International Order Fulfillment

Any names and experiences to share?

[sunnylyon]

Our e-business based in Europe is ready to outsource order fulfillment. Half our orders are in the USA, half the rest of the world, so we want a company with warehousing in the USA and Europe. A couple of hours on google haven't produced anything : there seem to be some nice little companies in the USA but they don't have bases in Europe. And the big names (eg PFSWeb)are just way too expensive for the likes of us? Any one come up dealt with a third party fulfillment company that they think would be right for little old us?

[Rachel]

If you're looking for smaller companies, that might be hard to find. It might be easier to look in a directory like dmoz, or maybe a smaller one that just concentrates on logistics like freightworld.com.

[jbinbpt]

United Parcel Service offers what you are looking for. I have not used them or have a clue what the cost is.

[beautykat]

ups does offer this service but they require 1mil annual revenue.

Try vendorseek.com. They have some pretty good listings of fulfillment centers who might be able to help.

[shipper]

We use the Eurologistix warehouse in the UK for filling UK orders, but I know they also have warehouses in Germany and in the USA.

[jagsanger]

Hi - we have a client that is looking for exactly the same service, and again they aren't quite the size for a big player, but too big for a mon and pop shipper.

The products are heavy houswares, volumes forecast to be 2000 - 5000 shipments per year, ave value $1,200 per shipment (not consumer electronics).

If there is scope to add your requirement to get some economies of scale?

Regards
Jag

[edited by: lorax at 1:09 pm (utc) on Mar. 25, 2005]
[edit reason] removed promo plug [/edit]

[sunnylyon]

thanks for all those suggestions.

all the multi base fulfillment providers that I contacted basically said we were too small to interest them, so I think the only solution for small companies such as ours would be to contract fulfillment to two operators, one in the USA and one in the UK, for example; when you look for single base operations there's a lot more to choose from and you can find plenty of people willing to work with small and growing companies.

For ourselves, we decided to go with Swiss Post, who run a small fulfillment operation here in Lyon, dropping the idea of going for a multi center solution. maybe we'll come back to it when (if!) we get a little bigger.