5 Steps to Create a Strong Brand Identity in 2021

Posted on by Kaylyn Perry

How to Create a Strong and Scalable Brand Identity: a Beginner’s Guide

In 2021, there are many touch points that customers can interact with your brand through. With so many channels and so many competing businesses out there trying to make a name for themselves, it’s become all the more important to have a strong brand identity that scales across any channel.

There’s digital channels like your website, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and other social media channels, and there’s also the offline experience, which includes your products and your packaging.

What is brand identity?

Your brand identity isn’t just your logo, your business or the products that you sell. It’s also the values you stand for, the experience you provide and the feelings this creates for your customer.

These intangible qualities of your business are ultimately what captures your customer’s mind, heart and attention.

Your brand identity also shapes the way people communicate your brand to others through word of mouth. Or as Amazon founder Jeff Bezos says, “Branding is what people say about you when you’re not in the room.”

With that in mind, here’s how to create a strong brand identity that scales.

Packaging

  1. Understand who you are selling to and the kind of experience you want to give them.

All great brands start with their customers, so knowing the qualities of the demographic your product or service is aimed at is incredibly important to shape the best possible experience for them.

Alongside their age, gender, income and occupation, some key questions to ask to identify them better could include:

  • What interests and challenges your customer?
  • What is the way they like to be communicated to, and on what channel do they most spend their time?
  • What is their expectation of the way a brand should act in terms of ethics and values?
  • What would your brand mean to them, and what experience would they be seeking from it?
  1. Come up with a strong value proposition, mission statement and personality.

Once you’ve gleaned the above information from the demographic you want to target, you have what you need to form a brand guidelines and build out your brand’s visual and written aspects.

This document should be stored in a place that everyone in your team can access for brand consistency as you start to scale. It also informs how your brand behaves in every interaction it has with customers, while laying out the key essence of your brand’s identity.

This includes:

  • A strong value proposition. This is what identifies your brand as unique in your particular industry. In order to succeed and build a strong identity, you need to be able to articulate clearly what makes your business different from the competition. What can you offer people that your competitors can’t? Keep an eye on other companies like yours are doing with their branding and see what works and what misses the mark.
  • A mission statement. This will help you to act with intention in every decision you make in business. It also helps you form a clear vision for the future. What is the reason for your brand’s existence? Once you have figured this out, it can be shared across every channel with customers and become what they know and trust you for.
  • Your personality and tone. There is no reason why you can’t think of your brand as personable like a human being – in fact, to connect with customers, it helps to identify human qualities within it. The language you use is just as important as visual attributes to represent your brand, so get specific on how you want to communicate. Is the tone of voice you’d like to have slick and professional, or informal and cheerful?
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  1. Think about how you can bring that same experience to every channel.

As your brand starts to scale, the touchpoints you have with customers will start to stack up across multiple mediums. The most important thing to keep in mind is keeping your messaging aligned across all of them, which is where your brand guidelines will come in handy.

Each channel will need its own treatment (think varying image dimensions and character limits) but there should be unifying elements, too. How can you bring your brand’s unique identity to your website, your social media channels, your product packaging, and your shipping packaging?

Tip: For ecommerce brands, a great way to translate your brand from online to offline and establish a link for your customers is to use custom packaging that uses your unique logo, colors, icons, or illustrations. If you want to bring your mission statement into it, a custom card is always a great option for telling your story.

  1. Keep it consistent. 

Consistency is absolutely key, so don’t send customers mixed messages about your brand’s identity. As you scale up, any visual or written content you associate with your brand and share with your audience should be relayed back to the founding document you’ve created of your brand’s identity.

If you have the time and resources, it’s a good idea to break the master document down to a brand guidelines for each specific channel to ensure any content or communication is as effective as possible.

  1. Track performance metrics to measure the way your brand is resonating. 

Once you’ve shared your brand identity with the world, it’s important to monitor feedback from your customers to see whether your communications are hitting the mark.

Keep track of engagement through likes, comments, discussions, surveys, emails, and Google Analytics to see how people are interacting with your brand and if the sentiments coming through are mostly positive or negative.

