What’s on our minds

Switching 3PLs is risky if your Shopify integration breaks in the process. Order data, inventory sync, and tracking updates all depend on that connection working cleanly from day one — a broken handoff means delayed orders, oversold inventory, and a wave of customer service tickets. Before you sign with a new fulfillment partner, here are ...

The Northwest Seaport Alliance (Seattle plus Tacoma) moves well over two million TEUs a year, making it the closest major U.S. gateway to Asia by sailing time. For brands importing from China, Korea, Japan, or Southeast Asia, landing inventory in the Puget Sound and fulfilling from there means shorter ocean transits and same-week availability for ...

The Port of Charleston is one of the fastest-growing container gateways on the East Coast, and it has pulled a wave of importers to the Lowcountry with it. The math is simple: clear your goods at Charleston, put them in a warehouse 20 minutes from the terminal, and ship to 75% of the U.S. East ...

Peak season mistakes are expensive. A stockout during a paid ad push, a warehouse that can’t keep up with order volume, or a carrier that runs out of capacity in December all turn a strong Q4 into a scramble. The brands that come through peak season cleanly aren’t the ones with the biggest budgets — ...

Chicago’s O’Hare corridor is one of the best places in America to run fulfillment. You get the second-largest air cargo gateway in the country, direct rail from the West Coast ports, and I-90/I-294 trucking access that reaches roughly 30% of U.S. consumers within a one-day drive. But “near O’Hare” covers a lot of ground, and ...

Returns are the part of ecommerce that rarely gets designed on purpose. Most brands build a fulfillment process, then bolt returns on afterward as a customer-service afterthought. That gap is expensive: a slow, disorganized returns process doesn’t just frustrate customers, it quietly erodes margin on every item that comes back. Why Returns Are a Margin ...

Most 3PLs can pick, pack, and ship your orders. Very few can legally clear those goods through U.S. Customs first. Customs brokerage requires a license from U.S. Customs and Border Protection, and the overwhelming majority of fulfillment providers do not hold one. If your brand imports its products, that means the typical “logistics partner” only ...

Splitting inventory across a West Coast and East Coast warehouse cuts the distance a package has to travel to reach most customers, which shortens transit time and lowers shipping cost per order. For ecommerce brands outgrowing a single fulfillment center, deciding where to add a second node is one of the highest-leverage supply chain decisions ...