Customers trust your beauty products because you take so much care to ensure that they arrive in excellent shape and elegant packages, but as your company has grown it’s become harder to be a one-person operation.
If you’re considering a beauty products fulfillment service, you probably have a lot of questions about how they work. Don’t worry, we’re about to give you a peek behind the curtain of 3rd party logistics companies (3PLs) that offer beauty products fulfillment!
How is Beauty Products Fulfillment Different?
Many types of product fulfillment are similar.
The product is stored in a warehouse, then it’s dealt out as customers order it. It’s a simple process that doesn’t require a lot of special care or attention to get right. But when it comes to beauty products, there’s a lot more at stake. Not only are your products often easily damaged, they also expire, which can cost you plenty.
Here are just a few ways that beauty products fulfillment is special:
- Careful product rotation. For many retail items, it doesn’t matter if new products are stacked in front of older ones because the merchandise is timeless. When it comes to beauty products, though, the clock is ticking from the moment they leave the manufacturer.This calls for special warehousing and product handling, otherwise your expensive stock may expire long before it’s sold. That’s why beauty products fulfillment houses carefully track products by SKU, lot number and expiration date to ensure that the oldest items are always going out first, minimizing waste.
- Fast reverse logistics. Sometimes customers order the wrong product or the wrong item is sent. This is all part of being a retailer, but how you handle the incoming products can make a huge impact on your profits.Reverse logistics that are too slow will mean your stock may not return to the sales floor or warehouse inventory until it’s much too old to sell, so you’re left to eat the cost of that returned item. Fast reverse logistics is vital to beauty products fulfillment and 3PLs that handle products like yours know it!
- Disposal of expired materials. Ultimately, you’ll have some sort of product that doesn’t sell terribly well and has to be disposed of. Depending on what that item is, it may require special handling or even be barred from entering a landfill.When this is the case, having a good beauty products fulfillment service is invaluable. They have relationships with different companies who can sometimes recycle products, improving your carbon footprint and extracting some minimal value from them. When items can’t be recycled, these companies know how to dispose of them safely to protect the environment.
Beauty product fulfillment services can really help your company spread its wings. Many companies find that partnering with a 3rd party fulfillment service that specializes in beauty products actually improves their customer service and product fulfillment speeds, making customers even happier than they were when the company was small enough to give each order personalized attention.
