Running a clothing and apparel business can come with a lot of responsibility and stress, especially when you have high volumes of orders to fulfil. As your clothing business may grow, you may start to wonder if partnering up with a 3PL can take away a lot of this stress. Finding the right 3PL is key, to ensure your stock is kept in perfect condition and sent out to your customers quickly and safely.
Perhaps you aren’t even sure what a 3PL is or how it can benefit your business, and today this blog post will dive into the key reasons why your clothing and apparel business may benefit from third-party logistics.
Why would you need 3PL?
A key challenge for eCommerce clothing brands is handling the order fulfilment. Your company may begin to grow fast and dealing with large amounts of demand can become very difficult. In doing so, you have the responsibility of warehouse and storage, packing and shipping your products, logistics, orders and returns tracking and more.
These are all jobs that one person could not handle on their own (especially when you have other aspects of your business to prioritise), but perhaps recruiting some helping hands may drive your business costs way too high. This is where a 3PL partner comes in to help with your logistics and operations (leave the boring bits to us).
Focusing on growth
You must prioritise growing your clothing brand, and this can be done through focusing on a lot of areas. For example, being active on social media should be a huge priority for you as a clothing brand as your competitors are likely to be very active on socials too. Being in this market means you can be creative on your socials, and you may even work with influencers to reach your target audience.
Being a clothing brand may mean you hand-make your own products, or you design them. Creating new products and having regular launches may be a huge priority to you as it can keep customers engaged and excited about your brand.
New lines may come out per season, or you may be constantly keeping up with consumer trends, meaning a large amount of your time is spent designing and planning. This will be the most time-consuming part of your company and you must choose to focus on these aspects to expect to grow faster.
What is 3PL?
Third-party logistics is the concept of partnering up with a 3PL provider to handle your stock and order fulfilment. This simply means you store your products at their warehouse, and they can pick, pack, and ship your orders to your customers. 3PL’s take care of all logistics and can track your orders through integrations.
This means for you; you can save on warehousing and staff costs and take away the stress of all jobs on your list. Not only are you saving yourself time and money, but 3PL teams are highly experienced in logistics and will ensure orders are sent out correctly and on time to customers (meaning higher customer satisfaction).
Choosing your 3PL provider
Here at GNOC, we are a 3PL provider who does the fulfilment and logistics of over 300 brands, of all different markets and niches. We however have a lot of experience in the clothing and apparel industry, as we have worked with several brands in this market and know the needs your business may have.
If you are wanting to start your 3PL journey, you can contact us here. We would be happy to speak with you and find out your requirements, no matter how big or small.
