e-commerce fulfilment helping businesses soar
Let’s take your online business to the next level
The 5 benefits we offer e-commerce businesses:
- We help you expand and scale
- We increase your margins
- We remove the fear and frustration
- We help you focus on growth
- We remove the risk associated with expansion
WHY CHOOSE THE FULFILMENT PEOPLE?
1 Helping you expand and scale
We offer a full 3PL service for businesses selling online. TFP will:
- Take delivery, or arrange collection, of your inventory.
- Place and securely store your inventory in our warehouse.
- Integrate with your store / sales channels – we deal with this for you.
- As we receive your customer orders, we pick, pack, and ship your products.
- Handle any product returns for you.
Essentially, we are storing and managing your inventory and fulfilling your orders – it’s the warehousing side of your business all taken care of for you, while keeping you firmly in the loop where necessary!
WHY CHOOSE THE FULFILMENT PEOPLE?
2 Increase your margins
That’s right, working with a 3PL partner should increase your overall margins. Once you consider the true costs involved, it is almost always the case that a good 3PL provider can do it cheaper than most SME’s can do in house.
This is because:
- You’ll benefit from our economies of scale.
- Access to discounted delivery options.
- We’ve tried and we’ve tested – we have the best practices and processes in place.
- Our vast experience + latest warehouse technologies = efficiencies!
WHY CHOOSE THE FULFILMENT PEOPLE?
3 Eliminate fear and frustration
One of the big fears about using a 3PL provider is having poor or delayed communication. We solve this problem by giving you direct access to the team working on your account:
- You’ll have a named account manager, and easy access to them!
- Your account manager is not sat in an office. They will be one of the people actually working your account.
- Direct dial phone access and direct email to your account manager.
- The same team will work on your account each day – you’ll likely get to know their names!
- It’s a team effort – so no problems when we have annual leave or sickness.
- The team will get to know your account and your products – yes, we have processes and systems, but nothing replaces the personal touch.
- We’re confident we’ll have one of the lowest customer turnover rates in the industry – our customer feedback tells us that our approach to our customer relationships and communications is a significant factor here.
WHY CHOOSE THE FULFILMENT PEOPLE?
4 Help you focus on growth
We’re sure you didn’t get into business because you wanted to spend half of your day picking and packing your customer orders but perhaps that’s right where you are most days. Or perhaps you’re having to spend unnecessarily large amounts of time chasing your current fulfilment provider for updates or information?
We did get into business to pick and pack and we’ve made it our mission to do this very well. It’s what we do, and we can do this for you! We will do this well, we will do this cheaper, and you will free up your own time to concentrate on growing the business that you started.
Would it be nice to:
- Have more time to focus on marketing
- Have more time to focus on product development
- Have more time to focus on your key business relationships
- Get a few of those evening and weekend hours back?
WHY CHOOSE THE FULFILMENT PEOPLE?
5 Remove the risk
With expansion, inevitably, comes risk. You can counter this risk by choosing to work with The Fulfilment People – we’ve done the groundwork.
- We have two warehouse sites ideally located in Newark, East Midlands.
- Ready equipped with various racking, shelving and binned storage options – we’ll have the right option for you. If we don’t, we’ll sort it.
- Industry leading software that integrates with almost anything via API.
- Experienced and long serving staff – our staff retention is excellent. Our people are our priority, and we look after them, if we get this right everything else falls into place.
- Established shipping and logistics networks.
- Robust ISO 9001 certified processes.
- 18-year track record of success.
- Incredibly loyal customer base with excellent customer retention.
We believe that people are the key to a successful 3PL business, far more than any other factor.
The path to unleashing your potential
Next steps
Most potential new clients share a few simple things when they approach us – they ultimately want their business, their customers & their products to be well looked after and in the hands of a fulfilment partner who cares.
We care.
Yes, they also need to know that we have the facilities, processes, the technology and the systems to make sure the ‘day to day’ runs smoothly and efficiently, these are very important factors. But can all this be in place, and can it be done with care?
We’ve got all the required operational boxes ticked and we care.
Recently one customer said to us after a few months working with The Fulfilment People – ‘you meant every word you said at the start, didn’t you?’.
Yes, we did, and we do – we care. It is simply a part of who we are and what we do every day.
If you are looking for a third party logistics provider and like the sound of our people focused approach then let’s talk. Contact us via email or the contact form or better yet give us a call.
Any questions?
FAQ's
How does 3PL work?
1 We will receive and store your stock in one of our warehouses. You’ll be introduced to the team looking after your account.
2 We will integrate your sales platform(s) with our warehouse management system. We’ll make sure you are comfortable in the training and understanding of your own access to our warehouse management system customer portal, here you’ll find lots of useful reports etc.
On the rare occasion this integration isn’t suitable we’ll discuss alternatives.
3 Your customers orders will automatically import to our warehouse management system. We will then pick, pack and ship these orders at pre agreed rates using pre agreed shipping methods.
4 Despatch confirmation and tracking information (if applicable) will be fed back from our warehouse management system and the order status will be updated on your platform and to your customer.
