Whether jewelry and accessories are your main business or your side business, it’s vital that your product fulfillment services are top-notch.
After all, how your fulfillment service handles these delicate items matters, as well as how well it supports your shipments. From the moment your inventory arrives at the warehouse until your happy customers receive their packages, it’s vital that your 3PL is giving your jewelry and accessories the care they require.
Jewelry and Accessories Require Lots of SKUs
Unless you intend to carry just one or two watches in your shop, your jewelry and accessories line will probably require a lot of careful handling.
Warehousing so many different items not only means having an advanced system in place to map each individual bin, but also putting an efficient plan in place to track and inventory the items in those bins as they move in and out of the warehouse. SKUs can help keep inventory counts if your 3PL uses high-tech barcode scanning tools to meticulously monitor stock levels.
But barcode scanning is only the beginning. Here are some other ways that your 3PL should be taking special care with your jewelry and accessories inventory:
- Custom packing. Although your inventory is often made of many small items, it’s still important to place them in appropriately sized boxes so you’re saving money with each and every shipment.The smallest boxes may be the most appropriate, but there may be other times that envelopes are a better solution, depending on the item, the customer’s location and the cost of shipping. In any event, the goal should be to get the item to your customer as efficiently and as safely as possible, your 3PL should never choose between the two.
- Up-to-the-minute reporting. Your customers never sleep, and neither should your 3PL. When your inventory starts to run low, your fulfillment center should be alerted right away so new items can be ordered or the line can be replaced. Back orders are customer killers, but good data will keep the inventory wheels moving efficiently and lots of happy customers lining up for a chance to buy your jewelry and accessories.
- Reverse logistics. Even if you do everything right, some customers will send those jewelry and accessories back because the shade of blue wasn’t just spot on or they changed their minds between the time they placed their order and the moment it arrived—it’s just the nature of the beast.A jewelry and accessories 3PL should have a dedicated reverse logistics department in place to get those items back into inventory as quickly as possible so you won’t miss a potential sale or be forced to clearance them out just to move inventory at the end of the season.
Jewelry and accessories fulfillment can require a lot of attention to detail, but a good 3PL with an eye to data will make an excellent partner for your business. Tight inventory control, excellent reverse logistics services and careful packing create a combination that can’t be beat in the fulfillment world.
