Multi-Warehouse Management Services & Beginner’s Guide

To grow as an ecommerce business, operating out of one warehouse isn’t enough.

But imagine trying to manage multiple warehouses. As an ecommerce business owner, operating one warehouse is hard enough, let alone multiple.

That’s why growing businesses partner with ShipBob. With ShipBob, you can store inventory in multiple fulfillment centers and leave the rest up to us.

Learn more about ShipBob’s multi-warehouse management services.

Utilizing ShipBob’s network of fulfillment centers allows us to lessen our carbon footprint as well. We’re currently storing inventory in some of ShipBob’s Southern California and Chicago facilities, which means that when we receive an order destined for someplace like New York, we don’t have to ship it from all the way across the country.

Juliana Brasil,

Director of Operations at Food Huggers

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What is multi-warehouse management?

Multi-warehouse management is the process of overseeing inventory and operations across multiple fulfillment centers. This strategy aims to optimize stock distribution, reduce shipping costs, and improve delivery times by placing inventory closer to customers. By utilizing multiple warehouses, businesses can better meet regional demand, prevent stockouts, and enhance the overall customer experience through faster, more cost-effective shipping options.

Multi-warehouse management services: a ShipBob walkthrough

ShipBob’s multi-warehouse management operations help you determine optimal inventory placement across our growing fulfillment network to improve delivery speeds and reduce shipping costs.

You can scale efficiently by distributing inventory into additional warehouses over time. Best of all, as you expand your logistics network, you can track fulfillment and inventory levels all from ShipBob’s cloud-based fulfillment platform.

Reduces shipping costs and improves delivery times

ShipBob offers a network of fulfillment centers, 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 carriers to pick up from the facility due to bad weather.

With a network of fulfillment centers, you can provide customers with affordable 2-day shipping while handing off fulfillment to experts.

“Currently, we have stock in ShipBob’s fulfillment centers in the UK, Canada, and Australia. We’ve also just begun moving into ShipBob’s fulfillment center in Poland, as we have customers in Germany as well!

With new locations being added all the time, ShipBob will help us service customers in more and more countries around the world over time.”

Aaron Patterson, COO of The Adventure Challenge

With customers today expecting a two-day turnaround for their orders, using multiple warehousing and storage locations lets you significantly reduce last-mile delivery times.

For instance, if you use fulfillment centers in hubs like Chicago or Los Angeles, you can reach a large amount of the population in different areas of the country.

It is easy to get the package delivered the same day to people who live in these cities, because the inventory is already close by. If your inventory is only in one of those cities, say, Los Angeles, then imagine how long it will take a package to arrive to your customers who live on the East Coast.

If you can offer a quick turnaround time – without using expedited shipping and it costing an arm and leg – you will likely see a surge in sales.

“We sell flammable goods that need to be shipped via ground, so ShipBob has been a great ally as they have fulfillment centers all over the US, facilitating a 2-3 day delivery time for any customer in the US.

This is helpful especially when weather challenges happen; being able to have different locations to ship from allows for a more seamless supply chain.”

Andrea Lisbona, Founder & CEO of Touchland

Best practices for managing multiple warehouses

What makes a multi-warehouse management operation work? Here are some of the best practices to consider when management multiple warehouses.

1. Implement smart warehousing systems

A warehouse management system (WMS) is a type of software that monitors and controls daily operations in a warehouse. WMS software helps ensure inventory is received, stored, picked, packed, shipped, and replenished in the most efficient way possible. 

When done correctly, a WMS can tell you exactly how much inventory is currently stored in real-time to help avoid inventory shrinkage. This is done by scanning in barcodes of both new inventory and the retrieval of each unit picked in an order.

Implementing technology like a WMS can also help you speed up the warehouse receiving process, organize your warehouse, track operations in real time, and easily store and find items in a warehouse at any time.

2. Track data and analytics

Along with implementing a WMS and inventory tracking system, being able to track operations in real time can improve demand forecasting, reduce stockouts, and better prepare for the unexpected.

3. Partner with an omnichannel fulfillment partner

A third-party logistics partner with omnichannel capabilities offers access to multiple warehouses that are powered by centralized WMS technology.

Instead of trying to manage multiple warehouses while also growing your business, you can outsource multi-warehouse management and fulfillment to ShipBob.

With ShipBob, you can store inventory in multiple locations and track warehousing operations from a centralized fulfillment platform.

“Knowing that ShipBob can always take on more order volume if we are overwhelmed helps us sleep at night when we spend long days at our warehouse. The value in tapping into ShipBob’s fulfillment centers in the US during the holidays is priceless. 

With ShipBob’s flexible fulfillment network, we are able to process all our orders on time and focus on capturing last-minute shoppers with expedited shipping. Beyond the holidays, ShipBob has proven itself to be a valuable partner when we find ourselves capturing a large market.  Previously, we would stop selling when we reached our warehouse’s capacity.  Now we can reach out to ShipBob and they can assist with our order overflow.”

Tom Wall, Vice President of Global Warehousing & Logistics at Beachwaver Co. 

Improve your warehousing strategy with ShipBob

ShipBob makes it easy to get started. Simply connect your online store with ShipBob’s omnichannel fulfillment platform. Once you do, you can choose which fulfillment centers to store inventory in.

Once ShipBob receives inventory, orders placed will be routed to the nearest fulfillment center. Throughout the fulfillment process, you can manage inventory, view data and analytics including insights on future demand, and manage SKUs all from one single dashboard.

With ShipBob’s WMS, brands with their own warehouse can even leverage ShipBob’s fulfillment services in any of ShipBob’s fulfillment centers across the US, Canada, Europe, and Australia to improve cross-border shipping, reduce costs, and speed up deliveries. 

Distributed inventory

With ShipBob’s network of fulfillment centers, 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 carrier 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 fulfillment center.

You can also distribute your inventory across ShipBob’s fulfillment centers 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 fulfillment process (e.g. when an order is picked, packed, or shipped), easily find shipping-related information (e.g., weights, dimensions, or carrier 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 fulfillment centers 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 fulfillment 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.

Don’t just take our word for it: ShipBob success stories

Save on fulfillment costs

Coffee creamer brand Prymal joined ShipBob in 2019 and was quickly able to save $8,000 per month on fulfillment costs, while at the same time achieving 4x growth.

Learn more about Prymal’s 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.

Learn more about BAKblades’s growth

Store, ship, and grow internationally

Sunglasses brand Ombraz distributed their inventory across 3 fulfillment centers in two different countries. This has allowed them to ship to 55 countries on seven continents.

Learn more about Ombraz’s growth