If you are an online retailer, then you are probably familiar with the drop-shipping versus order fulfillment debate. The question is – which format should you choose? When you drop-ship, the product is shipped directly from the warehouse of the supplier/wholesaler/manufacturer to the customer. The retailer simply provides a shipping and billing address to the [...]
Continue Reading...When you run a multichannel retail business, it always pays to have a unified system to track orders, store data, and manage both customers and inventory. Your back-end operations need extra care and thought. Having a well-oiled, integrated back-end system is vital for operational agility and cost efficiency. Specifically, there are three areas to focus [...]
Continue Reading...It happens in every retail operation: you order some merchandise that you think is going to fly off the shelves thanks to excellent promotions, innovative design, and fail-proof calculations of customer demand – except it, well, doesn’t. Non-moving inventory can be a real pain in both retailers’ warehouses and budgets because you’ve paid for it [...]
Continue Reading...If you run an ecommerce business, then you know that inventory takes up a large amount of space and money. As your business grows, so does you inventory – and everything else associated with it. If you want to scale up your operations and grow your business (and who doesn’t!), outsourced warehousing and fulfillment could [...]
Continue Reading...Online retailers have a lot to think about: merchandising, customer service, web design, ecommerce technology, digital marketing, vendor relations – and let’s not even get into all of the day-to-day tasks involved in the fulfillment of customer orders. Not only can operating your own warehouse be a time-consuming endeavor, but for many retailers it can [...]
Continue Reading...What are customers going to do in 2012? After a tremendous wave of shopping through the 2011 holiday season, this year’s Super Bowl, and Valentine’s Day, they’ll probably take a step back from shopping for a month or two until Easter rolls around. Unfortunately, online retailers cannot afford to do the same, no matter how [...]
Continue Reading...Ever wondered what an outsourced fulfillment warehouse looks like on the inside? Honestly, if you already operate your own fulfillment services, it probably doesn’t look much different than yours. Better yet – ever wondered how that perfect order gets from sitting on a warehouse shelf to your customer’s front door safely and accurately? The order [...]
Continue Reading...With Forrester Research forecasting online sales to reach $210 billion in 2012 and $249 billion by 2014, online retailers are at the cusp of tremendous growth and opportunity. So what should you do to grab a substantial piece of that $210 billion pie this year? Based on industry predictions and our own experiences at Fifth [...]
Continue Reading...When was the last time you took a good look at your operations? Most multichannel retailers treat their retail operations as the stepdaughters treated Cinderella – leave it to do the dirty work of the pick and packprocess while they focus on the more glamorous functions like site design, merchandising, and social marketing. But since [...]
Continue Reading...What makes the customer check that top box instead of any of the ones below it? You have been working on your order fulfillment process, refining it to meet your predetermined productivity and efficiency levels. However, experts recommend that you also synchronize your fulfillment services based on your customers’ expectations and treat your retail operations [...]
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