilment centres provide ecommerce businesses like yours, with the facilities, infrastructure, tried and tested processes, talented logistics professionals, equipment and extensive courier networks to scale your operations, without having to build and develop these elements yourself.
Just a process like returns, or reverse logistics, is hugely complex and can be incredibly costly to navigate for businesses without 3PL support and facilities like these.
Working with an established 3PL with their own facilities provides you with all this, and extensive logistics experience that can only be developed over decades, at a price that pales in comparison to having to establish your own facility, processes and team. In short, it enables you to focus on developing your business, growing your customer base, and maximising orders for your trusted partner to fulfil.
With the help of a fulfilment centre, your ecommerce business can not only scale as demand dictates, but transform the experience it offers to customers, by offering a highly competitive delivery and returns process that keeps the clicks coming, the reviews positive, and your market positioning strong.
Delamode’s Two-Centre Model
At Delamode, we have two fulfilment centres. Our flagship warehouse facility in Southampton UK, and our second in Roosendaal Netherlands, which is a mirror of our Southampton centre’s operations.
We also offer a 24-hour shuttle service to enable you to move your goods between facilities to position your stock close to customers in specific territories.
This approach enables you to make your generic stock lines go further, remain reactive to product demand and peak times, and serve customers across the UK, EU, and ROTW with ease.
Furthermore, due to the dock-side location of our Southampton fulfilment centre, we follow a port-centric logistics model, which helps to cut time, cost and carbon from your supply chain by removing 3 costly steps in the traditional inland model:
1) No need to transport products from the port to an inland warehouse
2) No need to bring empty containers back to the port
3) No container unloading deadlines and potentially costly fines to navigate.
You see, all 3PL’s and fulfilment facilities are not created equal. Be sure to consider not only the capabilities of the staff, facility and the value they can deliver to your unique organisation, but the locations of the facilities too to find the perfect partner for your needs.
Inside Our Centres
Early in the blog we touched on the activities typically conducted within fulfilment centres. But, what about Delamode’s warehouses?
When you work with Delamode, you can take advantage of both of our state-of-the-art facilities and the following fulfilment capabilities:
- Global Collection & Freight Forwarding
We collect your goods directly from the manufacturer, before our skilled and experienced freight forwarding team work to manage the smooth and efficient movement of your products, ensuring full customs clearance and helping you to navigate the payment of duties and tax associated with bonded warehousing. - Inbound & Stock Handling
Upon arrival at our facilities, inbound/imported stock is booked in at the dock, before being checked, counted, and efficiently stored, ready for fulfilment. - System Integration & Order Management
Orders flow into our WMS via API, EDI, manual upload, or marketplace integrations, and our system provides you with full control and visibility of your orders, in one centralised place. - Pick & Pack
Orders are picked using the most safe and efficient methods for your specific products, packed, repackaged or co-packed inline with your unique requirements, and customised and reworked as required. - VAS’s
We also conduct tailored value added services in our fulfilment centres, including Customisation & Rework, Packaging & Repackaging, Labelling and more. - Carrier Mapping, Dispatch & Final Mile
Whether you need a 72-hour, 48-hour, or premium next-day delivery, we deliver on time, using a large network of established, trusted carriers, and provide full tracking and visibility of orders via our system. - Returns/Reverse Logistics
We offer an end-to-end returns service and also support organisations with existing returns partners to help develop your reputation with customers, support your growth, and recover value through repacking, refurbishment, redistribution and beyond.
Contact our team today to discuss how Delamode can help to scale your business with our decades of logistics experience, flagship facilities, and tried and tested processes.
