Recommended 3PL / Fulfillment companies

getconnected

Hi

I'm looking to see if anyone here can recommend specific 3PL / fulfillment companies, ideally around Dublin.

We've contacted a few companies in the past and due to the pricing offered, we put it to the sideline, so now I'm looking into the option again, so any advice is really appreciated.

Whilst I don't know how many orders we'll have per week as it would be a new venture, 30+ orders a week wouldn't be unreasonable. Weight wise, we'd be under 10kg, and each order would roughly be around the size of a box of A4 paper.

I know a few members here have mentioned they use such companies, but there's very few actual companies mentioned.

Thanks in advance. :-)

JMR

I can recommend 2Flow (www.2flow.ie)
They are part of the Cyclone group of companies and based just off exit 5 on the M50.
We use them for storage, order fulfillment and delivery

Let me know if you need any further info

getconnected

Hi JMR
I've been in touch with 2Flow before.
Their pricing was quite prohibitive.
For example, we were offered:
Delivery - €6.95
Pick & Pack €1.65 for the first item, plus €0.50 per additional item.

When a lot of our orders are around 3-4 items, this puts the 4 items at €10.10 in total for their fees.

This is why I was looking for alternatives.

JMR

getconnected wrote: »

Hi JMR
I've been in touch with 2Flow before.
Their pricing was quite prohibitive.
For example, we were offered:
Delivery - €6.95
Pick & Pack €1.65 for the first item, plus €0.50 per additional item.

When a lot of our orders are around 3-4 items, this puts the 4 items at €10.10 in total for their fees.

This is why I was looking for alternatives.

Sent you a PM, your products appear to be >3kg (you say <10kg) which is pushing the cost up.
Our products are <2kg so this brings the cost down for us.

tacofries

Im with Autofulfil in Galway and I would highly recommend them. All costs are reasonable for me..

RUDOLF289

getconnected wrote: »

Hi JMR
I've been in touch with 2Flow before.
Their pricing was quite prohibitive.
For example, we were offered:
Delivery - €6.95
Pick & Pack €1.65 for the first item, plus €0.50 per additional item.

When a lot of our orders are around 3-4 items, this puts the 4 items at €10.10 in total for their fees.

This is why I was looking for alternatives.

I am not sure about your pricing model. If you have € 10.10 as a cost for say 35 orders per week, your spend will be in the region of € 350 per week or
€ 17500 per annum. Take the delivery costs out (€ 12162.50) you are left with just over € 5K processing cost per annum.

From where I am sitting I don't see how you can improve on that cost.

What are you paying for storage? Are there any other charges levied e.g. stock reports, handling in/out?

You probably have no choice but to keep this in-house and pay staff costs (share the workload between a few of your colleagues). You may be able to make a marginal saving on the delivery costs. However I don't see how you can make any significant savings on the info you are providing.

Cheers,
Rudolf289

JMR

Order fulfillment is a significant cost for any eCommerce business and it can be tricky to determine the correct price point to charge the shipping to the customer at but in my opinion anyway, the services of a fulfillment company are worth the cost in a small (one man / part-time) business like mine as it allows me the time to concentrate on growing the business in the very limited time I have available, rather than packing boxes etc.

If the best all in cost you can achieve is €10.10 per unit, you need to determine how much of that you add to the product price and how much becomes part of the delivery charge. If you have direct competitors, this can help guage where you should be at.

Psychologically, customers will often balk at the idea of purchasing a product for €25 with a delivery charge of €6.95 but will happily purchase the same product for €31.95 if free shipping is offered.

Also replied to your PM on 2Flow's monthly standing charges