Your Fulfillment Costs are Rising
Many startups bootstrap their operations to conserve resources in order to retain greater control while growing the business. This is great because you focus on the core aspects of your business, but it necessitates you to look past initial costs and take into consideration the bigger picture of outsourcing fulfillment. Does your business require you to scale quickly to maintain a competitive advantage? Or will you benefit by having a logistics partner? By bootstrapping fulfillment, you may miss out on the extensive network that a well-connected fulfillment center could provide by way of valuable industry-centric advice.
If you’re still hung up on costs, make sure you do the math. Once you factor in the cost of printers, scales, shelving, facilities, labor and supplies, it’s not uncommon to find that the total outsourced fulfillment cost per order comes in at less than the DIY cost per order. This also doesn’t take into account the value of freed-up working capital and the most essential resource of all time.