Mid-Market Fulfilment
ShipBob offers best-in-class mid-market fulfilment services for ecommerce businesses. We help simplify and optimise your logistics by providing the infrastructure, technology, expertise, and support you need to deliver an exceptional experience for your customers and stay competitive.
With a growing global fulfilment network powered by proprietary technology, ShipBob can help you reduce shipping costs and transit times, so you can expand your customer reach, while spending less time and energy on all-things logistics.
We sought a fulfilment partner with exceptional operational capabilities. Our priority was finding a partner capable of efficiently handling large-scale fulfilment while also streamlining our workflows. ShipBob emerged as the perfect fit, meeting our needs beyond expectation.
Ali Shahid,
COO of Our Place
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What is mid-market fulfilment
Mid-market fulfilment is the process of warehousing, picking and packing orders, and shipping packages to customers. At this stage of growth, mid-size businesses outsource fulfilment to a third-party logistics (3PL) company like ShipBob. This way, online stores can stay competitive by utilising ShipBob’s growing fulfilment network powered proprietary technology to reduce transit times and shipping costs, while expanding customer reach around the world.
Fulfilment challenges for mid-market companies
Mid-market companies are often challenged with how to further optimise their supply chain for future growth. There is a lot to consider, such as how launch into new markets, expanding to new sales channels, and offering affordable shipping options for customers while keeping logistics costs down. ShipBob can help you grow your business every step of the way with the infrastructure, expertise, technology, and support you need to maintain a strong fulfilment strategy.
Mid-market fulfilment from ShipBob
ShipBob Plus is the go-to fulfilment solution for the fastest-growing modern brands. Mid-market brands can chaos-proof their supply chain, save money by tapping into the scale of the ShipBob network, and drive more revenue with endless omnichannel and global expansion opportunities to get to hundreds of millions and even billions in sales.
With ShipBob, you get best-in-class logistics to power your operations and accelerate growth across infrastructure, software, and continuous optimisation. Check out ShipBob’s mid-market fulfilment case studies or request a pricing quote from ShipBob today.
Mid-market fulfilment FAQs
Here are answers to the most frequently asked questions about how mid-market brands fulfil orders.
Who are some mid-market brands ShipBob works with?
ShipBob works with some of the biggest names in ecommerce, including mid-market brands like Our Place, Bloom Nutrition, Aroma 360, PetLab Co. and Dossier. ShipBob Plus is the fulfilment solution designed to solve some of the most pressing and unique challenges faced by mid-market brands. Learn more about ShipBob Plus here.
How does ShipBob’s inventory positioning program reduce transit fees for mid-market brands?
ShipBob’s Inventory Placement Program (IPP) is a US-specific solution that helps mid-market brands reduce transit fees by strategically distributing their inventory across ShipBob’s US fulfilment centres in several key regions. Leveraging a proprietary algorithm, IPP automates inventory allocation by considering factors like historical order data, demand forecasting, and customer geography to ensure products are stored closer to end customers.
This approach minimises shipping zones and distances, leading to significant reductions in shipping costs and transit times. Brands send inventory to a single ShipBob receiving hub, and ShipBob handles the distribution and proactive rebalancing, which also reduces inbound freight costs.
Who is the best 3PL for mid-market brands?
ShipBob is the leading fulfilment partner to the fastest-growing mid-market brands due to its unparalleled scalability, vast global fulfilment network, its US hub-and-spoke model and middle-mile supply chain that enables better trackability and courier performance, its ability to fulfil versatile order types, and ShipBob’s technology offerings and ability to create solutions for complex upper mid-market brands using an in-house tech team. These together help mid-market brands unlock long-term savings and long-zone cost contingencies over time and drive more revenue.
How can ShipBob integrate with ERPs like NetSuite and platforms like Shopify Plus for seamless order flow?
ShipBob offers turnkey integrations with major ecommerce platforms like Shopify Plus and ERPs like NetSuite to create a seamless order flow. These integrations enable a two-way flow of information, automatically importing orders from sales channels into the ShipBob dashboard and syncing product and inventory data back to their respective sources of truth.
For instance, Shopify’s inventory levels are updated every five minutes to prevent overselling, and unique tracking numbers are uploaded to orders once fulfilled. This connectivity centralises order and inventory management across all sales channels, providing real-time visibility and control. ShipBob also offers a Developer API for custom integrations and a tech team to build anything custom for mid-market brands.
What support does ShipBob provide through dedicated on-site teams for mid-market fulfilment?
ShipBob provides world-class support with dedicated on-site representatives at each fulfilment centre to help troubleshoot issues. Our implementation team supports fast-growing brands, assisting with everything from configuring ship options to syncing online stores.
Mid-market brands also get a Solutions Engineer and even a Solutions Architect if any custom integrations are needed, and once they are onboarded, mid-market brands get a dedicated Merchant Success Manager for their account.
Additionally, ShipBob’s Merchant Care team offers comprehensive assistance via chat, email, and phone, with extended support hours tailored to various global time zones, including on-site support offered as a direct line to those on the warehouse floor. This includes support for specific needs like kitting validation via video calls with on-site support managers.
Brands often view ShipBob as an extension of their own operations team, relying on their expertise for logistics, inventory planning, distribution, and overall fulfilment.
What should mid-market brands look for in a fulfilment partner?
Typical things to look out for include a fulfilment provider’s distribution network, technology and analytics (at minimum, real-time visibility into inventory and order management across channels and locations), their ecosystem partnerships (across technology, couriers, channels, and the globe), and their support. If you want to learn more deatiled considerations, download the guide, Fulfilment Strategies for Brands Scaling Beyond $100M.
