Multichannel Logistics
Running an online store provides endless opportunity for growth.
You can expand into new sales channels and reach customers across the globe. But as you expand, it can be a challenge to streamline logistics operations.
ShipBob offers multichannel logistics solutions that help fast-growing brands grow and expand their business without barriers.
With ShipBob, you’re given the fulfilment infrastructure, best-in-class technology, data and analytics, and expertise and support to enable growth.
Read on to learn how ShipBob can help you grow your business.
We love that ShipBob actually operates its fulfilment centres — they know their operations and they are very clear about it.ShipBob having multiple locations was also huge for us. Keeping our inventory in Chicago and Los Angeles has brought cost savings since we ship from the locations that are closest to the customer.
Courtney Lee,
founder of Prymal
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What is multichannel logistics?
Multichannel logistics refers to a flexible ecommerce supply chain that allows for expansion. Multichannel refers to different sales channels, as well as distribution locations, which both provide an opportunity to reach more customers and deliver based on expectations.
An ecommerce brand has plenty of room to grow as long as they set their logistics up to expand into different channels. Without this flexibility, it can be hard to reach more customers, compete with competitors, and launch into new markets. It also helps to reduce risk in case of any unexpected delays during the supply chain as it will be easier to keep your business running.
Note: There is a logistics company named Multichannel Logistics that offers warehousing and transportation solutions.
Establish a multichannel logistics strategy with ShipBob
With a global fulfilment network and best-in-class technology, ShipBob offers a wide range of ecommerce fulfilment capabilities to help you create a multichannel logistics strategy, including flexible fulfilment, advanced data and analytics, and other world-class logistics solutions.
ShipBob helps you grow your business faster and still provide a great customer experience as you expand.
Here is an overview of ShipBob’s robust fulfilment infrastructure.
Multiple distribution centres
ShipBob offers a network of fulfilment centres, to help you strategically expand into new distribution locations based on where your customers are located.
This not only speeds up order delivery and reduces shipping costs, but it also helps mitigate risks in case of unexpected warehouse closures or inability of couriers to pick up from the facility due to bad weather.
Although online shopping allows access to your products from customers all over the globe, international fulfilment services present entirely new challenges. Different countries have various regulations, tariffs, taxes, and requirements for incoming shipments, making it difficult to navigate the international landscape.
ShipBob’s international locations are powered by the same 3PL software, which enables consistency throughout supply chain.
“ShipBob has multiple fulfilment centres in the US, one in Canada, one in the EU, and one in the UK.* All locations filter back into one centralised warehouse management system, so everything is under the ShipBob umbrella.
By distributing our inventory across these countries and regions, all of our customers are able to get their orders much faster while paying reasonable domestic shipping rates.”
Wes Brown, Head of Operations at Black Claw LLC
*Click here to view all our international locations.
Multichannel retailing
ShipBob makes it easy to plug your existing tech stack into our technology.
ShipBob directly integrates with all leading ecommerce platforms, as well as marketplaces like Amazon and Walmart Marketplace. This allows merchants to expand into new sales channels with ease and still manage inventory and orders from one fulfilment dashboard.
Optimised shipping strategy
By connecting your store(s) to ShipBob’s technology and splitting inventory across ShipBob’s network, you’re able to optimise your shipping strategy.
When an order is placed, ShipBob’s algorithm will send the order to the closest fulfilment centre to automatically enable the fastest and most cost-effective shipping route. ShipBob also offers 2-day shipping options for qualified customers (depending on their location and the nearest fulfilment centre), which offers affordable and fast shipping for customers.
Providing different ecommerce shipping options for your customers has been proven to reduce cart abandonment and improve average order value.
Streamlined data and analytics
As you expand into new channels, you will need to aggregate logistics data, which provides insights in the entire inbound and outbound logistics process. Having full visibility into your supply chain helps to keep fulfilment logistics costs down, improve speed of deliveries, and consistently meet demand despite sales fluctuations.
With ShipBob’s free analytics and data reporting tool, you don’t need to juggle multiple spreadsheets anymore. ShipBob makes it easy to automatically track your orders and inventory and provide insights into fulfilment performance, shipping, future demand, logistics costs, and more.
“We are very impressed by ShipBob’s transparency, simplicity, and intuitive dashboard. ShipBob’s front-end software was the primary decision-making factor for me in choosing them over other fulfilment solutions. Their software is so simple and intuitive, especially as so many 3PLs have either bad or no front-facing software, making it impossible to enter orders, keep track of what’s leaving or entering the warehouse
It’s fun to see orders shipping out instantaneously. I love how fast and efficient ShipBob is. Their shipping costs are very reasonable, and their platform makes fulfilment feel so easy.”
Harley Abrams, Operations Manager of SuperSpeed Golf, LLC
How ShipBob works
Getting started with ShipBob is simple. Once you sync your online store to our technology, we help get you up and running quickly. As soon as we receive you inventory, the orders are automatically sent to the closest fulfilment centre to the order’s destination to be picked, packed and shipped.
From the ShipBob dashboard, you can track inventory in real time, view order fulfilment and shipping insights, forecast demand, and much more.
Read on to learn more about how ShipBob works.
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.
Inventory management
At ShipBob, we empower merchants to manage their inventory with the right tools and guidance. It’s easy to view the status of inventory and quantity on hand across locations at any point in time, identify slow-moving inventory with high storage costs, and gain insights into the performance of units sold over time by channel.
Our inventory management software helps you set reminders to proactively replenish inventory with reorder notifications, bundle your products for promotions, make inventory transfer requests, and much more.
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
Save on fulfilment costs
Coffee creamer brand Prymal joined ShipBob in 2019 and was quickly able to save $8,000 per month on fulfilment costs, while at the same time achieving 4x growth.
Improve your conversion rate
Not only was BAKblade able to scale internationally by partnering with ShipBob, but they found adding 2-Day Shipping increased their conversions as well.
Store, ship, and grow internationally
Sunglasses brand Ombraz distributed their inventory across 3 fulfilment centres in two different countries. This has allowed them to ship to 55 countries on seven continents.