Brands leave their 3PL for the same five reasons.
Pick, pack and ship for ecommerce brands — run on a system built so those five things don’t happen to you.
Nobody switches over one bad week.
They switch because five things have been grinding away for months. Here they are, and here is what we do about each one — not a promise to try harder, a thing that is built.
The invoice never matches the quote
Fees that were not on the rate card. Surcharges nobody mentioned. A bill you can only query a month after the work happened.
HOW WE ANSWER ITEvery billable action is itemised by the system as it happens — each pick, each pack, each return, each label. You can look at the running total today, not read about it in three weeks.
Getting out costs more than getting in
Twelve-month tie-ins. Exit charges that make leaving unaffordable. Your own stock history locked inside somebody else's system.
HOW WE ANSWER ITMonth to month, 30 days' notice, no exit charge. Your stock, your data and your history leave with you if you go.
- 12-month term
- Exit charge to leave
- Your data stays put
- Month to month
- 30 days' notice
- No exit charge
The stock figure is wrong, and you find out late
Counts that drift. Mispicks found by your customer before anyone here notices. A monthly report describing what was true a fortnight ago.
HOW WE ANSWER ITBin-level locations and live counts on the same screen we use — there is no client version of the numbers. Picking is scan-verified, and goods-in discrepancies are raised the day stock lands.
Nobody answers, and when they do they don't know
A ticket queue. An account manager who has to go and ask the warehouse. Two days to find out where one parcel went.
HOW WE ANSWER ITMessages reach the people actually handling your stock, not a support tier. We are a small, selective operation, and you are welcome to come and stand on the floor and watch your own stock being handled. Search an order, product or SKU and attach it to the message, so there is nothing to explain.
It holds up all year, then falls over in peak
Volume gets accepted that the site cannot process, and the backlog lands on you in January with the returns wave on top of it.
HOW WE ANSWER ITWe take clients on selectively and tell you what we can handle before you sign. We would rather decline volume beyond the forecast than quietly sit on it.
Headroom through peak — and we'd rather decline volume than sit on it
Every answer above is a screen you can open.
Your charges, your stock count, your orders, returns and the video of every parcel sit in the same system the floor works in, changing as they work. There is no client version of the numbers and no weekly export.
It is written in this warehouse by our own software team. It changes most weeks, usually because someone on the floor or a client asked for something.
Bench camera00:27Hello Rowan & Co.
Sunday, 12 October · here is where everything is.
- Stock by product
- Packing videos
- Message the team
Illustrative screens and rates · your own rate card applies
Fulfilment isn’t finished when the parcel goes out.
Most of what goes wrong in fulfilment happens on the way back. A return is a parcel nobody forecast, holding something nobody has checked, against an order somebody is waiting to be refunded for.
It is the half we are known for: opened on camera, graded item by item, and matched back to its order even when it arrives with no paperwork in somebody else’s box. Resaleable stock is back in its bin and your available count the same day it passes.
Both directions run on one system and one floor, which is the only reason your stock figure can be right in both. Returns are processed on reitrn software.
- Goods incounted to bin
- Pick & packscanned and filmed
- Despatchlabel at the bench
- Returnsopened and graded
The whole operation, not a slice of it.
Stock arrives, sells, ships and sometimes comes back. We run all four, plus trade orders, on one system — so nothing is reconciled by email.
Goods in
- Booked deliveries
- Counted to bin
- Discrepancies same day
Storage & stock
- Bin-level locations
- Live counts
- Stock takes on the floor
Pick & pack
- Scan-verified picking
- Filmed at the bench
- Slip and label printed
B2B & wholesale
- Bulk and trade orders
- Pallets and cartons
- Retailer labelling specs
Returns
- Filmed inspection
- Condition graded
- Shelf or recovery
Probably yours, or something awkwardly like it.
Every 3PL says it can handle anything. These are the categories that have actually gone through this warehouse — including the ones that are a nuisance to pick and worse to take back.
Clothing
Picked, folded and packed. Steamed, repacked and graded on the way back in.
Lingerie, underwear & swimwear
Hygiene-sensitive stock, where a return needs someone to judge whether it can be sold again at all.
Fragrance
Samples and full bottles, packed for fragile transit and the courier rules that come with them.
Supplements & nutrition
Tubs, pouches and sachets, picked by scan so the wrong flavour doesn't go out.
Housewares & plastics
Light, bulky and awkward to pick efficiently — which is exactly the sort of thing a per-order price hides.
Mixed and multi-SKU
Bundles, gift sets and trade cartons built from the same stock pool as everything else.
Whatever you already run, we can connect to.
Your store, your returns portal, your carriers and the systems you already run your business on. Because the warehouse software is written here, the answer to “does it talk to X” is a timeline rather than a no.
Running today
Live on client accounts right now
Carriers
Booked and labelled at the bench, through Shippo
Built on request
Work — but work we can do, and we will tell you how long it takes
Using something that is not here? Tell us what it is
Running live, not in beta.
Built in our own warehouse, on our own clients’ stock, and fixed where it broke. Orders go out and returns come back through it every day.
Try us for four weeks.
Not a migration, not a contract. Long enough that the orders you ship in week one come back as returns inside the trial — so you see both directions, every charge as it happens, and the video of every parcel.