If you have a team that’s in charge of different channels, ensure there is a reporting system in place (such as a fortnightly or monthly meeting document) where you can review engagement and feedback on your brand, and look for room for improvement.

Wrapping It Up

We hope these ideas for scaling a strong brand identity that scales have helped you! Crafting a strong brand identity means consistently using your unique brand colors, language and other aspects until your brand achieves recognition for what you stand for beyond the name and logo.

6 Tips to Manage Your Amazon Inventory Like a Pro

Posted on by Kaylyn Perry

Managing your Amazon inventory is key to be successful on Amazon. Don’t ignore your stock health and risk your reputation because of poor management.

You may not believe it, but a healthy inventory is one of the cornerstones for a healthy Amazon business.

Improper inventory strategy generates serious impact on your business:

·  Product listings go down on search results

·  Sales and customer reviews take a bad hit

·  You can’t accept orders for back-ordered items

Proper Amazon inventory management attracts shoppers. It also reduces stock costs, spoilage and losses.

An efficient stock handling strategy helps Amazon sellers keep products in stock and sales flowing. It’s also crucial to keep an ample inventory while satisfying customers’ and seasonal demands.

To help you keep a great inventory management, we’ll share 6 strategic tips to handle your Amazon inventory like a pro seller.

1 – Use the Amazon Inventory Management Tools

Small businesses tend to manage and track inventory on spreadsheets. This is time-consuming and prone to error.

You can keep better track of your Amazon inventory through Seller Central. The dashboard has a suite of free stock management tools to automate your inventory.

Amazon Selling Coach

The Amazon Selling Coach reviews sales trends and gets an estimate for the days your current Amazon inventory can cover.

The data is based on actual sales figures, which is perfect to forecast inventory purchases. You can plot out trends to determine required stock levels over different seasons.

Manage Inventory tool

The Manage Inventory tool displays detailed data about your products. Amazon sellers can get a comprehensive report to make sound inventory decisions. It also allows you to:

  • Add new products
  • Change pricing and/or quantity
  • View seller fees per product
  • View active, inactive, and suppressed listings
  • Survey FBA shipments at every stage
  • Track FBA or merchant-fulfilled stock levels

Manage Excess Inventory

This tool provides you with information to help manage your inventory levels. Amazon calculates excess inventory based on:

  • Economic inputs – Unit cost and recovery rate
  • Sales data – Demand forecasts and price elasticity

The Estimated Excess quantity calculated by the units for which the cost of holding your inventory would likely be more than the cost of taking an action to reduce excess units.

This value is based on product demand and your costs (fees, unit costs, and cost of capital inputs), and estimates the level of inventory that could give you the highest return on your inventory investment.

If the following conditions are met, Amazon will identify your items in stock as excess inventory:

  • At least one unit of inventory is more than 90 days old.
  • The product has over 90 days of supply.
  • The cost of holding your inventory is more than the cost of taking action to reduce excess units.

Inventory Health Report

Access the Inventory Health Report to review the total unfulfillable and sellable quantities of products. This data is ideal to study sales rates at different seasons, and inventory health.

The report also shows:

·  How many items have been sold in the last 30 days

·  Weeks of cover based on the previous 30 days of sales

·  The lowest competing price for each product listing

Removal Report

The Removal Report displays Amazon’s recommendations for product removals. Here, sellers can choose to have products returned, liquidated or removed. This way, you can avoid being charged with a long-term storage fee.

2 – Understand Your Inventory Turnover and Sell Through Rates

Do you know how fast you sell and replenish your Amazon inventory? That’s your inventory turnover rate. It can be found by dividing the total sales by the average inventory during a given time period.

Inventory Turnover Rate = Total Sales / Average Inventory

You should also determine your sell through rate to optimize your Amazon inventory management.

Sell through rate = (No. of sales / Stock on-hand) x 1000

The sell through rate shows inventory sold compared to inventory purchased. It indicates how quickly you’re selling inventory, and if a specific product sale is paying off.

