Ecommerce Fulfillment service

[Adam_oxford]

Hi all,

We are a storage company based in Oxfordshire who offer many different services. At the moment we are trying to attract people who want a Fulfillment service for the products. We have so far attracted 5/6 different companies currently through word of mouth but we would like to attract alot more companies who would like the fulfillment of there products provided by someone else to make there life easier. We have so far found this difficult to market and were wondering if anyone had any experience or advice of how me could market this service .

We look forward to hearing from anyone who has any advice.

[luckyg]

I think your main problem may be your distance from any port.

I use order fullfillment/storage and my main criteria when choosing besides price is the distance from port of import to storage company to cut down on delivery of container from port to storage company.

How far is your nearest port?

[Electro]

Hi all,

We are a storage company based in Oxfordshire who offer many different services. At the moment we are trying to attract people who want a Fulfillment service for the products. We have so far attracted 5/6 different companies currently through word of mouth but we would like to attract alot more companies who would like the fulfillment of there products provided by someone else to make there life easier. We have so far found this difficult to market and were wondering if anyone had any experience or advice of how me could market this service .

We look forward to hearing from anyone who has any advice.

A very simple trick would be to get the companies (whom products you are delivering) put on their checkout page.. "products handled with care by xyz.corp/inc" and market yourself through an online website.

[CableGuy]

Hi all,

We are a storage company based in Oxfordshire who offer many different services. At the moment we are trying to attract people who want a Fulfillment service for the products. We have so far attracted 5/6 different companies currently through word of mouth but we would like to attract alot more companies who would like the fulfillment of there products provided by someone else to make there life easier. We have so far found this difficult to market and were wondering if anyone had any experience or advice of how me could market this service .

We look forward to hearing from anyone who has any advice.

There must be 100s of home/small web based businesses who want someone else to handle their distribution - maybe they live abroad for example and can't realistically dispatch items easily, or they just don't have the space.

I'd get a web site, advertise with Google AdWords and post on forums like this (and perhaps www.enterprisenation.com - a home based business site). Your posts don't have to always plug the business, they can be responses to genuine questions, with details of your business and services in the signature.

Hope this helps :)

[Adam_oxford]

Thanks for the replies so far very helpful.

luckyg - we are based in Oxford so we are one of the futher points from the sea which is not very helpful for people on transport costs! we have had customers who have had there items delivered to us from the ports mainly as they live local to us therefore its easier for them.

Electro - Thank you for the tip, ill contact our current customers and get them to put our name on there checkout page.

CableGuy - There are definately the businesses out there who need help with there fulfillment its just trying to get our name out there to say we provide this service to them. Thank you for the link to enterprisenation.com ill get myself registered on there. Ill also get my signature sorted!

Thanks again for the tips.

[sw67]

I use an ecommerce fulfillment service and they are fantastic. I found them through google and because they are a small company I have a very good relationship with the person who manages all our orders. They charge us a fixed fee per item and an amount for storing the stock. I would agree that advertising on google in the best way to attract new custom. My fulfillment company is based in Essex and I am in London but the distance from my office was not really an issue as they check-in all deliveries and send me stock reports (which I check against the stock levels showing on my system) so I rarely have to go there.

[davisonconsultancy]

Are you acting as a storage facility for pallets of products, or do you offer a dropship service for their products, ie: receive an order for one or more of their stocked products, pick, pack and distribute?
I think there are two different types of customers that may be interested, but you have to think about storage and resources to run both business types.
Have a look on the Internet for Dropshippers and consider advertising on that directory/website as that's where you target market will be looking.

Good luck.

[Burden]

ive done fullfilment for many companies in fashion area on small and large area!
worked out very well. mostly postage and courier though

[Adam_oxford]

Thanks for the helpful coments everyone.

sw67 - We do much the same as the fulfillment company you currently use, we are a small company too which provides a close relationship with all our current clients. I think we need to get ourselves much higher on the Google ratings in order to attract more customers.

davisonconsultancy - At the moment we are offering both types of storage, we are acting as a storage facility for pallets of products and we also offer dropship service for our clients products. Thanks for the advice for Dropshippers, im going to have a look into it and see what advertsing is available out there.

[wezza]

A fulfilment company is something that I will probably look to use in the future and I personally would go on the web to find one. So a website would be essential for me in my research.

[Jheath]

Hi Guys
I've followed this thread with interest for two reasons:

1st - We looked at expanding across the pond and our research led us to this lot: http://www.efulfillmentservice.com/
It never got off the ground for various reasons, but their service was just what we were looking for at the time. Could you take any ideas from their website / service offering and incorporate them into your business? And could you seek US ecommerce companies who are looking for storage / fulfillment over here?

2nd - I have warehouse space (and outside storage) in Lincoln that I'm looking to let out on a per pallet / per week basis and would be grateful for any guidance about what to charge and how to promote the service locally.

[Adam_oxford]

wezza - If you ever need any fulfilment send me an e-mail and im sure we can help you.

Jheath - efulfillmentservice is a very helpful website for setting up a website of our own to promote our fulfilment services.

We would be more than happy to provide US companies with our storage and fulfilmemt services, we just need to find the right way of marketing it to let them know we are here to provide these services.

[matt_15]

Search engine optimisation is always good for marketing.

[davisonconsultancy]

Our company Pace Retail supply Webshops and are always on the lookout for product feeds to populate our webshops. However, we do come across people who sometimes import their own products that may have a need for your services. Please PM me if you are interested.