Online electronics merchants can find huge benefits in a warehousing and fulfillment partner. Here are some of the challenges electronics brands face in their ecommerce strategy, and how a fulfillment partner like Excelsior can help overcome them.
- Product turnover and new products coming to market: Electronic products evolves quickly and product lifecycles are generally short. You’re constantly improving your gadgets and devices, so you need a logistics partner who can help manage inventory of new versions of the same product, ship and facilitate A/B tests, dispose of obsolete inventory, and handle a steady turnover of your SKU listing.
- Volume spikes and the holidays: Electronics are prone to dramatic volume spikes upon new product releases as well as around the holidays, and you’ll need to work with a 3PL that has the size and workforce to accommodate the peaks, and the experience to plan ahead with you so you’re as prepared as possible. Constant communication in these peak periods is also key. We’ve seen product mentions on places like Instagram, Good Morning America and Wired, lead to surprising volume spikes which often leave merchants surprised and scrambling to catch up.
- Sell on many channels: Customers buy products in many places and you must meet them there: your website, Amazon, big box retailers, drop ship sites, etc. You can choose to have your 3PL connect directly to each channel or use an order management software and connect your 3PL to that. Either way, you need a partner with pre-existing integrations and that is willing to work with your specific business needs. The 3PL will have a preferred way of integration, but a degree of flexibility and a willingness to build new features to accommodate your needs are important.
- Fast, affordable fulfillment that just works: Small electronics companies can carve out niches such as smart home devices, wearable tech, entertainment-related gadgets, etc. But no matter the niche, you’re being judged on expectations set by Amazon and the other large retailers: Super-fast delivery, free shipping and low prices. You need late same-day cutoff times, cheap shipping rates, multi-warehouse options, and reliable, accurate and affordable fulfillment that just works.
- Presentation: Creating a “WOW” experience through product presentation and excellent customer service, leads to better product reviews, which are often the deciding factor in why a customer buys from you over others. Your 3PL should work with you to help tweak and improve the un-boxing experience over time.
- Security: Electronics inventory is often highly valuable and inventory security is important. A 3PL must have the necessary security measures in place such as video monitoring and workforce screening. It also helps to visit and build a relationship with your partner so you know you can trust them (do they have a positive culture where employees seem happy to come to work each day?) Additionally for high end products, unit-level inventory tracking can be a business requirement and help provide visibility into the supply chain.
- Returns: Electronics often do not experience a high return rate, however returns can still be tricky. Returns for defective units need to be tracked but kept out of saleable inventory. Merchants also need visibility into common return reasons and the ability to match returns back to original orders for completing refunds. A 3PL’s web app and/or API options can be instrumental in facilitating this flow of data.
How Excelsior does electronics fulfillment:
- Customer service driven: Whatever your industry, your relationship with your 3PL is critical. You’ll have unique requirements and issues that arise as you grow, and we get that you need to be able to talk with us regularly, sometimes frequently. We’ve built ourselves on the service we provide, and pride ourselves on it. If you need us to inspect 500 units of a potentially defective item, expedite an order to a special customer, re-package one product with a newer version of packaging, or whatever else, we’ve got your back.
- Integrate with any channel: Check out all our integrations here. Or build your own with the Excelsior API. If you need something you don’t see, we’re eager to help you solve it, just ask.
- Scalability and Startups: Some of our biggest success stories are customers that started with 20 orders/day and can now hit peaks of 5,000+ per day. We take a service driven approach and love working with young companies, implementing the logistics infrastructure now, that your business will need in 3 years.
- Shipping: We have warehouse facilities in Massachusetts and California, which will allow you to reach 70-90% of your customers with cheaper shipping options that still arrive in two days or less. We ship with all the major carriers – UPS, FedEx, USPS, DHL, and many freight forwarders and can offer you steeply discounted rates. We also allow you to ship on your account or any third party account should you prefer.
- Inventory Accuracy: We have several operational systems in place designed to maintain the highest inventory accuracy: ASN based receiving with automated checks for receiving accuracy, a replenishment process that uses older stock first and maintains PICK versus OVERSTOCK bin accuracy, periodic cycle counting procedures, and a quality control scan on outgoing orders (provided products are accurately barcoded).
- High value items: Excelsior staff are willing to go the extra mile to ensure inventory integrity and extra security are available if needed. This could mean storage in locked rooms, extra security cameras, or even just more frequent cycle counting. Additionally, we can institute serialized inventory management on any of your products that have unique serial numbers. This enables unit-level inventory traceability. Here’s how serialized inventory tracking works.
- Returns: Excelsior’s return processing services will help you streamline this crucial yet often overlooked component of the logistics lifecycle. We provide inspection according to your specifications, capturing of return reasons and any comments, automatic notifications and easy access to all your data either through our web portal or API.
- Product Assembly & Kitting: We offer optional product assembly, bundling and kitting services whether it’s for a one-time project or ongoing product line. Some clients choose to delay final product assembly until the last possible step, giving greater inventory flexibility. Others may need to re-work a product by removing one component item and adding another newer version. Our kitting services give you this flexibility.
- Presentation & Branding: Along with fulfillment speed and accuracy, presentation is an important factor in the delivery experience your customer will have. We’ll help you create a delivery and un-boxing experience that suits your brand and leaves a lasting impression on your customers. We can do this by allowing customization options in the packaging step of the fulfillment process, such as using your branded tape, stickers or custom packaging, handwriting thank-you notes, following special item placement rules, or any other ideas you come up with.