8 Reasons You Should Only Use Experienced Apparel Fulfillment Companies

Fashion brands frequently rely on the expertise of apparel fulfillment companies to manage order fulfillment. However, apparel fulfillment requires unique capabilities that many general eCommerce fulfillment providers can’t handle. When looking for a third-party logistics (3PL) provider to support your online apparel business, choose one that understands the many fulfillment challenges associated with clothing and accessories.

NOTE: Not all apparel 3PLs are alike. Some will have special storage equipment and processes unique to items like shoes or garment-on-hanger. Others, like Staci Americas, focus more on fulfillment of smaller, specialty apparel lines with a lower SKU count.

Either way, apparel experience is essential. Here are 8 reasons why you should only use experienced apparel fulfillment companies:

1. Sudden order surges. There are countless reasons why sales for an apparel brand might explode overnight. Whether it’s the peak season rush, a successful marketing initiative, or the paparazzi caught a celebrity wearing one of your tie-dye hoodies, online clothing sellers need a 3PL that can scale up to meet any need. To properly support your operation, your logistics provider must have flexible fulfillment capabilities that can handle the ebb and flow of your business, such as the ability to scale throughput capabilities with demand.

2. Demanding efficiency requirements. By and large, the apparel sector has low profit margins per item. When done manually, fulfilling orders for t-shirts, socks, undergarments, and various other clothing items requires many hands on deck. Once a retailer reaches a certain order volume, bringing on enough labor to keep up with volumes becomes a real cost burden. A good apparel 3PL will recognize the right point in your growth to introduce technology into the equation, offering continued scalability without driving up labor costs or degrading efficiency.

3. Multiple sales channels. While some clothing retailers may choose to sell exclusively online, many brands drive significant volume through retail store chains, as well. Don’t assume your fulfillment partner can handle both channels equally well. The know-how, equipment and processes required for efficient B2B fulfilment are vastly different than those for high-volume, direct-to-consumer (D2C) fulfillment. When it comes to fulfilling brick-and-mortar retailer orders, juggling their different routing guide requirements may quickly become too much to handle for an inexperienced partner. Failure to comply with routing guides at major retailers will result in expensive chargebacks. Seasoned apparel fulfillment companies will have the right processes, technology, and experience to manage the complexities of multi-channel fulfillment.

4. Complex inventory management. A fashion collection may contain a dozen or more styles, and each style may encompass several individual clothing items and accessories. Many of these items often look similar in their packaging, opening the door to errors during the picking process. You’ll want RF-based picking solutions – voice pick systems are one example – that automatically flag mis-picks. Not all apparel fulfillment companies have the right technology and processes to handle high levels of inventory complexity.

5. High customer return volumes. Online shoppers return up to 30% of standard eCommerce orders, and apparel gets returned at even higher rates than other types of goods. For example, consumers may regularly buy multiple sizes of an item with the explicit intent to return those that don’t fit. Because of this, online sellers tend to have lenient returns policies and need apparel fulfillment companies with robust returns management programs in place. To make sure it can manage your returns properly, look for an apparel 3PL with dedicated returns space, tech-enabled returns management processes, and data collection capabilities that allow you to identify trends and problems by SKU.

6. Custom packaging needs. While plain brown boxes are fine for many product types, consumers tend to have a more personal connection to the clothing and accessories they purchase. The unboxing experience means more to shoppers in the fashion world and becomes part of the end-to-end customer experience. Not all providers are able to offer truly custom packaging. Amazon FBA, for instance, will simply place your product in an Amazon-branded box with no special filler materials or inserts. It’s important to work with apparel fulfillment companies that offer the custom packaging capabilities necessary to reflect your brand.

7. Shipping in high volumes. Successful online clothing retailers usually ship high volumes of small packages – but do they ship enough to get discounts on parcel shipping? By leveraging the combined order volumes from all its customers, a fulfillment services company gains bargaining power with major parcel carriers. This benefit can generate significant savings for apparel brands by reducing unnecessary parcel spend. For example, let’s say you ship 50,000 orders per month. If you leverage the aggregate freight spend of your 3PL to cut your parcel shipping rate by $0.75 per shipment, you’ve suddenly saved $450,000 per year.

8. Demand for fast delivery. Consumers want their apparel orders fulfilled quickly and accurately. Unless you’re selling a unique item, failure to provide rapid fulfillment can cost you repeat business. In the US, you can’t reach 100% of a national customer base from a single facility, so you may want to align with a fulfillment 3PL that has a nationwide fulfillment center network. While splitting inventory into multiple locations will increase inventory challenges, it will also reduce your parcel shipping costs and allow you to reach customers in a day or two.

Looking for an Apparel Fulfillment Company?

Don’t select just any 3PL to oversee your apparel fulfillment needs. At Staci Americas, we have broad experience helping apparel brands handle all the above issues and more. To see how we can support your online apparel operation, please contact us today.