eCommerce fulfilment for startups: it's never too early to grow
Small businesses shouldn't stay in the spare room forever. The next step is a fulfilment provider – and it's never too early to grow.
It's easy to hold a certain nostalgia for the "early days". Having climbed the mountain, many successful leaders look back fondly on the times when the boardroom was the home office and the distribution centre doubled up as a guest bedroom.
When dreams have been created in the hours between the day job and yearly plans hashed out over family dinner, it's fair to say you can take the startup out of the home – but it's harder to take the home out of the startup.
Cultivating a new business is much like nurturing a seedling: the best plants flourish with attention, skill and a little luck. But when they've grown enough, what they need most is to be moved to a bigger pot. Otherwise, it becomes a cage.
With such a personal investment, founders can be forgiven for their reticence over anything as disruptive as repotting. However, for their seedlings to grow, a change of environment is vital.
We're talking, of course, of the inevitable moment when a startup must leave the garage and transition instead into more official surroundings. It's a huge milestone and a tremendously positive one – but such a large-scale move must be executed in the right way, with the right partnerships.
In this article, we look at why using a fulfilment provider is key to turning a budding startup into a blossoming success.
What are fulfilment providers and how are they beneficial?
A fulfilment provider is a third-party agency that processes and ships customer orders on behalf of businesses. The provider handles every step, from storing inventory to picking orders and packaging them for the carrier network, eliminating the need for the CEO to juggle operational logistics alongside managing the business.
While getting a startup off the ground usually does require a large degree of "jack of all trading" on behalf of the founders to keep costs down, transitioning to a professional distribution centre should always be one of the initial goals of an aspirational startup. Third-party carriage networks and manufacturer shipping are usually needed from day one, after all.
It makes sense to outsource the middle element of the supply chain as fast as possible – particularly when the speed and accuracy of orders are key drivers in securing happy customers.
Don't forget: happy customers are repeat customers!
How do fulfilment centres help business growth?
They bring knowledge
Growing a brand from nothing often requires the founders to juggle all elements of the business to keep costs down. While wits and transferable intelligence are admirable traits that will see a startup flourish, there's a ceiling in the long term. At some point, the business must rely on industry experts to reach the next step.
Smart companies secure their future by investing profits into hiring people who are qualified to do the jobs better, more quickly and more cost-effectively.
The supply chain is a complex and reactive eco-system – one that comes with a whole host of legal regulations that can be a headache to understand. By partnering with a professional fulfilment provider, leaders benefit not only from the much-needed expertise of a company designed to cater for the commerce industry, but from their dedicated workforce too.
Instead of family and friends fulfilling a customer's order, it's managed end-to-end by highly trained warehouse staff, inventory managers and supply chain experts whose combined experience likely runs into the decades.
Third-party fulfilment providers like Stowsafe aren't just familiar with how to run an efficient and optimised fulfilment service nationally. For businesses looking to expand overseas as quickly as possible, global reach is far more attainable when they can take advantage of their fulfilment partner's established global network – and its understanding of local commerce law.
This leads nicely to the second benefit…
They let you scale your way
Fact: good businesses target growth.
Another fact: to turn revenue into profit, growth
has to be sustainable.
Most strategies understandably prioritise increasing sales, increasing customer reach and increasing conversions. But overtrading can be a major risk for small businesses and many can easily
grow too quickly for their infrastructure.
That's why it's so important to cultivate a solid relationship with a reputable fulfilment provider – one with experience supporting expanding clients.
Often, growth requires innovation. What worked for the first 1,000 customers might not necessarily work for the next 10,000 – and evolving consumer expectations can be difficult to keep up with.
While a home-based business is capped at the space it has, fulfilment providers offer more space to stock a wider product portfolio, empowering businesses to test new products and captivate larger audiences. Alongside that, they'll offer an entire range of transit packaging to suit all sizes and types of shipments at unbeatable costs (compared to the local Post Office, at least).
Industry-leading technology
With a fulfilment provider, small businesses don't just benefit from more space, better costs and a pool of resources – they also get the keys to the kind of technology being used by much bigger companies.
With increasing orders to keep on top of, warehouse management systems (WMS) easily keep track of inventory, monitor shipments and returns and process wastage. This means leaders can invest more time in marketing and brand management, confident the books are being managed reliably.
For transitioning a home business to a fulfilment centre to be successful, small businesses need to look for a provider that can seamlessly integrate into the existing eCommerce platform. That's why companies like Stowsafe cover all of the leading platforms, such as eBay, Shopify, Amazon and WooCommerce.
The leap into fulfilment partnerships can be daunting for the owners of small UK businesses. That's why Stowsafe always tailors
eCommerce order fulfilment to the needs of the client.
Every client benefits from our secure warehousing and a dedicated account manager, so they can rest assured their stock is in safe hands. It's never too early to grow:
get in touch today to learn more about how Stowsafe can help shape your brand.