Knowing your Amazon inventory turnover and sell through rates will point out the areas you need to focus on to optimize your inventory.

·  Track how many times you have sold and replenished stock

·  Estimate the stock levels you need to keep between inventory shipments

·  Avoid over-buying or under-buying when you reorder stock

·  Plan inventory purchases and setting discounts

·  Analyze pricing and marketing strategies

·  Close gaps between manufacturing and the supply chain

·  Move through slow-selling items

NOTE: To get your average inventory, add the beginning inventory and the ending inventory, then divide it by 2.

3 – Understand Your Supply Chain Lead Times

Supply chain refers to the inventory movement from initial sourcing to arrival in a warehouse. Lead time is the timespan it takes for stock to arrive once ordered.

Know your supply chain and lead times. This data will allow you to spot the nuances involved in sourcing, receiving and storing your Amazon inventory.

Sellers who understand their supplier lead times can avoid ordering too much stock, and ordering too late. It is also great info to stay on top of manufacturing and delivery schedules.

4 – Use Inventory Forecasting

Inventory management requires precise forecasting to determine when to order more inventory, and how much.

Look at it this way–Sometimes you will need a lot of inventory to meet demand. Some other moments will demand less stock.

Predicting how much inventory is needed is called inventory forecasting. It is broadly based on re-order quantities, sales trends and inventory levels.

Forecasting Amazon inventory is crucial to tackle sales fluctuations. For example, holidays affect inventory because of peaks or drops in customer demand.

Proper forecasting will let you increase goods in high demand during peak sales cycles. You’ll also be able to decrease slow moving products during certain seasons.

Related content: 5 Ways Inventory Financing Can Grow Your Amazon Sales and Company

5 – Strategic Promotions and Sales

Seasonal discounts and promotions speed up sales, but be careful you don’t drain your inventory. Being out of stock at such times just creates backorders, bad reviews, and low Amazon rankings.

Plan your promotions to avoid setbacks on your Amazon inventory. A good strategy is to set a threshold for a specific set of promoted products. Once you hit that number, stop the promotion to avoid running out of items.

Check Amazon’s Seller Central constantly during a promotion. If you begin to run out of stock, you can stop the promotion at once. Then, you can increase prices to slow down demand.

A Few Extra Tips

Keep Some Safety Stock (if Needed)

If luck strikes, you’ll deal with an unexpected high demand for your stock. So, you may need to store some safety products beforehand.

But, how do you decide if it’s the right thing to do? And how much is ‘the right amount’? Review each listing for the past 12 and decode:

  • Maximum daily sales
  • Maximum lead time
  • Average daily sales volume
  • Average lead time

Then, just do the math:

Safety Stock = (Max. daily sales x Max. lead time) – (Av. daily sales vol. x Av. lead time)

This will give you a calculated idea of the safety stock you’ll need for each product.

Consider Dropshipping

When you drop-ship, you buy products from a retailer or manufacturer who fulfill the customer orders directly.

This frees you from shipping and keeping an inventory. Instead, you simply list products and tell the supplier when one is sold. Then, the manufacturer takes care of the rest.

The main downside of dropshipping is that you cannot ensure that packing and shipping is handled in a proper way. So, shoppers may get damaged products or no products at all.

Amazon Liquidation Program

If no option above is worth the effort or you think that it will hurt you in the long run, you can choose the Amazon Liquidation Program.

Liquidating inventory can often mean taking a loss. It may just be the best choice, however, if keeping the inventory means losing even more.

Just note that Amazon offers only between 2.5% and 10% of the item’s original listed price. Also, you can’t back out once the product has been accepted.

Final Thoughts

It doesn’t matter if your inventory needs are big or small. Managing your Amazon inventory is key to be successful on Amazon.

Apply the tips in this post as best you can to take control of your Amazon inventory. Don’t ignore your stock health and risk your reputation because of poor management.

Better to understand the problems you face when you let you run out of inventory run out, and how you can prevent this.

