Clothing and apparel brands deal with unique shipping challenges.
These challenges are compounded further nowadays with ongoing supply chain issues across the world.
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What’s the one solution to these challenges facing apparel brands? It’s working with a clothing fulfillment center.
Here are 4 reasons why clothing and apparel brands should work with an experienced third party fulfillment center.
4 Reasons You Need a Clothing Fulfillment Center
High Number of SKUs
Every clothing brand understands the difficulty of dealing with high SKU counts. Processing a large number of SKUs is vital and makes inventory management very hard. Not to mention, new fashion trends come in every season, meaning SKUs can change very rapidly.
Returns Management
If you are in the clothing and apparel industry, you know returns are something you will have to deal with all the time. Management of a returns program can be very distracting for brands during busy periods. At Evolution, our returns management team take this distraction away and manages this for you. We implement automated systems and client specific processes that help to minimize the costs associated with returns handling from your customers to our distribution warehouse in Vancouver, Canada. The product is inspected, photographed and quickly put back into inventory as shippable finished goods (for those items that can be resold).
At Evolution we also understand the need to process returns in a timely fashion, whether these be Wholesale Returns where clients look to clean up the books before month end, or Consumer Returns where customers expect immediate credit on their orders.
We process large volumes of retail product returns, from the big box retailers to the independent boutiques. Evolution utilizes a sophisticated cloud based warehouse management system to efficiently manage returns for credit and returns for exchange on behalf of our clients.
Admin Support Services
Don’t slow down your business operations with boring administration work. You can instead outsource it to an experienced logistics partner. Here at Evolution, our senior accounting team at Evolution is available to assist in the following areas:
- Business registration
- Accounts payables / payment processing
- Bank and Credit Card reconciliations
- Tax remittance & filing
- Bank deposits
- Insurance reporting
- Sales Rep/Agency Commission processing & payment
- Administrative Support Services – Receivables & Credit Management
Customer Service
Our outsourced customer service department can help with:
- Inventory allocation
- Contacting customers to obtain shipping authorization
- Order administration
- Notifying customers of PDC and COD pick ups
- Administering Advances Shipping Notifications (ASN) or special customer shipping requirements
- Pre – shipping season preparation including order acknowledgements, cancellation notification, issuing welcome packages and confirming payment terms.
- Maintaining customer relationships and fielding customer issues
- Processing Return Authorizations Requests & Credits
- Administrative Support Services –Forwarding, Brokerage & Logistics
IT Support
Lastly, our outsourced IT support team is able to provide the highest level of IT customer support. We are actively integrated with some of the leading industry cloud based e-commerce software including Nu order, Brandboom, Shopify, Spree and Magento.
Minimize Overhead Costs
By partnering with a 3PL company, you don’t have the added cost of getting warehouse space, hiring warehouse workers, and the needed equipment. The 3PL company you outsource to handles all of these areas for you.
This also means you don’t need to spend time hiring and training more employees, freeing up valuable time for your leadership team.
About Evolution Group of Companies
Established in 2010, Evolution Group of Companies has grown to include five distinct operating entities: Evolution Fulfillment, Evolution Global, Ape Ship, Order Marshal and Blastramp. Each one of our brands is unique in its own way and effectively allows international businesses to operate in Canada and the US with turnkey order fulfillment solutions. Our focus on efficiencies, solutions, and technologies sets us apart.
From warehousing and fulfillment, customer service and accounting to software integrations, application development and shipping and courier – we have evolved to cover all aspects of supply chain management.
If you’re interested in learning more about our 3PL services in Canada and in the US, visit our website at www.evolvewithus.ca.
