Regional Inventory Management Services
The best part of owning an ecommerce business is the ability to reach customers across the world.
But many online brands make the mistake of storing inventory close to where they operate.
A better strategy is to split inventory across locations to reach your customers faster.
With ShipBob, online brands can outsource regional inventory management and fulfilment, so they can grow their business while spending less time on logistics operations.
Learn more about our regional inventory management services work.
As we started to hit that first inflection point of growth, it became apparent we needed to look for a 3PL that could help us expand geographically in the US and also drive down shipping costs and expenses.
Michael Peters,
VP of E-Commerce Operations at TB12
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What is regional inventory?
Regional inventory refers to inventory stored in specific locations based on demand.
Regional inventory requires distribution management and a team to store, pick and pack, and ship inventory from a nearby location. This allows orders to be fulfiled closer to customers to reduce shipping costs and transit times.
Managing regional inventory in several different locations requires a robust team, resources, and technology. But with a 3PL, you can outsource regional inventory management to save time and money on operations.
ShipBob’s regional inventory management services
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.
Once you connect your store to ShipBob’s technology, you can send inventory to one or more of our fulfilment centre locations by filling out a warehouse receiving order (WRO). Once we receive your inventory, we store it until orders are routed to the nearest location to be picked, packed and shipped.
Using ShipBob’s dashboard, you can 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.
This makes it much easier to track inventory by increasing inventory visibility and providing insights into when it’s time to replenish inventory, run a promotion, and track slow-moving items that are no longer generating sales.
Our built-in inventory management tools helps you set reminders to proactively replenish inventory with reorder notifications, easily setup product bundling, make inventory transfer requests, and much more.
“We are growing really fast and won’t slow down anytime soon. With ShipBob, we have the option to use more of their warehouses to further reduce shipping costs.
Because ShipBob has a lot of people to handle our orders and additional warehouses we can expand into, we can scale up with ease as we continue to grow quickly. If we ran our own warehouse, it would be much harder to hire people and we’d inevitably outgrow the space.”
Oded Harth, CEO & Co-Founder of MDacne
Read on to learn how ShipBob can help you grow your business.
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.