How To Fight Back Against Credit Card Chargebacks

Posted on by Kaylyn Perry

The holiday shopping season is winding down for ecommerce merchants across the internet. At the same time, credit card chargeback season is just ramping up. January is typically the worst month for chargebacks and merchants that are unprepared can suffer catastrophic financial losses.

What is a Credit Card Chargeback?

In simple terms, a chargeback is a credit card transaction that is being disputed. A Visa, MasterCard, Discover or American Express cardholder has certain protections against credit card abuses. The card brands typically give the consumer between 60 and 180 days to review their charges. If there is a charge the consumer wants to dispute, they simply call the card issuer and initiate a chargeback. The chargeback is then issued against the corresponding merchant that processed the original transaction.

Chargeback Reason Codes

Each card issuing brand has approximately twenty different chargeback reason codes. Depending on what the consumer states is the reason for the dispute, the customer service agent will then select a chargeback reason Codes that closely matches. The Chargebacks typically fall into one of three categories:

  1. Authorization: If a merchant processes an Authorization without the customer permission
  2. Consumer Disputes: Product not received, not as described, didn’t cancel reoccurring, not as described are the most common
  3. Fraud: Any instance where a credit card was stolen

When a merchant is issued a credit card chargeback, it will contain details on the original transaction (customer name, dollar mount, date of transaction, etc.). Most importantly, it’ll also contain the specific chargeback reason code. The chargeback reason codes are the key to identifying and eliminating the cause of future chargebacks.

What is a Chargeback Ratio?

The chargeback ratio is simply the number of chargebacks divided by the number of approved transactions within a given month. For example, getting five chargebacks on 1,000 transactions in a month equals 0.50% chargeback ratio. If your chargeback ratio is consistently above 0.75%, you bank or processor may deem your business too risky and they will close your merchant account.

Three Main Causes of Credit Card Chargebacks

There are basically three main causes of Chargebacks. The least problematic cause is “operator error,” which is basically a self-inflicted wound by the merchant.

Here is a sample of merchant errors which will result in chargebacks:

  1. Ship out wrong items
  2. Ship to wrong address
  3. Not shipping in a timely manner
  4. No shipment tracking/signature on delivery
  5. Lost, stolen or damaged packages
  6. Poor customer service
  7. Not refunding a returned package
  8. Not clearly disclosing refund and return policies
  9. Issuing a refund but failing to cancel further subscription billing
  10. Not making a customer happy

Any well run operation should have zero chargebacks but a poorly managed business could get hit with 30%+ of each month’s sales volume. Ouch!

Every one of these errors can easily be avoided if the merchant simply does good business. Fulfillment, customer service and billing accuracy are the fundamentals of any ecommerce-based business. Eliminate any issues within your operation and you can easily avoid chargebacks going forward.

The second area to focus on is fraud and stolen credit cards. Stolen credit card numbers are available on the black market for less the $0.05. A thief will spend five cents so they can use it to purchase a $2,000 laptop. Because the ROI is so high, this is the main method thieves use to steal products from your inventory.

To make matters worse, the consumer that had their card stolen will also call their credit card-issuing bank and hit you with the chargeback against the $2,000 charge. The merchant ends up losing merchandise, shipping costs, processing fees and eats a $35 chargeback fee. Unchecked fraud can easily put a merchant out of business!

Fortunately, the actual amount of online fraud is fairly manageable. There are a myriad of fraud detection, prevention and countermeasures available. The simplest tool is Address Verification Service (AVS) and the 3 or 4-digit security code associated with every credit card. This is the barebones level of fraud protection and should be used by every merchant.

Your shopping cart will typically securely connect to the credit card networks via a payment gateway. Payment gateways typically have additional fraud scrubbing features like volume/velocity check, black or whitelisting and the ability to customize how you approve, decline, or flag a transaction for manual review. A merchant should consider turning on or upgrading their gateway if the monthly chargebacks exceed 0.25%.

If you sell high value products, then it will be worth investing in and using a more advanced fraud prevention solution. Third party fraud scrubbing solutions are extremely sophisticated and may have 300+ additional tools to protect your ecommerce business. Things like device fingerprinting, Geo-Fencing, BIN-block, global negative databases are just a few of the many tools available.