5 Our trusted and reliable couriers will deliver the ordered products to your customer 😊
6 If your customer returns any products, we will deal with these and process under a pre agreed returns process.
7 If any order or delivery related queries arise, we are easily available to assist in resolving these (you may find that we have spotted an issue, and we are proactively working on it already!)
8 We’ll deal with any order specific requirements, for example B2B delivery bookings etc. These are the details that we’ll liaise with you around in early stages, we’ll ask the questions to make sure we understand any such scenarios.
Essentially that’s it – we do understand that all businesses are different and there is no ‘one size fits all’ approach – we will have identified and discussed any specific areas that we feel we may need to ‘tweak’ at the early stages.
What does it cost?
Each customer is different so it is difficult to give an exact cost here.
Storage starts at £8.50 per month per cubic meter used.
Pick and pack costs start at £1.76 for the first pick and then £0.24 for additional pick on the same order
UK delivery charges start at £3.95 for a tracked economy service (2-3 days)
Other charges for packaging and goods in will be present but these are so varied its hard to give exact pricing here but, rest assured, this will all be agreed up front after we have discussed it.
For more details on charges please visit our pricing section.
Also, check out our informative video on how 3PL can actually save you money
What types of company do you work with?
We work with both business to consumer and business to business sellers alike, across a wide range of industries.
- Toys and games
- Homewares & electrical goods.
- Industrial components
- Gardening and camping equipment
- Corporate gifts
- Clothing and apparel
Typically our B2C customers would have minimum 250 orders per month and B2B 100 orders per month – there are exceptions to this and nothing is set in stone – feel free to talk to us about your own individual business and its needs.
What integration do you offer?
We offer many integrations through our partnership software Mintsoft. Mintsoft is the leading warehouse and order management software with many WMS integrations.
Mintsoft’s network of API integrations offers the most integrations from one platform with the main Marketplace and Shopping Cart integrations all catered for.
Link to all of Mintsoft’s integrations can be found here: https://www.mintsoft.com/integrations/
Bespoke integrations can also be managed through Mintsoft – let us know if you need any further specific details.
Where are you based?
We are based in Newark in the East Midlands with excellent transport connections throughout the UK and we are locally serviced by the majority of the main courier companies.
Is there anything you can't deal with?
We are not equipped to deal with:
- Dangerous or hazardous materials
- Very large, bulky or heavy items
- Anything needing a bonded warehouse
- Anything needed temperature-controlled storage
What makes you different/special?
In a word “people”.
We are the Fulfilment People, and the word “people” is the most important word in our company name. You may be surprised if we said our employees are more important than our customers, but it’s true. They make us what we are and separate us from our competitors. Our people then help us to look after all the other people in our world, our customers and their customers. If your customer is a happy one, then we have done our job (and we are proud of that!)
We have a culture of care and respect from our core and (call us old fashioned) but customer service is also high up there on our list of values.
We employ good people, we pay them well, we look after them and they then form great working relationships with our customers. We actively encourage development from within our team. That is the secret sauce (and source) of our competitive advantage.
How do you deal with problems/ what happens if things go wrong?
Calmly and accountably.
Any 3PL provider who claims to never make mistakes is lying and you can probably dismiss them as potential partner right away.
In a busy hectic world mistakes do happen, of course we keep them to an absolute minimum but when they do happen, we own them and deal with them. You’ll notice your account manager jump on the situation right away and keep you informed while it’s being resolved.
If it’s our fault and that means we need to take a financial hit to get it solved, then that is what we do. Accountability is one of our 6 core values.
Of course, we’ll also work hard to resolve problems that have originated elsewhere, we’ll be part of the solution if we can.
How do you deal with returns?
Yes, we deal with returns every day – your product returns requirements could vary from the next customer, so we’ll discuss this with you individually.
How long will this take to setup?
Typically speaking, the initial negotiations and conversations take longer than the onboarding itself. 99% of integrations can be dealt with in a matter of hours by our inhouse onboarding team – once that bit is done and we have your inventory to hand, we’re ready to go.
We also appreciate that you may have notice periods etc to deal with, with a current partner – we understand this, and we always use this time wisely to make sure we are ‘ready to go’ when the time comes.
Our current record, from initial enquiry to agreement then integration & stock received & put away with all back orders (2 weeks’ worth) then shipped, is 4 working days. It wasn’t easy, but we did it.
What are your terms / contracts?
Our terms and contracts are very flexible.
You’ll initially be provided with a written proposal, and should you accept we’d then ask you to complete a new client application form.
We will have agreed all rates before onboarding, so you’ll know what to expect when invoices come around.
Invoices will be issued at the end of each month and on 30-day terms.
For those that prefer to do so, we can of course formalise our agreements through written contract, and we have a standard agreement that we are happy to share with you.
For customers without a formal contract our invoicing terms would provide an implied contract notice period of 30 days.
For customers that take the option of a written agreement we have a 3 month notice period as standard. 3 months can be adjusted up/down to suit, with a minimum of 30 days.