By now, it’s clear “market globalization” isn’t just a fancy buzz word. The internet makes it fairly easy to communicate and sell to international customers, but can you efficiently and effectively fulfill orders to those customers?
Adding international selling channels to your mix offers its fair share of challenges. And, like most things in life, the 2 competing variables are time and money. Fast international shipping costs you money and slow or inconsistent shipping can cost you customers. On top of that, who really has the time to figure out a better solution? Below are 3 fulfillment scenarios. See if you can relate.
- You’re eagerly taking international orders hoping to expand your brand globally, but it is costly and you don’t have enough volume to drive down rates.
- You don’t currently offer products to international customers because you’re just not quite sure where to start down that path.
- You’re happy with your current fulfillment provider, but they don’t offer much assistance when it comes to the high cost of international delivery.
Sound familiar? Keep reading…
Let’s start with those of you that can relate to scenarios 1 or 2, your goal should be to partner with a 3rd party fulfillment provider who can cost-effectively handle both domestic and international shipping through its existing fulfillment network. Whether that means your product flows out of their international hub or you simply take advantage of their industry resources and relationships to achieve better rates, you’ll have so much more flexibility for handling all your shipments from one inventory.
For the rest of you that are happy with your current fulfillment provider. Good news! There’s no need to switch to lower your cost on international orders. A fulfillment center with consolidation services can act as a secondary service provider. Your primary fulfillment center would simply ship orders to the consolidator who would then use their international network and relationships with postal authorities and parcel carriers to ship and deliver your orders to other countries at lower rates — often faster than using traditional services.
Don’t spend unnecessary time and money getting your arms around this “market globalization” thing. Partner with people who’ve already figured it out.