Finding the right e-commerce fulfilment partner for your business and its needs can be challenging. Logistics is a key aspect of any organisation. This is where SKU Logistics fits in.
As a full end-to-end logistics partner, we prioritise your company and customer needs. We have 40+ years of experience in offering warehouse, distribution and storage solutions for businesses of all sizes.
What should you consider before choosing a logistics provider?
Before making a decision, you and your organisation must have clear business goals and objectives. You should know what you want to achieve from working with a fulfilment partner.
Checking reliability is another important aspect of the process. You should research different providers and ensure you can trust their involvement in your business operations. You should ask questions about the technology they use and how it will benefit your company.
As part of this process, you will need to know your customer demographic inside and out. This should inform your choice when checking your potential fulfilment company's location. If you are looking to explore new markets, choosing a tactically located partner is key.
Good end-to-end fulfilment providers should give you high levels of transparency when it comes to your inventory levels. Having an organised management system, amongst other things, lets your third-party logistics company become an extension of your business.
How does e-commerce fulfilment work?
At SKU Logistics, we pride ourselves on providing full end-to-end e-commerce fulfilment solutions for our clients. We strive for honesty and transparency with every client we onboard. We want to understand their business operations and their customers in order to provide the best service possible.
It is just as important for our e-commerce fulfilment clients to understand our processes.
E-commerce fulfilment helps expand markets and enhances business operations for you and your team.
The typical process works as such:
- Your e-commerce website lists your products ready to buy.
- You join us as you struggle with orders or want to enter new markets.
- We complete onboarding and put everything in place to start serving your customers.
- We store your SKUs in one of our two distribution centres based in the South West.
- Due to integration with your e-commerce platform, we are able to see orders coming.
- Our warehousing teams pick, quality-check and pack orders, ready for despatch.
- One of our partnered carriers collects goods for shipping.
- In no time, your customers receive their items.
- We send you daily reports of inventory levels.
This process is clear and transparent. It enables you to focus on your business goals and explore new avenues.
What does Fulfilment look like with SKU Logistics?
Case study: Mörk Chocolate
An Australia-based company, Mörk Chocolate, contacted us in 2021, looking for a fulfilment partner in the UK. They established manufacturing in the UK and needed a warehouse team to handle the distribution of finished goods.
When they enquired, we explained our operations process and confirmed we could work with their e-commerce platform. The platform they use is WooCommerce which also hosts their website.
Onboarding
The first stage of starting to work as their fulfilment partner was onboarding. This meant understanding their needs, full end-to-end requirements, and target customers, and setting out objectives for our partnership.
Understanding their needs was crucial. It was also important to know who they wanted to sell to. This allowed us to agree on a competitive pricing schedule, service-level agreement (SLA) and courier selection with their team.
Our team put reporting in place according to Mörk Chocolate's requirements. Before starting fulfilment, we gave them login details for our online inventory system. This would allow them to check delivery status, and stock levels as well as create custom reports.
Within 4 weeks, we received and stored their stock, ready for fulfilment.
Solutions provided
Once fulfilment started, we worked on a variety of solutions for Mörk Chocolate. We provided every aspect of their fulfilment requirements as set out in the onboarding stages.
Our warehouse teams worked on picking and packing orders for B2C and B2B and ship to customers. Whilst despatching orders, we also received raw materials (cocoa powder, sugar, packaging etc.) from Australia. These materials were needed to make the products and therefore shipped from our distribution centre to their manufacturing partner.
Our team created sample packs, stored exhibition equipment, and prepared them for shipping when needed. We also took care of processing returns and resends for Mörk which freed up a lot of their time. This also involved reworking stock into different pack configurations to ensure organisation and time efficiency.
As part of our goal to provide the best levels of transparency, we shared daily despatch reports with the team. This allowed them to make decisions about manufacturing and wider business operations.
Although the team didn't require customer service support, we offered a dedicated account manager to support their day-to-day requirements.
Here's what Mörk Chocolate had to say:
"We, at Mörk Chocolate, have been using SKU to fulfil our orders since July 2021. In that time, we have had thousands of orders hand-picked and courier delivered without issue.
I would thoroughly recommend working with SKU Logistics. Our business runs smoothly, thanks to their hard work. They store our products safely and securely in their warehouse, adhering to best-before dates, and ready for sale.
We can easily log in to check our stock levels and our order tracking numbers. We send our daily orders through to their team, who then pick, pack, and have shipped on the same day.
We have also worked closely together on events, with timed and location-sensitive deliveries being handled with care, and with great communication throughout. I look forward to many more years of the fantastic service they provide for us."
Supporting Mörk Chocolate has been such an enriching project and we look forward to a long-standing partnership with the team.
To find out how SKU Logistics can become your fulfilment partner, get in touch.