As you would expect from the name, a pack and ship service handles the packing and shipping of merchandise. By and large, they focus on providing services to small businesses who are either incapable of shipping items themselves or plainly don’t want the bother. They provide a good substitute to setting up an in-house mail room.
Pack and Ship vs. Fulfillment Services
Pack and ship services typically do not store merchandise, but concentrate on shipping services. Invoices, billing and all communications with the customer are done by the retailer. They are particularly important to those who need to ship hard to package items or items that need special shipping or insurance.
The majority of pack and ship operations deal with multiple carriers – UPS, FedEx, DHL, USPS and several others. Some will also arrange local transport and might provide custom drops to and from airports. Most will even pick up items as well as send them, so you could use them as virtual addresses.
Fulfillment services often handle storage as well as shipping. They may also pick and pack to help you meet your order requirements. The major difference between fulfillment services and pack and ship services is that a fulfillment service might offer to store a reasonable amount of stock for you. They will charge for order assembly in addition to packing and shipping fees.
Pick-up is a service rendered by pack and ship companies, but for any significant volume, a fulfillment service might make more sense – because they are able to store stock for you.
Specialty Services
Several pack and ship services specialize in worldwide deliveries. Their experience with insurance, custom regulations and costs for shipping overseas can be priceless. In addition to this many offer one or more of the following:
• Guaranteed delivery – same day, overnight and 2-day.
• No size limits and custom crating for fragile or unique packages.
• Cargo insurance – important for time-sensitive deliveries and perishables as well as oversees shipping.
• Real time tracking
• Office add-ons on site: mail boxes, fax, copies, supplies and even notary services.
Some small pack and ship services will hold items in hand (with the rental of a mailbox) and ship them on your direction. They are usually not set up for any warehouse functions so this is only useful if you sell small items.
Fulfillment services usually offer specialty services that most pack and ship services don’t: customer contact in the form of receipts mailed to your customers, package tracking and in some cases, billing services. This is fantastically convenient when the only customer contact required is a courtesy follow up email.
Choosing between pack & ship and fulfillment services
Pack and ship companies are usually the best choice if you only ever send occasional items or if you deal with more expensive items on an occasional basis. They also come with the additional benefit of being able to accept, as well as send, packages. They sometimes offer more shipping options than fulfillment services too. This is important if you want to send valuable merchandise and can’t take the chance that items will be damaged. If this is the case, insurance and tracking are much more important than the ability to store large amounts of inventory.
Because you initiate the process at a pack and ship company, you have a greater degree of control over when items will actually be shipped. If the item has a longer distance to travel before it reaches the hands of the customer, a pack and ship company might also be more likely to ensure a timely arrival.
Jeff Ehrlich is the President of FulfillmentPlusNY which delivers <A href=”http://www.fulfillmentplusny.com”>fulfillment warehouse operations</a> for a whole host of customers~clients~accounts~companies~businesses} globally.Contact Jeff for <A href=”http://www.fulfillmentplusny.com/direct-to-consumer/order-processing.cfm”>order processing</a> services.
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