The final and most difficult source of chargebacks to contend with is basic consumer fraud. Your customers know they can chargeback and dispute any transaction on their monthly credit card statements. Running short on rent? Need gas money? Spent too much on holiday presents? Regret a purchase choice and can’t make a return? Consumers can inappropriately or incorrectly use a chargeback simply because they often can without recourse.

Since these types of credit card chargebacks are so random, it makes it virtually impossible to predict and counteract. Every single online merchant or business has incurred these types of chargebacks and unfortunately, this is simply the cost of doing business. For most merchants, the number of chargebacks caused by consumer fraud is typically less than 0.25% of the gross monthly sales.

Conclusion

Credit card chargebacks are a direct hit to the bottom line and can kill your profit margin if they are not prevented or addressed, where possible. Preventing chargeback requires a bit of work. Look at the incoming chargeback notifications, determine what is the root cause of the chargeback (Operations, Fraud or Bad Customer), then take the corrective action to prevent the next chargeback from debiting your bank account.

Preparing for the Holiday Ecommerce Rush Starts in the Summer: Five Things to Remember

Posted on by Kaylyn Perry

Any growing ecommerce or retail business knows the holidays are critical to their health and success, as it’s the time of year that typically brings in the most revenue. That’s why it’s important to begin strategizing and planning during the heat of the summer to ensure your brand is ready to go. The National Retail Federation reported that in 2019, by the first week of November, more than half of consumers had already begun their holiday shopping and that people planned on spending more than $1,000, on average, for items including decorations, gifts, and other purchases for themselves and family.

With non-store sales rising year-over-year, the fourth quarter presents a huge opportunity for digital retailers. Additionally, the recent global pandemic has caused consumers to stay home and shop online more. The fourth quarter presents a huge opportunity for businesses to increase their profits. In 2020, with more consumers already familiar with online shopping because of the global pandemic, the opportunity may even be bigger to capture more sales.

But what do retailers need to consider in order to position themselves for success? We have five key areas to focus on when building your holiday ecommerce strategy.

Email marketing

Email marketing is a great way to boost holiday sales. As competition continues to increase, it’s important to take early action to ensure your promotions are at the top of customers’ inboxes and minds.

Build the right list

Well before the holiday ecommerce rush, you should run lead generation campaigns to build subscriber lists. Additionally, nurture your relationship with existing customers, subscribers, and fans throughout the year. Offer one-time discount codes for signing up or other perks to create a refined list to use when it’s time to push out holiday sales and promotions.

Supplement marketing initiatives

Effective email marketing works hand-in-hand with other marketing initiatives. You should always plan to promote Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales, but there are other ways to grab your subscribers’ attention, too.

  • Gift Guides. Do you have more than one product offering? If so, use the upcoming holiday season to organize your offerings into guides for mom or dad, gifts under $20, or stocking stuffer ideas. Feature your guide on your website or landing page and create click-through links to include in emails to your subscribers.
  • Contests: Think creatively about how to generate more buzz around your brand. Contests are a great way to encourage your subscribers to refer their friends or recruit new subscribers.
  • Create urgency. Around the holidays, urgency can be created in a number of ways. For example, low-inventory items can be designated with banners. Countdown clocks are also effective at reminding customers about the last day to purchase in order to guarantee to ship for the holidays.

Make your language stand out

Direct subject lines are the best way to engage your customers. Are you offering a gift guide? Say something like “Gift guide for the fitness enthusiast,” or “Best gifts under $20.” Throughout the holiday season, test out subject lines and tweak them.

Make sure the language is exciting, but keep the body of the email direct and concise.  Additionally, check to ensure every link works, especially during the call to action.

Create mobile-friendly emails

With more customers using their smartphones for research and purchases, it’s important to make sure your emails are user-friendly on those devices. You should avoid small text or graphics so everything is easy to read. Use descriptive alt-text on images to accommodate users who have email media turned off on their phones.

It’s a good idea to use “mobile view” to see what your emails will look like when displayed on a phone. Send out test emails to yourself and other team members to make sure things look good.

