Are you looking for a China fulfillment center that offers the flexibility to pick, pack and ship your online orders at discount rates, while at the same time in sync with inventory management, order tracking, online reporting system?
Here’re some tips that you’ll find useful.
1. First question to ask yourself: which should you go, fulfillment center near suppliers or near customers?
Some warehousing and fulfillment service providers like Amazon FBA with multiple warehouses tend to shorten consolidating time and fulfill the orders in the nearest place from the buyers. The biggest draw of near-customer fulfillment is delivery time is drastically shortened and shipping damages are also reduced to a large extent.
However, the procedures are usually far too complicated, and the exorbitant costs would take up large portion of your selling prices. Imagine having your Chinese suppliers ship the goods to a number of different warehouses, the chances are high that errors would occur, which would later lead to additional shipping costs.
Local fulfillment centers in China are, in particular, more cost effective and efficient. Two typical ways of order fulfilling are dominating the E-commerce marketplaces currently, with the former known as drop shipping, referring to direct delivery from the manufacturer to the customer, and the latter is third-party fulfillment center, where suppliers of e-commerce sellers ship the products to outsourced fulfillment center, the center would pick, pack and ship to the end customers.
Using third-party fulfillment centers in China is considered as a more cost saving approach since the warehousing and consolidating fees are much lower while compared to the ones in the west. If you want to save more money on warehousing, shipping, taxes, etc, outsourced fulfillment center in China is a great option, but here comes another question.
2. Should you go with drop shipping or third-party China fulfillment center?
Here we’ve listed some pros and cons of drop-shipping and third-party China eCommerce fulfillment service providers, so you can decide which is better for you.
Drop-shipping
Pros
* Small startup capital. Drop shipping is second to none choice for those starting to sell on e-commerce websites with limited budget. It offers the flexibility to sell online without investing on any physical stocks, setting up companies, hiring employees, etc.
* Less risks. Compared with traditional way that importers buy a huge quantity like a container, pay for shipping, import taxes and then sell locally, you don’t have to invest in stocks and shipping fees with drop shipping. The drop-shipping suppliers will provide all products specification, once you get orders, they’ll ship directly to the end customers.
Cons
* Losing competitive edge. You might have innumerable competitors selling the same products in the same market place. Low price is particularly the strategy to stay ahead of the rat race, which means profit margin can be extremely tiny.
* Less controllable. The stocks of your drop shipping suppliers can go out fast as usually they supply to a great number of e-commerce sellers. If they don’t follow their stocks closely and update frequently, you might end up working in vain. Besides, drop-shipping from multiple suppliers can make things quite complicated and less controllable if you get lots of orders every day.
* Leaking of business secrets. Some drop-shipping suppliers also sell in e-commerce market places. Chances are, they might steal your customers or other business information if you let them do all the drop-shipping for you.
Third-party China fulfillment center
Pros
* With more expertise. Third party China fulfillment centers are dedicated to storage and consolidation of ecommerce orders, and they’re often more professional and experienced.
* Better shipping rates. A great number of outsourced fulfillment centers have better prices with DHL, UPS, FEDEX, EMS, etc. as they tend to ship a lot.
* Effective inventory management system. Some China fulfillment centers provide effective inventory management system, with that you can easily check status of online orders, tracking code, inventory, etc.
* Additional value added services. Apart from warehousing and fulfillment service, a great number of China fulfillment centers offer additional customized services, i.e., quality inspection, etc.
Cons
* Higher costs. Third party China fulfillment centers will charge you warehousing fee, handling fee, etc. Some centers might apply a minimum monthly fee if your order quantity doesn’t reach their requirements.
* Takes longer time. Usually you have to follow the procedures, book in advance for your fulfillment centers to pick, pack the goods and process the orders.
3. What qualifications should you look for in a good China fulfillment center?
The number of e-commerce order fulfillment service providers has rocketed with its soaring popularity. However, not everyone with a rented warehouse can work as a warehousing and fulfillment center. There’re a few factors we suggest you to take into consideration while looking for the right third-party China fulfillment center in Shenzhen.
Experience
An experienced China fulfillment center usually have long term cooperation with leading express carriers like DHL, UPS, EMS, thus, they’re able to offer more competitive rates for international shipping. More often than that, fulfillment centers with enriching experience know pretty well the shipping regulations in different countries, and can help avoid problems as well as increasing customer satisfaction.
An order that is packed in a wrong way can easily lose you a customer, hence, it’s vital that your order fulfillment provider has a well managed, experienced system with very low error rates.
Tech
The application of tech like using bar code, inventory management system and integration with e-commerce platform can make the fulfillment process easier, more effective and controllable. Take Shopify as example, with the fulfillment integration system, the fulfillment center will receive the orders and fulfill them once customers place orders in related Shopify stores.
Security
In terms of security, it’s a must to make sure the China fulfillment center keep the products in a safe place with advanced security system. Besides, security doesn’t only mean to keep the goods safe and sound, it also evolves keeping your business secrets like customer information, company information confidential.
Good