8 Benefits of Shifting Your Amazon Fulfillment to A 3PL

Why did you start your business? To make an impact? To make money doing what you love? To be your own boss? To delight customers with products you love? It probably wasn’t because you have a passion for running a warehouse or looking for all the little and big ways to improve your logistics and fulfillment (unless you’re a part of the team at QuickBox).

In order to allow you to focus on what you love most and why you started your business in the first place, one of the best things you can do is partner with people who have a passion for inventory control, logistics, and order fulfillment. This can allow you to scale your revenue, your team, your impact, and your high-level tasks for bigger wins.

As a bonus, you’ll also save money on leasing, managing, and staffing a warehouse while eliminating headaches from keeping track of all the tiny details involved with fast, friendly, and accurate fulfillment.

Amazon FBA Benefits

Because of its power in the e-commerce market, many brands have come to rely on Amazon FBA (i.e., Fulfilled by Amazon). There are benefits to utilizing Amazon FBA services, such as:

• Amazon Prime eligibility, including Prime promos
• Seamless reverse logistics (i.e., ease of returns)
• Transparent (though expensive and somewhat complicated) fees
• Multi-channel fulfillment to service, for example, you own website along with Amazon
• Fast shipping
• International capabilities
• Transparent return rates (~5% to 15% for most categories, reaching 40% for electronics)

Amazon FBA Drawbacks

There are, of course, also drawbacks to Amazon FBA, which many customers discover too late. These include:

• High fees: Amazon is one of the most expensive fulfillment options.
• Lack of customization: Your package will look just like every other Amazon package, and customers will think they’re buying from Amazon rather than from your unique brand.
• Direct competition: Amazon will promote their products with any similarities over yours. In other words, their own proprietary products could compete directly with yours, putting your brand at a disadvantage.
• Lack of support: If you want or need a dedicated account manager to help you optimize your strategy, discover improvements, or uncover cost savings – or even a real person to speak with about an urgent issue – Amazon likely isn’t the right fit for you. You certainly won’t be partnered with an account manager who treats your business as if it were their own.
• Lack of control: Why does every marketing and sales professional talk about branding? Because it’s vital for differentiating your business so you stand out, people buy from you again, and they even tell their friends about you. With Amazon, you can become just another package with little to no choice in how your products are branded, what marketing materials you can include, how your products are presented, or the end user’s experience. If you want to focus on your company’s and product’s image, reputation, and presence, this lack of control could be a big setback.
• Customer communications: If one of your reasons for starting your business was to delight your customers, Amazon FBA may put you at a disadvantage. Sure, they take care of the customer complaints, returns, and shipping issues, but it also means you lose a critical touch point to communicate directly with your customers and help improve their experience with your brand. The lack of insights can even prevent you from really knowing your customers to better serve them and grow a bigger audience.

Benefits of Shifting to a 3PL

Even if Amazon is your biggest reseller, the drawbacks above could be dealbreakers for growing your business. Is there a better solution?

One of the biggest benefits of using QuickBox is the expertise we provide working with Amazon (as well as other channels), so you can focus on doing what you love. Here are just some of the benefits of shifting to QuickBox for third-party logistics (3PL):

1. Greater control to optimize your warehousing and fulfillment strategy.
2. Dedicated account manager who understands you, your business, and your goals, so they can provide personal attention to help you strategize and grow your business, save on costs, and improve all aspects of fulfillment. You get a real person with the expertise to work with you, help you strategize, and even offer solutions to help resolve complicated logistics issues.
3. Enhanced customization for branding, such as branded packaging, custom inserts, and customer add-ons for a powerful unboxing experience that leaves a lasting impression. In other words, you won’t look like every other package delivered, so your brand can stand out and get noticed and remembered.
4. Flexibility for sales fluctuations, so when you have a spike in sales – such as for Black Friday, over the holidays, in the new year, for pre-beach or wedding season, or due to a surprisingly effective sales promotion – QuickBox has the storage space, staff, and technology to keep up with the increase in sales and can scale with you. We can also keep you up to date in real time, so you know when stocks are running low or if you need to pivot your offering.
5. State-of-the-art shipping speeds, which is vital since Amazon has created a marketplace where anything longer than two days can be seen as “slow.” Fortunately, with multiple warehouses strategically placed around the country, QuickBox can match this expectation to continue to delight your customers.
6. Improve transparency with technology that works for you with an easy-to-navigate and customized dashboard that provides the real-time data and details you need to make better decisions to improve your business.
7. Cost savings due to the optimization of shipping options, relationships with postal carriers, and improved logistics, which help you save even more on postage while improving time to delivery.
8. Increased margins by improving all aspects of your business, delighting your customers, and cutting fulfillment costs.

Ready to move beyond Amazon FBA to gain greater control and improve your margins? Learn more about how QuickBox’s fast, friendly, accurate fulfillment can help you deliver a seamless experience. Contact us today.