If your business is on the right track you’ll eventually need to either hire a bunch of employees or a fulfillment company. The good news is that expanding your business to using a fulfillment company is not as expensive as you think. Not only will this free you from the burden of customer service, returns, ect. but will be a big step in your growth. The sooner you realize that you can’t do everything in your business the better.

Amazon Fulfillment

Amazon is the first on my list, because even small time guys can use them! You’ll get charged a certain amount for storage, and for the handling/picking. They seem to be the cheapest deal I’ve found. The cons of this service is that they do not offer custom packaging. So your box will have a big “Amazon.com’ print on it. If that doesn’t bother you or you sell on Amazon it’s a small inconvenience. You can ship from Amazon or other venues (including your site).

Amazon            Multi-Channel/Other

Handling fee:         $0.00                $1.90

Picking fee:             $0.50*              $0.60

Weight Handling: $0.40                 $0.45

Storage Fees:          $0.40/ft           $0.40/ft

Shipwire

I really like Shipwire, but they are rather expensive. Unless you sell all high value items it will probably be too costly for you to use their service unless you really jack the prices up. They do have lots of bells and whistles that make for easy automation, and reporting. If you can figure out how to incorporate their costs into your business plan it could be well worth it. They offer other services too like product photos. You can also pick where your warehouse is.

Flat Rate Fees

——————-

$30/month (8 items shipped, 1/4 pallet storage space)

$559.95/month (250 items, 4 pallets storage)

The first plan seems pretty useless. I think it’s mostly a ‘try our service plan’. It comes out to about $2.23 per item for the second plan. Which is the cheapest plan with anything worthwhile on it. Though your pick and pack fees, and storage are combined on this plan. If you have a return it will count as your shipped items. If you have a high return rate beware! This is also for every item that is picked. So if they order two items in the same shipment it still counts as two picks for you. So a sale of three items no would technically have a pick cost of $6.69. You’ll have to factor all this into your price.

There’s many others that don’t advertise their prices. You may be able to get a better deal with them if you’re savy with it. You’ll have to contact them for a direct quote though so get busy!

Originally posted 2011-05-19 07:20:11. Republished by Blog Post Promoter