Community Q: Inventory storage!

This might be silly, but where do all the pants go after they arrive from wherever they come from? Your back room/garage? :) 

This isn’t a silly question at all! As you’ve guessed, there are a lot of different possibilities, which tend to correspond with the size of the brand. Here at Alpine Parrot, we’ve gone from the basement to the warehouse, and I’m happy to share the general breakdown of options 😄

Deciding on how to store your inventory for fulfillment (aka shipping orders) depends entirely on the combination of how much space you have and how many units you have to store in it.

In my experience, there are four types of storage options:

1. Somewhere at home - extra room, garage, behind the couch/in the kitchen/wherever things fit
• Pros: The inventory is easy to fulfill, and it’s cheap (probably even free!) to store
• Cons: Keeping track of the inventory is a pain, there’s a chance it could get dirty, you’re probably going to bump your toes on a box or two, and fulfillment gets OLD after a while
2. External storage (e.g. public storage unit)
• Pros: It’s relatively cheap, and you don’t have to worry about accidentally bumping into it all the time
• Cons: Travel time to the unit eats up valuable time, temperature control costs more, and fulfillment has to be done in batches
3. Shared warehouse space
• Pros: It’s out of the house, there are other humans around to help or socialize with, and all the tools (e.g. tables, packing tape, etc) you need are available
• Cons: You’re basically renting space and you have to do your own packing and inventory management or hire someone to do it for you - aka $$$. Also shared warehouses tend to be in bigger cities, so if you’re in a smaller town this option might not even be available to you.
4. Third-party logistics (aka 3PL) warehouse
• Pros: Someone else is taking care of everything for you - from inventory tracking to fulfillment, plus it’s all integrated with your website, so you don’t even have to think about it!
• Cons: You don’t have as much control and $$$$

I decided to fulfill all of our “Get ‘Em Now” Kickstarter orders myself, if for no other reason than I wanted to fully understand where the pain points of storage and fulfillment would be (so that I could justify spending the money on hiring a 3PL). At the time, we only had a couple hundred units of Ponderosa Pants, so I was able to take over most of my basement and set up a storage and fulfillment station. To be clear, “station” includes: the items we were selling (e.g. Pondos), poly bags for keeping the garments free from shipping/storage muck (e.g. dust, dog hair, as an extra layer of protection in the mail), mailers (the external packaging), paper/labels/printers for actually shipping the orders, a table for putting everything together (doubles as a place for processing returns), and packing tape. 

Goodness gracious, the experience taught me that fulfillment is tedious and exhausting, especially when you have more than 1-2 orders to fulfill at a time! It requires focus to make sure you’re shipping exactly what folks have ordered, as well as energy and time to keep that focus going for however many orders need to be fulfilled. 

While I was fulfilling the first round of Kickstarter orders, I made the extremely conscious decision to hire a 3PL to take care of everything for the rest of the Kickstarter orders and beyond. Not only had I run out of space (especially when MOQs from our next factory resulted in at least 600 units of Pondos at a time), but I didn’t have anyone to help me with fulfillment at the time. I needed help, and I was more than willing to pay for the privilege. 

Since our Kickstarter, we have moved factories and 3PL partners for a variety of reasons - and I don’t regret a single dime I’ve spent on their services. That said, I am a huge proponent of saving every penny you can until the benefits of paying for services far outweigh their costs. Folks who have small products (e.g. cosmetics, food, or accessories) or are still working with small volumes of product will probably find a lot of success in operating their storage and fulfillment from one of the smaller-scale options I mentioned earlier. 

For folks who are ready to make the leap to a 3PL, it’s a known fact that most 3PLs are notoriously terrible. I’ve managed to luck out and partner with incredible companies, so if you’re a brand in need of a great 3PL, please reach out! I love making referrals 😄

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