Content and SEO

SEO takes time. If you’re hoping to rank for your keywords in November and December, you’ll want to get going in the summertime. Start by determining the keywords you want to rank for. Consider what sold best last year during the holidays, which products make the best gifts, and what trends your products fit into.

Once you’ve identified keywords, you can focus on ranking. Update the product descriptions and your website’s metadata to include the keywords you’re targeting. Additionally, it’s a good idea to create blogs and other content that reference keywords, too.

Amazon Listings

If selling on Amazon is part of your general or holiday ecommerce strategy, you’ll want to make sure you up your Amazon marketing game. Make sure you’ve optimized your product description on Amazon so its search engine finds your product. Be sure to add holiday-related keywords like gifts, gift-giving, sales, stocking stuffers, and more. It’s important to keep in mind that you’re writing for Amazon search engines and customers, so keyword order, frequency, and the overall listing copy must flow for readability.

Update your photos with holiday flair. Products with images that fit with the holiday theme will stick in customers’ minds. Consider changing up colors or have photo settings be family or holiday-centric.

Double-check your inventory to ensure you have enough products on hand by reviewing sales reports and prioritizing top sellers. If you’re using Fulfillment by Amazon, check the warehouse deadlines, and be sure your stock is ready to go on time.

Social Media, Influencers and Public Relations

How can they help with holiday ecommerce?

Holidays are a great time to have a little fun with your brand’s social media channels, relationships with influencers, and the media. These three groups work hand-in-hand to generate brand awareness which can lead to increased sales. Be sure to leverage all of them as you prepare for, and head into, Q4.

Social media

Social media is a casual space where you can relax and engage in a more informal way with your audience. That’s why you should get creative as you celebrate the holidays. Make fun graphics, run holiday giveaways, craft content that’s on-brand and festive. For example, if your company sells cookware, opt for a “12 days of recipes” campaign. At the least, wish your followers a happy holiday through messages or a short video from the team.

Influencer marketing

Social media influencers are helpful year-round, but especially at the holidays. First, look for influencers who your customers follow and engage with. Then, find fun ways to collaborate with them. Keep in mind that you must reach out early to key influencers, as many work months in advance to plan their content.

Have a budget, benefit, and product for the influencers you wish to target. This is their business, and they seek to provide value to their followers. Offering a product for them to test, a discount code for their followers and either upfront or commission-based payment are ways to stand out among the other brands seeking collaborative partnerships.

Public relations

Many popular online publications look for holiday content early. As with influencers, it’s important to pitch journalists as soon as possible to get on their coverage calendars. It’s a good idea to pitch your products as part of gift guides and roundups. Make sure to pitch journalists individually, noting the types of guides they’ve published in the past and the articles they’ve covered.

Strengthen Manufacturing Relationships

In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, businesses saw their production capabilities shut down for several weeks. Timed with the Chinese New Year, companies that had planned for that annual reduction in production suddenly saw those issues compounded. This magnified the need for diversified supply chains. Be sure to have established relationships with a number of manufacturers, have supply on-hand, and the ability to scale up production when your marketing efforts increase your sales.

Ready, Set, Grow

Now that you know the key to Q4 and holiday ecommerce success starts with early preparation, start planning. You have several key marketing tactics to consider, but, if you need help, consult an expert like our strategic marketing partner, Enventys Partners.

Your Guide to Finding the Right Outsourced Fulfillment Provider

Posted on by Kaylyn Perry

5 questions to ask when selecting an outsourced fulfillment provider

Supply chain, including logistics and distribution, is a part of doing business when you’ve got a product to deliver.  With many marketplaces guaranteeing 2-day shipping, merchants are feeling the pressure to keep pace. For large brands with the scale and capital to meet these standards, there may be little friction or concern with how they will manage.  And, this is where, as a growing business, knowing when to insource and when to outsource to an expert fulfillment provider becomes an essential tactical lever.

Many SMBs decide to outsource their logistics with hopes that it will free up their operational bandwidth to focus on product innovation and expanding sales channels. In theory, this is true. The key is finding the right partner.

