Seasonal Inventory Management Services
There’s one thing holiday, seasonal sports gear, and apparel brands have in common.
They all deal with seasonal inventory.
Seasonal inventory requires a more complex inventory management strategy, but you don’t have to tackle its complexity alone.
If you sell seasonal products online, ShipBob can help you track and manage seasonal inventory.
Learn more about ShipBob’s seasonal inventory management services.
Even our previous 3PL was unable to scale at the level we needed years ago, which became apparent my first holiday with them. This past holiday season would have been completely unmanageable for both our old 3PL and us. ShipBob does it seamlessly.
Michael Peters,
VP of E-Commerce Operations at TB12
Request Fulfillment Pricing
We’ll get back to you within 24 hours. Privacy Policy
What is seasonal inventory?
A seasonal brand manages inventory that serves a specific time period, event, or season, leading to different demand levels depending on the time of year.
Many ecommerce companies experience sales that fluctuate month-to-month (e.g., ski equipment, beachwear, etc). or see large spikes during peak season when shoppers are buying more from Black Friday through Christmas or other holidays.
Seasonal inventory challenges
A seasonal business sees high demand at the same time period(s) every year. Year over year, that volume may increase, but their logistics strategy looks very different than a year-round brand. When you don’t have consistent sales and revenue coming in, it can be very expensive and unsustainable to manage logistics in-house over the off months.
During the busy months, fulfilling orders yourself can get extremely chaotic, resulting in delayed shipments. You can hire more temp workers, but they are unfamiliar with your processes. Once staff are up-to-speed, the season wraps up and you have to lay off your new workforce.
ShipBob’s seasonal inventory solutions
ShipBob is a best-in-class 3PL with a growing fulfillment network and leading technology. With a wide range of fulfillment capabilities, ShipBob helps brands ramp up seasonal inventory with ease. To help you create a strong seasonal inventory management strategy, including flexible fulfillment, advanced data and analytics, and other world-class logistics solutions.
ShipBob’s growing global fulfillment network allows you to store inventory across multiple locations while putting your logistics workflows on autopilot.
By automating logistics within a highly connected logistics network, you don’t have to worry about tens of thousands of orders getting out on time from one facility, because you can split your inventory across locations and have them shipped more efficiently.
“Running a music label, order volume fluctuates as it is based on certain times when an album drops. We don’t have continuous promotions running, and months can go by before a new physical product is ready to sell. I also couldn’t get order volume discounts if I set up an account with DHL or FedEx on my own, which have steep minimums.”
Lee Nania, Founder of SubSubmarine
Here is an overview of ShipBob’s cosmetics logistics solutions:
A great unboxing experience
The unboxing experience is a crucial part of the product that customers are buying. The extra effort you put into packaging has the potential to increase the perceived value of your product. Psychologically, it feels good to open a package that’s aesthetically appealing.
ShipBob partners with you to help maintain superior brand quality, even when it’s done outside of your four walls.
We offer several different packaging options and partners, so you can design a custom box or poly mailer for a variety of cosmetics products with inserts that will keep your customers delighted and coming back for more.
2-day shipping
DTC brands are quickly changing their shipping strategy to meet with customer expectations. By offering 2-day shipping, you can reduce cart abandonment and build a loyal customer base.
ShipBob also offers a 2-Day Express Shipping Program, which has been proven to bring in new customers and drive repeat purchases for cosmetics brands.
Distributed inventory
By partnering with a 3PL that offers a network of fulfillment centers, you have the option to split inventory across multiple locations, known as distributed inventory. Utilizing fulfillment centers in different regions can reduce transit times for customers and shipping costs for you.
With ShipBob’s robust fulfillment network, you can store inventory in the locations that make the most sense for your business. Our technology automatically routes each order to the fulfillment center that’s closest to the shipping destination for the most efficient delivery.
International shipping
Scaling internationally can enable your business to grow at speeds faster than in your home market, and allow you to build a global customer base. ShipBob takes this into account, and can advise you on how logistics can help you scale faster overseas.
ShipBob operates an international fulfillment network and can ship orders to all countries where the major shipping carriers deliver to, and we also negotiate bulk discount rates with carriers to provide simple and affordable international shipping capabilities, such as DDP shipping services to freight shipping.
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.
How ShipBob improves your fulfillment and logistics
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.
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 fulfillment centers in two different countries. This has allowed them to ship to 55 countries on seven continents.
