Retail consolidation services reduce costs and improve customer satisfaction
What is retail consolidation service?
Retail consolidation services centralize the distribution of goods to big-box retail stores by accumulating several clients goods in a third-party warehouse. After enough goods are in the retail consolidation facility, the consolidator will ship full truckloads of stock replenishments to retailers.
Sending full truckloads avoids paying higher costs for shipping. Many big-box stores have strict compliance policies and only accept full purchase orders. When POs arrive in partial shipments, vendors are charged high fees for violations. Shipping partial truck loads (LTL) and in-complete POs of goods to retail consolidation services before shipping direct to big-box stores to reduce fees.
Retail consolidation services provide a single warehouse to receive, sort and organize full purchase orders to ship to department stores. Consolidating goods in a third-party consolidation center is a fast and easy way to reduce supply chain expenses in the Retail industry.
What is retail consolidation services and break bulk warehouse?
Consolidation and break bulk warehouses offer third-party logistics services to increase speed and profitability of manufacturers and big-box retail vendors. Speed and profitability improve by receiving goods in partial or bulk, sorting goods, arranging goods into purchase orders, transloading and reshipping goods to their final destination in less, full-shipments with correct quantities.
Consolidation logistics services ensure finished foods from manufacturers and vendors are sorted and quality controlled before going to their final destination. Often, consolidation exists to receive goods from multiple suppliers that fill a single order. Initially, all goods go to the retail consolidation warehouse. The warehouse stores and manages the goods until all items from the PO arrive. Once all items arrive, consolidators send a single shipment to the destination.
Similarly, break bulk warehousing receives a large lot of manufactured goods and sorts them before shipping them to final destination. Manufacturers often manufacture large lots together to reduce costs. The lot must go to multiple distribution centers, retail locations or separate customers.
To ship the same lot to multiple customers, break bulk warehouses operate as a silent, cost savings middle-layer in the supply chain. Manufacturers and retailers send single, bulk orders to a third-party logistics (3PL) warehouses. Here the warehouse staff splits the goods into smaller lots for many client POs. Then the 3PL sends the smaller shipments directly to their next or final destination. Consolidation takes place behind the scenes, without in-house teams handling the goods again.
What is inbound consolidation?
Inbound consolidation is the storage and management of goods from many smaller shipments
Inbound consolidation services receive many smaller shipments to a single facility before forwarding the goods to the final destination in one load. The inbound consolidation 3PL does not send goods to the next step in the supply chain until they receive all shipments that will ship together to the next destination. Manufacturers, retailers, commercial and eCommerce brands count on inbound consolidation services to receive many smaller International shipments from manufacturers to fill purchase orders and project lists.
Consider using third-party inbound consolidation near the gateway city where most of your goods are entering the country. For instance, if you order home decorations and office furniture from 10 suppliers in Asia and 8 of them are sending goods that will enter the USA through Florida, a 3PL retail consolidation service in central Florida may be ideal. All goods can import directly to the consolidation warehouse for receiving and storage until the final shipment arrives. Then all goods can be delivered, in a single delivery to their final location.
How does consolidation transportation work?
Consolidation transportation works to reduce the cost of getting goods from point A to point B by consolidating multiple less than truckload (LTL) shipments into one larger, better value load. In the consolidation transportation service model, goods arrive at a single transportation warehouse from multiple carriers that are less than full truck loads. Many shipments are heading to point B so warehouses who book loads for multiple customers share cost savings across companies.