Every parcel is your brand, not ours
In DTC the parcel is the only physical thing your customer ever touches. It is a brand moment that happens in a warehouse.
In direct-to-consumer selling, the parcel is the only physical thing your customer ever touches. Everything else — the site, the photography, the emails — is a screen. The box is the product experience, and it is assembled in a warehouse by someone your customer will never meet.
That is the whole argument for caring who packs your orders.
What DTC fulfilment involves
- Single-parcel picking, usually one or two items per order
- Packing to your presentation standard, with your materials and inserts
- Dispatch on your carrier, with tracking written back to the order
- Returns received, inspected, graded and reported back to you
- Stock counted and reconciled so your storefront shows what you actually have
Your customer never sees us
The parcel carries your brand and nothing else. Our name is not on the box, not on the label and not on anything inside it.
Dispatch notifications reach your customer from your own store, because tracking is written back to the order rather than sent by us. Returns come back addressed in your brand's name. If a customer of yours ever works out who packed their order, something has gone wrong.
Where DTC costs sit
DTC orders are usually one or two items, which means the base pick fee carries almost your entire picking cost and the cheaper per-additional-item rate barely applies. A brand shipping four items per order spreads that base fee further than you do.
The other line that moves is returns, which in some categories reaches a quarter of the total bill. Both are worth modelling before you sign anything.
Scaling without re-platforming
The thing that breaks first as DTC volume grows is not the picking, it is the exceptions: a launch week, a carrier that stops collecting over a holiday, a SKU that arrives mislabelled from a supplier.
Handling those is why the same person who set your rates is the person you speak to when something goes wrong. There is no account management layer between you and the operation.
Common questions
- Will my customers know their orders are fulfilled by someone else?
- No. Parcels carry your branding and nothing of ours, dispatch notifications go out from your own store, and returns are addressed in your brand's name. We are the part of your operation your customer never sees.
- Can I use my own packaging?
- Yes. Your mailers, tissue, inserts and cards are part of the packing instruction for your account. If you would rather we supplied plain materials, that works too and is priced in your rate card.
- How quickly do DTC orders go out?
- Orders received before the cut-off on a business day are picked, packed and handed to the carrier the same day. What happens after that is the carrier's timetable, which we quote rather than promise.
- What if I also sell wholesale?
- Then it should come from the same pool of stock rather than a separate one. Holding inventory twice is how brands end up out of stock in both channels at once.
Not sure what your fulfilment would actually cost?
Work out a realistic range first, then get a quote based on your real numbers.