Every online brand starts the same way: boxes in the spare room and a trip to the post office. It works until it doesn't. A fulfilment company takes that whole job away, so you can get back to running your brand.
What fulfilment covers
At its simplest, fulfilment is everything that happens between someone pressing buy and the parcel landing on their doormat. That usually means:
- Storing your stock in a warehouse, counted and easy to find.
- Picking and packing each order as it comes in from your shop.
- Shipping it with a tracked service, then sending the tracking back to your store.
- Handling returns, checking what comes back and putting it back into stock.
Fulfilment and full brand management
Standard fulfilment stops at the parcel. Full brand management goes further and looks after the whole operation behind the brand: the online shop, marketplace listings, customer emails, returns and the stock you need to reorder. It suits brands that want to focus on ideas and leave the day-to-day to somebody else.
When it's time to hand it over
There's no magic order number. These are the usual signs:
- Packing is eating the time you should spend on design or marketing.
- Your stock has taken over a room in your house.
- A busy launch or Black Friday leaves you buried for a week.
- Customers are waiting longer than you'd like for their orders.
What to ask before you sign up
Not every warehouse works the same way, so ask:
- How quickly do orders leave after they come in?
- Can you see your stock levels at any time?
- Will the parcels and packing feel like your brand?
- Who answers when a customer has a problem?
- What happens during your busiest weeks?
How we do it
We run fulfilment for our own seven brands from our warehouse, and we can do the same for yours. For Stonewall, we designed the Rainbow Laces and the shop that sells them, and we manage and fulfil the orders. See how fulfilment works at Make Chaos or tell us about your brand.
