Can anyone comment on UK fulfilment houses?

[Chabrenas]

... and in passing, on UK vs US spelling of 'fulfil(l)ment'. I've seen UK ones use 'fulfilment' so I presume it follows the same rules as skil(l)ful.

Currently, the MD and majority shareholder of a company whose site I manage is sacrificing his drawing room to the business of picking, packing, shipping and invoicing. This is not only a pain, but makes the business unscaleable, so we're looking for a fulfilment house to take over the job. I have a few questions that I'd like to ask the forum, as well as quizzing any prospective drop shipper:

1. How frequently would you recommend visiting their premises and checking how things are going, resolving issues, etc?

2. Can I ask a fulfilment house to use custom packing (e.g. better quality wrapping paper inside the box than their standard stuff, even if I have to supply it)?

3. We would deal with the product suppliers, shipping goods to the fulfilment house. How should we track and control bulk shipments? Can a fulfilment house do inspections and reject non-conforming goods? (Obviously, we'd have to train them as well as supplying a list of things to check for). Or is the normal approach just to rely on the customer returning faulty goods? I'd hope to do better than that.

[akirk]

I would ring a couple and chat to them - it sounds as though you are rightly concerned about wanting to ensure a high standard of service to the customer... however be aware that all of this will push the price up substantially...
I would consider turnover and likely growth... and balance that against the cost - if he is running from his drawing room he is a small business, so should be avoiding any un-necessary overheads - using his drawing room is only the start - he presumably has a kitchen / bedroom / bathroom / hallway / attic still available ?! I would suggest that he pushes the capability of where he is now as a first step...
Then cost up renting a lock-up / emall office or space (if rural - farm barns / buildings are often very cheap) and then look to local workforce for cheap labour - may be the best way of guaranteeing service...

to go to a fulfilment agency may require quite a bit of scaling up before it is worthwhile - def. before you can start to specify how it is done!

Alasdair

[crabfoot]

I have to ask if you are looking in the right country.

My experiences of UK fulfilment centres have not been positive, as a customer, a delivery person, and as a purchaser of surplus stock which is still marketable.

I would not advise anybody to use any of the operations I am aware of in England. I have been told of a couple of places in the vicinity of Belfast which are said to offer a reasonable service, and something in the vicinity of Stranraer which is supposedly "umbilically coupled" to one of those operations - no personal experience.

Once in a while I have been tempted to buy cigarettes from the "tobacco bandits". They advertise their websites on lamp posts, you go to the site, place an order for 200 Marlboro, and hope they arrive (never had a loser, truthfully - they all delivered). Every package has arrived from France, although the cigarettes all come via Belgium (the best EU friend of the smoker until you discover Slovenia). Forebye the disguise aspects, when I checked out the postal rates France came out on top.

Looky you here, m'lad, if you can find a French fulfilment centre there will be postal advantages on price and efficiency, coupled with the fact that the French still take a certain pride in the job, instead of slashing open every box with Stanley knives without regard for the contents.

To be frank, asking the questions on the forums of eBay.fr or eBay.be is more likely to be fruitful than asking around these parts. If there's no help forthcoming, ask me again and I'll go deeper.

[golles]

try looking into fulfilment by amazon - we work with one retailer that uses them and he raves about the service. this is not really a recommendation as such as we have no direct experience.

there are a few things I would be mindful of re: utilising amazon services - one example is they will have some of your data. but there is no denying they do fulfillment well.

[Chabrenas]

to go to a fulfilment agency may require quite a bit of scaling up before it is worthwhile - def. before you can start to specify how it is done!

Alasdair, what would you consider a suitable scale? Currently, the business has a peak rate around 15 orders a day in summer. Although about three quarters of sales are either returning customers or (until a few days ago) organic search visits, we have successfully controlled the volume by adjusting Adwords spend (we had to, because of an unreliable supplier). We plan to double our range, using an new supplier and goods with a higher price and margin. I believe we could double turnover quite easily by adjusting ad spend and adding other advertising channels, both on and off line.

if you can find a French fulfilment centre there will be postal advantages on price and efficiency, coupled with the fact that the French still take a certain pride in the job

Sadly, I don't think you're entirely right. They may be less vandalistic, depending where they are, but we checked French vs UK postal rates for our class of goods (espadrilles fold flat and fit in a jiffy bag that goes letter rate, and we use a franking machine). UK is much cheaper. The big problem is that, outside the big cities, management is sloppy and businesses are run in firefighting mode. They're under-capitalised, but also consider 90 debtor days an unrealistic goal.

I would suggest that he pushes the capability of where he is now as a first step...
Then cost up renting a lock-up / emall office or space (if rural - farm barns / buildings are often very cheap) and then look to local workforce for cheap labour - may be the best way of guaranteeing service...

The house is in a hamlet outside Sherborne, which is a small market town in Dorset. There is a small estate with lockups and few industrial units, but a local businessman grabs them as soon as they become available, for his own use. Because it is so remote, the only available workers (and the only ones that one would leave alone in the house) are the wives of retired colonels, etc., looking for an excuse to get away from their husbands for a few hours a day. They tend to be unavailable just when you need them most, in the summer season. This is a part of the world where the neighbours drive old Land Rovers and Mercedes cars so that they feel on more equal terms with oncoming tractors and white vans in the narrow, vergeless roads.

One other consideration is that once the operation moves out of the house, someone has to travel to the work site and do a bit of supervision and management from time to time, even with a small number of trusted workers. Recently, we toyed with and abandoned the idea of buying the business of a competitor who had ceased trading. His costs for using a fulfilment house were comparable with the bare cost of adequate premises near Sherborne.

[akirk]

I am not sure that I would consider 15 orders a day to be particularly large (not that I know anything about this business!)
How long does each order take to fulfill? - 2 minutes - put espadrilles into envelope / insert invoice into plastic cover / stick on front / frank
so 1/2 hour to 45 minutes a day to fulfill? and that is peak... wow - you are definitely not out of the bedroom size operation yet...
without any accurate knowledge I would have thought that you need to be selling hundreds a day...

Alasdair

[Chabrenas]

try looking into fulfilment by amazon - we work with one retailer that uses them and he raves about the service. this is not really a recommendation as such as we have no direct experience.

Thanks, Golles, but it looks as if we'd still be in the loop, packaging each item:

• You prepare and label your products and packages for shipping.
• You ship your products to us.
• We receive and store your product units in Amazon’s fulfilment centres.

A pity, because using the might of Amazon's shipping and tracking facility would be attractive.

[akirk]

I think with Amazon - that packaging is not final packaging - item packaging, not postal packaging
so espadrilles in a drawstring bag / plastic bag might suffice

Alasdair

[Chabrenas]

I think with Amazon - that packaging is not final packaging - item packaging, not postal packaging
so espadrilles in a drawstring bag / plastic bag might suffice

Alasdair

Yes, that's the way I interpreted it. However, our supplier sends boxes full of espadrilles, each pair held together with an elastic band, with several sizes and colours in each box. It takes us hours to sort them and stack them on the proper shelves (and check for non-conforming goods to return to the supplier/manufacturer, typically at least 5% of each consignment) so that they can be picked later to fulfill an order. The objective is to rid ourselves of this task as well as the picking and packing. I begin to suspect that no drop shipper will take on the job in this form.

[akirk]

can you get the supplier to send them based on size / colour?
if not - I would be tempted to get a homeworker (local mother!) to do it - simple easy work they can do at a cheap rate for you...

Alasdair