In recent years, the outsourced logistics landscape has grown to be more innovative than ever before, opening up more options for merchants. Speed, flexibility, and technology integrations are on the forefront of merchant expectations to operationally keep pace with consumer expectations. In the outsourced fulfillment space, you, more or less, have two options, the traditional 3PL (third party logistics) provider and the newly emerging 4PL (fourth-party logistics) provider.

What Differentiates a 4PL from a 3PL?

The difference between a 3PL provider and a 4PL provider is scale and breadth.

A 3PL owns the warehouse/s, maintains the staff, and handles all inventory management and fulfillment workflows on behalf of the merchant. 3PLs typically own between one and ten warehouses and most focus on providing coverage for a specific region of the US.

3PL services are a portion of what a 4PL provides.  Most 4PLs have a variety of warehouses, often including multiple 3PLs, in their network to provide more comprehensive shipping capabilities, storage capabilities, and geographical coverage to merchants. Beyond more extensive fulfillment and distribution coverage, 4PLs can provide more visibility into a merchant’s full supply chain through technology integrations that can connect data points from sales through delivery.

Ware2Go is an example of a  4PL provider that has proved successful at building a logistics and distribution footprint that offers merchants one to two-day shipping across most any product needs. Ware2Go provides merchants with a WMS (warehouse management system) that connects all sales channels to one fulfillment network and even offers merchants a no contracts service model, enabling risk-free scalability.

Fulfillment

5 Questions to Ask When Selecting an Outsourced Fulfillment Provider.

At the point when a business realizes that outsourcing fulfillment is the right answer, there is still a rather intensive vetting process ahead of them, especially if they’ve opted for a 3PL over a 4PL, which may do the warehouse vetting for them. Let these five questions guide you in making the “best-fit” decision for your business.

  1. Can Your Warehousing & Fulfillment Needs Be Handled? Start this search by taking a step back and evaluating the specific criteria your products require from their logistics provider. Do you have perishable goods that need to be stored and shipped at specific temperatures? How about fragile items that need special care? Do you require specialized kitting workflows? How much storage space will you need, and how will these volumes shift with seasonality?Once you’re able to pinpoint the exact warehousing and fulfillment services you need, fishing for detailed feedback from each potential provider will differentiate those that can meet your requirements from those that are not best-fit.
  1. Can You Reach Your Customers At the Speed Required? It is important to understand each warehouse’s geographic coverage and how that aligns with your key customer markets and their shipping expectations. If you need to reach all customers with two-day shipping and only want to pay ground shipping rates, you need to narrow your search to partners that can meet those expectations.While identifying ideal shipping speeds and coverage may sound simple, it’s important to maintain a forward-thinking lens as you make this decision. Today, many marketplaces require two-day shipping, and one-day shipping may be on the horizon. As shipping speeds become more influential to customer shopping patterns, it’s essential to consider how your fulfillment provider will be able to keep pace and scale with your needs.
  1. What Are the Varied and Fixed Costs? You can expect that most outsourced fulfillment providers operate off an internal “rate card” that line-items the fees associated with each process, such as storage, picking, packing, and delivery. Generally, these rates will vary based on storage space requirements, order volumes, product weights, and transportation modes.Be sure that you’re pressing for additional fees and contract terms associated with the pricing model. For example, 4PL providers may charge a technology fee or an additional fee to access their client support team. It’s important to evaluate the nominal value of these services and the short and long term benefit they will bring to your business. Contract minimums are another important factor to consider. Most 3PLs will require a 1+ year contract for their service that requires merchants to guarantee a consistent volume of shipped orders and storage space. On the flip side, some 4PL providers are beginning to shift to a monthly pay-as-you-go model allowing merchants to flex their fulfillment up or down with demand throughout the year.
  1. How Responsive is the Support Team? The trade-off to outsourcing your fulfillment workflows is often visibility and control, which is why it’s vital to have a strong understanding of what your partner’s client support will provide to you. You’ll want to consider both sides of client support, the warehouse teand handles all am physically performing yourDig in and ask questions about on-time fulfillment speeds, dock to stock time, and security measures to understand their warehousing processes and service levels. Ask about the speed to resolve issues, the number of clients to each team member, and the hours of client support services. It’s fair to ask for a reference from an active client before signing a contract to ensure that you’re comfortable with the support and service you will receive.
  1. Are Technology Integrations Possible? Beyond the “managed services” component of 3PLs, there is often a technology component associated with 4PLs, typically provided in the form of an online warehouse management system (WMS).Integrated technology is a huge advantage for merchants. It bridges the gap between delivery (where sales and operations meet) and every other part of the business. It allows a full-funnel view of both the supply chain and the sales cycle for more accurate customer acquisition costs (CAC) and cost to serve figures.Consider your current tech platforms and how inventory and delivery data would enrich them. Most merchants see tremendous value by plugging their order management systems, marketplace sales channels, and ERP systems into their WMS. Additionally, the WMS will provide  full visibility reporting on the daily fulfillment workflows, including on-time order speeds, inventory volumes, and fulfillment delays.

