Being an online seller is a big responsibility and requires a lot of work. Here, you don't provide your customers with a useful and appealing product alone. A seller needs to purchase the product, market it online, sell, and then deliver the item along with exceptional; customer support. The process involves daily performances and consignment operations. Clearly, if your business starts growing, all this work becomes daunting after a certain time. That is, when you hire or outsource the best fulfillment service, Charleston has to take care of your workload.

Outsourcing a professional service provider to handle your shipment is the best way of streamlining the work. E-commerce businesses or sellers highly prefer third-party logistics to handle their daily consignment delivery, inventory storage, and quality control.

Like any other services, hiring fulfillment services come with their advantages and disadvantages. But before we move to the pros and cons, let's understand if you are outsourcing the correct type of fulfillment service.

Types of fulfillment services around us

The order fulfillment process of every e-commerce business company is different from the others. You should outsource fulfillment services based on the category of the business process in your company. There are majorly three different categories of order fulfillment service for you to hire.

1. Merchant Fulfillment:

Merchant fulfillment services Charleston is probably the most preferred beginners' package for online retailers. This service includes inventory storing, pickup, packaging, and product shipping to customers. In this type of fulfillment service, the service provider gets complete control over the inventory and its management.

It is definitely the best option for beginners as the merchant company grows. But the time-consuming delivery process hastens with the third-party handling your packaging and shipments.

However, choosing branded fulfillment service providers can be expensive. So, when you hire a professional, do thorough research and decide on outsourcing.

2. Dropshipping:
Dropshipping is the second most-preferred fulfillment service hired in Charleston. Here, the seller prepares a list of products from the manufacturers' index. The manufacturer act as the fulfillment service provider. They check the product list, fulfill the product requirement, and ship all orders to the customers directly. In this case, the seller never handles the product. The process is the simplest one as the shipment is managed by dropshipping software. All large online retailers prefer to use dropshipping as their preferred fulfillment solution.

3. Outsourced fulfillment:

Outsourcing fulfillment is a service between self-shipping and dropshipping. You need to choose a third-party logistic provider for storing your inventory at their warehouse and update them on customer orders. They will ship the product on your behalf.
Here you get better control than drop shipping, as your get to purchase your product, prepare an inventory, and communicate with customers on product delivery.

Conclusion

Once you know the types of fulfillment services available around you, choosing a comfortable one becomes easier. Understand how much control you need over the product and hire the services accordingly.