New breed of 3PLs help
frozen-food e-tailers get chill
For e-retailers marketing chilled and frozen food products, speed, quality, and accuracy are just
the starting points. They’re now finding it takes highly customized—even personalized—fulfillment
service to keep customers happy. A new breed of 3PLs can help them do that.
A PROBLEM THAT ALMOST ALL E-COMMERCE
retailers grapple with at some point in their evolution is
how to adapt their fulfillment processes to meet the exponential growth of online sales. This is particularly true with
small and mid-sized e-retailers, which account for roughly
90% of all internet retail suppliers. 1
The real conundrum is that this e-commerce growth
is somewhat unpredictable. Some internet retailers are
reaching their five-year goals within two years and 10-year
goals within five years, having completely outgrown their
warehouse space and order-fulfillment processes. This
b Continuous stock-keeping unit (SKU) growth driven by
new-item releases and the need to stock both fast-moving
and slow-moving items;
b The small number of order lines per order;
b Under-stocking, influenced by seasonal and trend spikes
in product demand;
b High returns from customers due to mis-ordering,
mispicks, and shipping damage;
b Customer-driven demand for the fastest delivery at the
lowest cost; and
b The necessity for real-time cloud-based visibility of
inventory and order movement.
Essentially, e-commerce retailers are realizing it’s incumbent on them to develop a better understanding of their cus-
