There are many facets to running a business, and depending on how big your business is, you may find yourself wearing many of the company hats so to speak. With demands on your time such as content creation, customer service, and sales, it comes as no surprise to learn that smaller companies are having to turn to independent warehouses in order to cover housing and distribution costs.
By using this method, small businesses, particularly those selling goods online, can hold larger amounts of stock and ship to its destination much more easily. Usually situated in larger populations or on main routes, distribution of good can be done efficiently, ensuring you have happy customers.
Whilst most distribution warehouses are kept full by many clients, they can store vast amounts of merchandise and, you can rest assured that your products won’t be mixed up with anyone else’s.
Warehousing and distribution facilities can offer a lot of service for a reasonable price and really help to grow your business with little investment. Handling goods coming into storage, organizing, cataloguing and holding your products until the orders start to come in, warehouses are a marvel that takes the pressure off having to run your own site. Add to this that many warehouses also offer a distribution service, shipping items in bulk to retailers or manufacturers on your behalf, and the logistics are handled without you having to put any effort in other than paying the invoice.
Of course, warehouses also offer the option of collecting and delivering things via outside carriers or your own trucks. The site staff will usually aid any not residential workers in collections and offer a docking list for shipments in and out, so you’re always kept in the loop as to stock quantities.
And these logistics are not just on paper. Many warehouses offer real-time updates via apps or private websites, which allow you to more effectively manage stock rotation, clearance and your business in general.
Some warehouses also offer specialized and individual distribution for smaller shipments, for example, direct to door or individual customer orders. These work in much the same way as a courier and give the added value to your paying customers as they will not have to wait for their items.
However, one thing to bear in mind is that warehouses and distributions centres are not one and the same, though they can merge. Usually, a warehouse is the holding ground of product and is a separate space from the distribution centre. The product then gets moved in smaller quantities for shipments of a lower scale.
However, when it comes to deciding which one of these store alls fits your needs, it often depends on your product, the size of your business and how much product you need to contain. Often with wholesales and online businesses, they buy or manufacture in bulk prior to retailing, so both a warehouse and a distribution centre would be a beneficial investment of service and is defiantly worth considering.