How can brands optimise inventory distribution across multiple fulfilment hubs?
Brands can optimise distribution by implementing an AI-powered inventory program that automates SKU allocation based on real-time and historical demand. For example, ShipBob’s Inventory Placement Program (IPP) uses a machine-learning decision engine to analyse:
- Geographic order patterns
- SKU velocity
- Transit times
- Seasonal demand
This enables brands to consolidate inbound shipments to a single hub and have inventory redistributed dynamically across fulfilment centres where demand exists, reducing delivery times and costs. For example, some brands have seen their average transit time drop from 3.5 to 2.8 days while lowering per-order fulfilment costs.
Brands can also benefit from visual analytics, such as inventory maps that compare actual vs. ideal distribution to guide rebalancing decisions.
What options do mid-market brands have for fulfilment?
Between self-fulfilment or managing your own warehouse(s) and partnering with a 3PL, mid-market brands have many options for how they go about fulfilment. Some more modern strategies involve combining both with a solution that offers the best parts of both a 3PL and self-fulfilment, also known as the “Fulfilment Accelerator,” which offers many fulfilment requirements needed for mid-market brands to survive and scale quickly. For more information on such options, download The Fulfilment Accelerator: The Secret to How Fast-Growing Brands Are Managing Fulfilment.
What lead times should mid-market companies expect during peak seasons?
During Q4, high-volume ecommerce seasons typically span October through January, with inbound prep starting as early as July to account for various retailers’ cutoffs.
Last year, for example, brands using ShipBob consistently achieved 99%+ SLA performance on inbound, outbound, and expedited orders during peak with 100% uptime.
Lead times can vary by region, but most fulfilment centres publish local cutoff and order import deadlines (e.g., orders must be imported by a specific time to meet SLA).
How do real-time analytics improve fulfilment transparency?
Real-time reporting empowers brands with visibility into fulfilment operations and logistics spend, including:
- Transit time, SLA adherence, and late order tracking: Brands can pinpoint bottlenecks or courier performance issues.
- Inventory reporting: Daily stock by SKU across locations, days-of-inventory remaining, reorder alerts, and SKU velocity tracking help brands anticipate stockouts and rebalance inventory proactively.
- Cost breakdowns: Transparency in shipping costs, storage fees, billable weights, and fulfilment spend per order enables more accurate forecasting and profitability analysis.
Together, these tools give brands a clear line of sight from order placement to delivery, enabling faster, data-driven decisions and greater trust in fulfilment performance.
More ways how ShipBob helps mid-market brands
Distributed inventory
With ShipBob’s network of fulfilment centres, you can strategically split your inventory across our locations to get your products from point A to point B more quickly and affordably. Storing inventory near your customers helps reduce the shipping zones and costs associated with shipping orders to faraway destinations.
Distributed inventory also helps you stay competitive by offering fast shipping to your customers. When an order is placed, ShipBob’s algorithm automatically selects the warehouse and courier that will give you the quickest turnaround at the best price. This strategy has helped our merchants bring 13% savings to their bottom line.
100% Coverage Across the Continental US
If you’re looking to expand into the United States, ShipBob has 2-Day Express Shipping that provides 100% coverage in the continental US from even just one fulfilment centre.
You can also distribute your inventory across ShipBob’s fulfilment centres across all regions of the United States. We leave it up to you to decide where you want us to store your inventory.
Order management
At ShipBob, we track your orders from A to Z. Filter orders by status, search for specific orders, see a quick timeline view of where your order is in the fulfilment process (e.g. when an order is picked, packed, or shipped), easily find shipping-related information (e.g., weights, dimensions, or courier service), and get a quick snapshot of any orders that require action.
With order management software for your direct-to-consumer and wholesale shipments, you can manage subscriptions, make changes to your orders post-purchase, map your store’s shipping options to ShipBob, and automatically share tracking information with your customers.
Reporting and analytics
To provide you with visibility into our operations and performance, and also hold ourselves accountable, ShipBob’s free analytics tool is packed with charts to help you with everything from year-end reporting, to better supply chain decision-making.
Data can be a competitive advantage, and our reports show an analysis of which fulfilment centres you should stock, days of inventory left before you run out, impact of promotions on stock levels, each shipping method’s average cart value, shipping cost, and days in transit, your fulfilment cost per order, storage cost per unit, and much more.
End-to-end customer experience
We care about the customer experience as much as you and strive to be an extension of your team. From custom branded boxes to free plain packaging, ShipBob works with you to provide the unboxing experience you want. We also help you offer the fastest, most cost-effective shipping options to meet your customers’ expectations.
As soon as an order ships, tracking is pushed back to your store. We also offer return management services, allowing customers to generate return shipping labels and track returns, while getting your products processed and back into your available inventory as efficiently as possible.
How ShipBob improves your fulfilment and logistics
Fulfil orders from every channel
Hero Cosmetics keeps expanding into new retail sales channels and recently began selling DTC. When their old 3PL dropped them right before the holidays, ShipBob provided the seamless omnichannel fulfilment they needed.
Breeze through peak season spikes
Demand for Touchland’s hand sanitizers surged when the pandemic hit, growing 1,200% in a few weeks. ShipBob scaled with them to fulfil 700 orders a day in the first weeks of the pandemic, and achieved 2-3 day shipping.
Store, ship, and grow internationally
The Adventure Challenge’s wanted a fulfilment partner that could keep up with their international expansion plans. ShipBob’s global fulfilment centre network helped capture global demand more cost-effectively.