Final Thoughts. 

As the e-commerce landscape continues to evolve, and shoppers expect a faster, cheaper, and more transparent shopping experience, businesses should be strategic about building their product and distribution. While outsourcing fulfillment workflows are typically the most affordable and effective way to manage, finding the ‘right’ partner will strengthen operational workflows, provide an exceptional customer delivery experience, and ultimately drive your business growth forward.

Interested in talking to a 4PL provider we stand by? Reach out to Ware2Go, and they can walk you through the process of building a comprehensive fulfillment and distribution network fit to your needs.

How to Build a Strong Supplier Relationship

Posted on by Kaylyn Perry

Building a strong supplier relationship is key to creating quality products. A report from First Insight found that 53% of customers rate quality as the most important factor when considering a product. When you have quality products, you’ll make more sales.

Using a service like Kickfurther is a great way to get the funding you need for inventory management, but it’s up to you to establish a good rapport with the companies you’re sourcing from. Use the following tips to help strengthen your supply chain management and create products your customers will love.

Stick With a Few Key Suppliers

On average, a company that spends $1 billion in supplies will have around 3,000 suppliers. That can be a lot of supplier relationships to keep track of, which is why some experts suggest the 80/20 rule. This rule means you should spend 80% of your budget on your top 20% of suppliers.

If you’re dealing with international sourcing, you’ll want to spread out your supplier base to mitigate risks from political instability or natural disasters. About 55% of overseas suppliers would not be able to maintain their workflow during a disaster, so it’s important to prepare for the worst.

Understand How Your Suppliers Work

Understanding your supplier’s workflow has several benefits. You’ll show respect for its business as well as your commitment to coprosperity. When both of your companies are working well, you’ll both profit.

A great example of this practice in action is Toyota. It has an entire supplier relationship management team that conducts regular company-to-company reviews and manages all concerns and requests from every Toyota division. This keeps both Toyota and its suppliers on the same page so they work as partners.

Need help with this? Consider inventory management tools and services to track inventory, such as Cin7, Ordoro, Fishbowl, or Veeqo.

Talk Through Misunderstandings

Inevitably, you’ll eventually encounter some misunderstanding or problem with your supplier. Maybe it provided you with a batch of faulty ingredients or you’re having trouble collecting payments, meaning you’re going to be late on your bills.

Whatever the case, be open and honest to avoid causing the issue to elevate or get personal. Work toward a resolution that will make both parties feel secure.

Provide Valuable Feedback To Boost Supplier Relationships

Be open about a supplier’s success or failures. Take Honda, for example. It sends a report card to its suppliers every month that discusses the quality and quantity of the supplies it ordered. That way, if something goes wrong, the supplier can work on fixing it right away. You may also want to consider a periodic SWOT analysis to determine what’s working, what isn’t, and how to change that.

Forge a Lasting Partnership

Remember, your relationship with suppliers is a two-way street. As long as you treat them as a partner rather than a subordinate, you should be progressing toward a customer-supplier relationship both parties value for their ongoing success.