Warehouse Services
State-of-the-Art Warehousing And Fulfillment
Warehouse services are at the heart of your eCommerce business. Ensure your products are stored properly and strategically with a warehousing and fulfillment provider that treats your products like their own.
What Are Warehouse Services?
Warehouse services could be simple storage of goods (warehousing). Or companies — like East Coast Warehouse & Fulfillment — can offer logistics, kitting, and inventory management. Picking, packing, shipping, and storage are each an example of a warehouse service.
It’s crucial to find a warehouse that offers all the warehousing services you need.
What Are The Different Types Of Warehouses?
There are three types of warehouses: fulfillment, storage, and distribution. Many of these facilities don’t fall strictly into only one of these categories.
East Coast Warehouse Fulfillment is primarily a fulfillment warehouse, providing expert logistics and warehousing services. We provide inventory storage, so there is overlap in our 3PL facility with other types of warehousing.
What Are The Primary Warehouse Activities?
Different types of warehouses provide different services. In a 3PL warehouse, the primary warehouse services include receiving, picking and packing, order fulfillment, and shipping. Your warehousing providers should be experts at these core processes.
Receiving
Receiving, also known as inbound shipping, is the essential process of inspecting and unloading your items upon their arrival by container or tractor-trailer. This often overlooked warehouse service is of utmost importance. Swift and precise receiving can determine whether your products are promptly available for sale on your website or face unavailability, loss, or backorders.
Once your products are registered in the inventory system and placed on the shelves, they are ready for the warehouse team to pick and pack them. Whether your goods are arriving from overseas or from locations within the United States, the East Coast Warehouse & Fulfillment inbound shipping team is fully prepared to receive and document them with speed and accuracy. Your goal is to have your products in inventory and ready for the picking and packing process, and this is our goal as well. This commitment is underscored by our accuracy guarantees, such as our 2-day dock-to-stock guarantee, and the recognition and rewards we offer to our team members for their quick and error-free receiving services.
Picking & Packing
When a customer places an order on your eCommerce website, the order details are seamlessly transmitted to our 3PL (Third-Party Logistics) warehouse. Here, our dedicated picker locates the items required for the order, each meticulously organized within their designated shelf space. Subsequently, our skilled packer selects an appropriately sized box and adds the necessary protective infill to ensure the safe shipment of your products.
The core of a flourishing eCommerce business hinges on the precision of the picking and packing processes. East Coast Warehouse & Fulfillment was established by eCommerce enthusiasts, with the primary objective of delivering top-tier fulfillment services to our clients. We take pride in our ability to pick and pack orders swiftly, often on the same day as their placement, with a cutoff time as late as 5:00 pm. Fortunately, our highly experienced warehouse team maintains an exceptional track record of accuracy.
Order Fulfillment & Shipping
The final step in the order fulfillment process is shipping. Once your order is meticulously packed and labeled, it proceeds to the shipping station. At scheduled intervals throughout the day, carriers such as FedEx, UPS, USPS, and others visit our warehouse to collect the outbound shipments. From that point onward, it becomes the responsibility of the carrier to ensure the safe delivery of your package to your valued customer.
East Coast Warehouse & Fulfillment goes the extra mile to support our clients beyond the warehouse’s confines. We maintain strong partnerships with major carriers, which empower us to negotiate favorable rates and more advantageous dimensional weight factors. This, in turn, translates to potential cost savings for you when it comes to shipping. Moreover, we are unwavering in our commitment to ensuring that your orders continue to move smoothly. In times of urgency, when carrier capacity constraints have caused shipping delays at other warehouses, we have proactively devised innovative solutions to minimize delivery disruptions for our clients.
Specialized Warehouse Services
Many 3PLs provide specialized warehousing services. These are just a few of the services that East Coast Warehouse & Fulfillment offers.
East Coast Warehouse & Fulfillment is primarily a fulfillment warehouse, providing expert logistics and warehousing services. We provide inventory storage, so there is overlap in our 3PL facility with other types of warehousing.
What To Consider When You Choose A Warehouse
When you choose a third-party logistics warehouse for your eCommerce company, you’re making a choice that can have a significant impact on your business. Fast, accurate fulfillment and shipping can win you repeat customers. On the flip side, mis-picks and shipping errors can cost you customer service time and negative reviews.
Here are three things to consider first when you’re deciding which warehouse will ship your products.
Location
When creating a checklist of attributes for your fulfillment warehouse, it’s essential to prioritize location. The warehouse’s geographical placement significantly impacts shipping costs and delivery times, both of which play a crucial role in ensuring customer satisfaction.
Ideally, your logistics warehouse or warehouses should be strategically situated in centralized locations. This allows you to provide fast and cost-effective shipping to a broader customer base. Unless your business is already positioned in a central location, it’s advisable not to use a warehouse close to your headquarters or a port city. Shipping rates tend to increase as orders traverse more shipping zones, with the highest costs associated with cross-country shipping. These increased costs and longer transit times can result in lost sales.
An effective fulfillment strategy should involve one or more warehouses located near your target customers. This is precisely why East Coast Warehouse & Fulfillment has meticulously selected strategic locations for its fulfillment warehouses. By placing your inventory in just two of East Coast Warehouse & Fulfillment’s warehouses, you can reach 97% of U.S. households within two days or less.
Accuracy
There is nothing more disappointing to a customer than opening a box to find the wrong product inside. Even if you move heaven and earth to fix the error, you can’t erase that first impression. Accurate fulfillment is crucial for the success of your business. Fulfillment errors cost you money in multiple ways: personnel time for customer service, return shipping and reshipping, restocking costs, and canceled orders.
Speed
Every year, eCommerce speeds up. Customers want their orders delivered quickly. There are two ways to accomplish this. The first is by locating your products in warehouses close to your customers. The second is same-day fulfillment.
More Questions About ECommerce Warehouses?
Location, accuracy, and speed are just three qualities you need in an eCommerce warehouse. For more questions to ask when you’re looking for a warehouse, feel free to use our fulfillment company questionnaire.
You’ll Love Having East Coast Warehouse & Fulfillment As Your Company Warehouse
Fill out our fulfillment questionnaire to find out if East Coast Warehouse & Fulfillment is the best fulfillment company for you. If you need help finding the right fulfillment company for 3PL and warehouse services, give us a call. We’re happy to make a recommendation — even if it isn’t us.
Ready To Get Started
After 30 days of experiencing our processes, people, and service, if you’re not satisfied with what East Coast Warehouse & Fulfillment did for your company and your customers.