APSFulfillment-07-19-13Good Goods

The real romantics always say that “life is about more than just stuff and things.” They put human interaction, happiness, and love for one another ahead of any sort of material good. They say that there’s no comparison between inanimate objects and people’s emotions.

And they’re right. There’s nothing like humans relating to one another and connecting on a personal level. It’s unbeatable.

But some stuff, well, it’s kind of nice. You don’t have to be any sort of hardcore materialist to enjoy a few tangible objects in life. Let’s face it: we’ve all got a thing or two that we treasure. A 1950’s Seeburg jukebox, an iPhone 5, the 1967 Mustang GT you inherited from your dad—all these things have their place with human pleasure. So, if some things provide an outlet for happiness with people, then, arguably, objects can’t all be that bad.

Product fulfillment pros have to understand this. The material they are dealing in often provides a lot of pleasure to clients the world over. However, many of the pros run into difficulties when dealing with products for their clients. They have great delivery services, professional attitude, and good overall knowledge of the industry, but they lack the knowledge of what it takes to acquire, manage, and deliver quality merchandise. It really doesn’t take much to master this, but there are some pointers of which to take note.

Getting It Out

On its own, merchandise fulfillment in product fulfillment seems like a basic component. You acquire products—“stuff”—then sell them to people. How hard is that? Well, again, there are some notes to take on the subject.

It’s necessary that, once you finalize what products you are going to stock as your merchandise, you have the right connections to regularly supply you with that stock. Connecting with suppliers or supply chain companies is the important component here. Before you commit to any one supplier, be sure to shop around. There are a lot of suppliers out there and many multinational supply chain companies with good stock, but since they are a competitive industry like everything else on the marketplace, they have various service formats and price ranges. Pick the supplier—or however many you need—that can service you best while not breaking your bank.

With merchandise fulfillment, there’s also the storage question. Where are you going to store all of that stuff? This question has two answers: You can either invest in your own storage unit on your premises or outsource to a third party to keep your merchandise. In either case, it means having a storage facility that is safe, secure, and, above all, accessible for you to get the products out to the clients when they order them.

It’s necessary to have a proper merchandise chain working for your product fulfillment business—it’s important that you cover everything from supply to storage to order fulfillment for your clients. That last part will likely require you to have a separate order fulfillment center for taking your merchandise orders and beginning the process of getting the orders out to the clients.

More for Everyone

As you can now understand, there are a lot of bases to cover when dealing with merchandise in product fulfillment. It’s often difficult and a lot of the time it can get hectic; therefore, you have to be continually improving your merchandise fulfillment process. Can you get a faster order processing system in place? Do it. Do you know of a way to get better transportation logistics to send out your merchandise faster but still come under budget? Get on it. Have you come into contact with some cool products to add to your roster? Add ‘em.

When there’s great merchandise in product fulfillment and great processes to get those products out to those who want them, everyone’s happy. Success, satisfaction, and financial rewards: all the right stuff.

Need solutions to your product fulfillment problems? APS Fulfillment, Inc has the knowledge and services to make your direct mail and product fulfillment ventures more successful. Contact APS Fulfillment, Inc by e-mail at [email protected], visit its web site at www.apsfulfillment.com, or call (954) 582-7450.