Fulfillment services in detail – this is the topic of the second episode in the second season of our exclusive radio series for international online sales and deliveries. The episode aired on February 27th live on Darik Cafe’s morning show. Participants in the episode were again our CEO Svetlozar Dimitrov and our CCO Vihren Biset. The two shared with the radio listeners expert details about fulfillment services and how they help online merchants grow their business locally and internationally.
“Literally, fulfillment services represent a complete logistics process fulfillment” – specified Biset when asked by presenters Dyuzev and Raychev what exactly is fulfillment. The process originated as early as the 1970s and mainly serves postal parcels. To date, the service is an indispensable part of the business of online merchants from the United States and Western Europe. In Eastern Europe, however, the situation is different. Given the weaker economic development of the region, the trend for online stores to outsource this unchanged eCommerce process to fulfillment partners is still emerging.
Briefly, fulfillment partners receive and store online merchants’ products and manage inventory. They process the orders received by the online store by collecting the products required for each order from their respective locations in the warehouse, packaging them and preparing them for delivery. Specialized fulfillment operators such as euShipments.com automate all possible processes as well as create customized ones. Examples are generating barcodes, creating and placing additional labels such as warranty terms, descriptions, user manuals, bundling (creating sets of products), assembling large quantities of products for B2B sales, etc.
“They are not for everyone” – Dimitrov and Biset are categorical. Before an online merchant decides whether and how he will use fulfillment services for his business, he must be consulted (ethically) by experts in the field. Not every eCommerce business can benefit from outsourcing to a fulfillment partner and it is important to do the math in advance.
As Dimitrov summarized, “the fulfillment partner turns fixed costs such as the rent of warehouse premises, salaries, bills, into variables”. In this way, online merchants have more flexibility and manage their resources more independently. In addition to the financial side of fulfillment services, however, there are many extra factors that must be taken into account when choosing a fulfillment partner.
Bisset added that until a decade ago, ‘base’ fulfillment operators – offering only fulfillment services – were a common phenomenon. Over time, however, practice shows that this is an unsuccessful business model, therefore, to date, most companies offer a combination of fulfillment and logistics services – domestic, or most often – cross-border deliveries. Consolidating e-fulfillment and cross-border deliveries into a single partner optimizes the time and costs of eCommerce businesses.
Consideration should also be given to the flexibility of the partner in terms of deliveries – what destinations it covers, how many last-mile partners and delivery methods it has integrated – in general, but also at the level of an individual country. *We remind you that euShipments.com provides at least 2 shipping options – for implementation in our clients’ check-out pages. As our experience shows, this is the minimum for international eCommerce competitiveness.
There are many more aspects to selecting the right fulfillment partner that Darik Cafe’s studio conversation failed to cover. Our team is available for a free business consultation with any online merchant who needs a professional analysis of goals and opportunities regarding fulfillment and cross-border logistics. As always, we thank the hosts Mihail Dyuzev and Ivo Raychev for their hospitality. Don’t miss the next episode of “Online sales and deliveries” – only on Darik Radio.
Watch the full season two pilot episode here:
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