ShipBob’s Elastic Logistics Services
Looking for a flexible logistics solution?
ShipBob is a global omnichannel fulfillment provider that offers a wide range of logistics solutions for ecommerce businesses of all sizes.
From an international fulfillment network to offering a powerful logistics platform, ShipBob makes it easy to grow and expand your business at your own pace.
ShipBob’s elastic logistics capabilities make it easy to optimize logistics by saving time and money. Read on to learn more.
As we’ve grown over the past year, we’ve also experienced working with some partners who were not able to scale as quickly as we needed them to without having an impact on efficiency and quality. Quality is non-negotiable for us, and ShipBob has shown us time and again that they will treat our products like their products.
Stephanie Lee,
COO at PetLab
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What is elastic logistics?
Elastic logistics offers the ability to design a more flexible and efficient supply chain by being able to reduce or expand logistic capabilities to align with demand.
The ability to make adjustments to supply chain operations enables ecommerce businesses to optimize logistics, save money, and better manage inventory based on customer needs.
How does elastic logistics work?
With elastic logistics to work, it requires a combination of expertise, technology, and warehouse management, as well as data to support demand forecasting.
Warehouse automation, including inventory tracking and warehouse management systems (WMS), is an essential as it provides the data needed to track inventory flow in real time.
An inventory tracking system can also provide insights to historical order data to make better decisions on inventory replenishment.
What are the benefits of elastic logistics?
There are several benefits of an elastic logistics system.
Optimize inventory levels – With a more flexible supply chain, businesses can choose to increase or decrease inventory levels based on demand, so they don’t have too much capital tied to inventory or have too little inventory to prevent stockouts.
Save on costs – When logistics operations are made flexible, it allows businesses to reduce or expand their logistics needs, saving costs in the long run.
Save on time and labor – Thanks to the elastics logistics requiring automation, much of the heavy lifting can be automated, such as time-consuming warehouse management tasks, inventory audits, and optimizing shipping routes for each order.
ShipBob’s elastics logistics services
With ShipBob, we offer ecommerce businesses the flexibility they need to run a successful supply chain that is fast and affordable.
ShipBob’s global omnichannel fulfillment services allows businesses to work with us based on their needs, including the decision to choose what fulfillment center locations to store inventory in to deciding to run fulfillment in-house but still have access to our advanced fulfillment platform.
Even from just one fulfillment center, ShipBob offers 100% 2-day shipping coverage across the continental US. With ShipBob, you can meet customer expectations around speed and convenience, and drive loyalty through reliable and fast shipping.
“Right from the jump, we opted to get our products into three ShipBob fulfillment centers across the US instead of one. This way, we would be able to decrease shipping times for more customers in different regions of the country. In the end, I want speed. I want customers to compare our delivery time to Amazon.”
Dwight Lee, co-founder and COO of Hero Cosmetics
ShipBob has great relationships with all major carriers and provides discounted shipping rates. Depending on your exact needs, we provide a wide range of shipping options from international to expedited shipping.
ShipBob’s built-in inventory management tools reduces risks related to common inventory management challenges, such as inventory shrinkage, inaccurate inventory reports, stockouts, and backorders.
One of the greatest features of ShipBob’s software is the inventory management functionality, which lets us track inventory change and velocity over time. Being able to monitor which styles are selling quickly helps us always keep our best sellers in stock.
Additionally, our B2C and B2B order volume changes month to month.
Between shipping new collections for wholesale earlier in the year and Q4 madness for direct-to-consumer sales, we’ve been able to get through our heaviest seasons while staying ahead of production using ShipBob’s inventory forecasting tools — even as our order volume more than quadrupled in less than a year.”
Ryan Casas, COO of iloveplum
If businesses is ramping up but you’re not ready to store inventory with a fulfillment provider, ShipBob’s Merchant Plus program, which allows brands to fulfill orders from their own warehouse using our cutting-edge technology.
“Knowing we can still lean on ShipBob’s fulfillment center(s) if we need to and have the ability to scale up to meet demand quickly is quite reassuring. ShipBob has completely won me over with Merchant Plus.”
Jacob Skidmore, VP of Operations at Outlaw Soaps
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.
