In-House Fulfillment Setup
Thinking of setting up in-house fulfillment for your new business?
First of all: Congratulations! This is an exciting moment in your entrepreneurial journey, and it deserves to be celebrated.
Secondly: You’ve landed in the right place on the internet. We cover what you need to know about order fulfillment and everything you need to fulfill orders in-house. We even put together a handy checklist to make sure you’ve got all the must-have tools to manage in-house fulfillment efficiently.
Order Fulfillment Flow
Let’s start with a quick review of how orders are fulfilled — from getting your products in before an order is placed, to getting them out to customers after they place an order.
Everything you need
to fulfill orders in-house
As a leader in the fulfillment industry, ShipMonk has created hyper-efficient processes and technology for fulfillment — you can read more about our warehouse automation here. But if your company is relatively new and your sales volume is low, fulfilling orders in-house might be the best option when starting out. You don’t need a ton of expensive tools to pack and ship orders from your own home, office, or warehouse. In fact, there are only 8 things you need to get started. Check out our list below.
Must-Have Tools
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Tape & Tape Gun Tape guns are an inexpensive and easy way to speed up the process of packing orders.
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Boxes Boxes should be large enough to comfortably fit the products inside – but not too big or you may run into dimensional weight issues costing you unnecessary money.
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Packing Cushioning Protect your shipments with a filler material such as packing peanuts, bubble wrap, foam, specialty paper, or crinkle cut paper.
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Storage Bins Keep everything organized in bins, so your products are easy to find and move.
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Klever Safety Cutter Reduce the chance of injury to workers – and damage to merchandise – by opting for a Klever Kutter instead of a box knife.
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Hand Trucks or Dollies Don’t hurt your back! Use a hand truck or dolly to quickly and easily move containers between workstations.
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Tape Measure & Scale Quickly and accurately calculate postage for shipping. Pro tip: Don’t estimate weight, or your carrier will invoice you for shipping surcharges to account for the difference.
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Packing Table A clean, dedicated space with all of your packing needs within arm’s length is crucial for efficiency.
Nice-To-Have Tools
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Laser Printer As your business grows, consider dedicated hardware to print shipping and postage labels.
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Barcodes Take organization to the next level with barcodes, so you can identify separate SKUs to pick & pack orders more quickly – and with more accuracy!
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Tape Machine If you’re sealing lots of boxes with stickers, you may eventually want to invest in a gum tape dispenser to save valuable time.
Download a copy of our checklist
Is your brand a good fit for In-house fulfillment?
- Do you ship fewer than 100 orders per month?
- Is your average order value $25?
- Are your products custom made to order?
If you answered YES to at least two of the above, your brand might be an ideal candidate for in-house fulfillment.
Want to chat about your business
with a
fulfillment expert?
Set up your free consultation today!
Did you know?
ShipMonk has helped many well-known businesses scale to the global marketplace even before we began providing fulfillment services. We began as an international package-forwarding center and we’re still running operations out of South Florida… but now with many more industry-leading services up our sleeves, plus a few more strategically-located fulfillment centers to boot!
With ShipMonk, there’s no additional cost to ship internationally and we provide customs assistance. We help with all the logistics stuff you shouldn’t have to worry about because we created ShipMonk to help you Stress Less and Grow More!