With the holidays on the horizon, it’s time to test drive some scalable shipping strategies that are ready to deploy when the peak selling season — November and December — arrives. There are many parts to a shipping strategy, like selecting a carrier and managing returns, but perhaps the…
Quick heads up for your bottom-line! The biggest changes to USPS shipping rates arrived last January, but when the clock strikes midnight on August 28 (this Sunday), USPS will greenlight yet another rate change. Uptick in Lightweight, First Class Rates First Class shipping is extremely cost-effective for many e-retailers…
The title may sound brutal, but excess inventory is no trivial matter, as any retailer experiences eventually. Whether or not it’s worse than a stockout is debatable, but one thing is for sure: inventory that isn’t sold is cash that’s tied up. Inventory is most likely your biggest investment.…
Relationships are everything, especially when you’re trying to get someone else to do something for you. Will you ever find that perfect partner? Someone willing to store your junk? Someone willing to take orders at a moment’s notice? Someone with their ship together? These are the questions many e-retailers ask…
When your fulfillment operation runs like clockwork, you’ll have more time on the clock to accomplish other biz objectives. There are plenty of things to do to optimize your back-office operation — you can utilize shipping and inventory management software, forecast inventory accurately to prevent out-of-stocks and stock outs, and…
Most online retailers will tell you — managing inventory & orders can be a challenge. Traditional retailers have the task of managing the physical inventory. Storing, organizing, packing, and shipping all have their unique and often tedious organizational issues. Online retailers that choose to sell “dropship” products have…
Each week, we publish a mishmash of ecommerce related, insight infused articles for your to smash through. Just as we collect business information across all of a merchant’s channels in a single place, we’re doing the same for ecommerce related content from a variety of top tier content…
We’ve covered in-house and just-in-time fulfillment, as well as outsourced fulfillment, each with its own positives and negatives, but now we’re moving to a completely hands-off form of fulfillment — dropshipping. To some, it sounds like a pipe dream. No managing inventory? No actual fulfillment? That’s the essence of…
Last week, we spoke about how in-house and just-in-time fulfillment granted you complete control over your fulfillment process. This week, we’re going on the other end of the spectrum with outsourced fulfillment. Fulfillment can be quite the drag. It’s complicated, we all know this. So why not pay…
Isn’t fulfillment fulfilling? Depending on who you ask, the answer is questionable. But one thing is for sure: a fulfillment process that runs smoothly and efficiently is definitely fulfilling. And sometimes, it’s best to DIY. That’s at the core of the following two fulfillment models — in-house and just-in-time. Here’s…