Retail Fulfillment: Supply Leading Retail Chains and Boost Your Revenue
Once you've reached a certain scale in your DTC volume, you have the opportunity to expand your market or leverage additional sales channels. Leading DTC brands don't just sell their products online – they also reach consumers offline through traditional retail. With just a few retail partnerships, you can increase your revenue by up to 20% in retail fulfillment.
What Makes Retail Fulfillment Different?
Unlike e-commerce fulfillment, retail fulfillment has special requirements and needs dedicated processes. With DTC fulfillment, you typically ship 1–10 items. In retail fulfillment, by contrast, you ship entire packaging units, cartons, or even full pallets.
That's why it's critical that your fulfillment partner has dedicated processes and the necessary expertise to meet the demands of leading retail partners.
Which Online Retailers Should Consider Retail Fulfillment?
Retail should always be an addition to your distribution strategy. On one hand, you give up a portion of your margins – you sell your products in larger quantities at a discount to retailers. On the other hand, you give retail partners significant negotiating power if a large portion of your revenue comes from their sales.
That's why retail fulfillment makes sense for you only if you have stable DTC order volume. Starting at 5,000 shipments per month, you can enter the B2B market without taking on the risks mentioned above.
Retail Fulfillment: The 3 Key Benefits for E-Commerce Shops
Revenue with Minimal Effort
To be honest, it requires relatively little effort. Of course, you need to meet certain baseline requirements – like official EANs for all your products and specific delivery conditions that must be met to successfully supply the distribution centers of major retailers.
Once you've overcome the initial challenges, a lucrative revenue stream opens up. Leading retail chains like dm, Douglas, REWE, and EDEKA can distribute your product range across multiple locations, serving as a force multiplier. Often they order in large quantities, so you can sell thousands of individual items in one go.
Brand Awareness
While you do give up a portion of your margins, direct profits from sales aren't the only value for your brand. Through retail partnerships, your brand becomes visible nationwide. Potential new customers for your online store see your products in stores, notice them actively, and buy them.
Let's say you sell nutritional supplements – the next time a potential customer searches for supplements, they'll think of your product first, or reach for your product during research because trust is already established.
Market-Specific Knowledge and Insights
You face dozens of decisions every day – How do you allocate your marketing budget? Which markets do I invest in? Which products should be added to my portfolio? Which products should be discontinued?
Through your additional retail sales channel, you gain valuable insights into customer behavior and demand in different regions for your various products and product categories. This lets you make better decisions about marketing, product development, and your company's strategic direction.
Checklist:
Prerequisites You Should Meet to Start Your Retail Business
Specialized Fulfillment Partner
By working with a fulfillment service provider, you save not only on storage, handling, and shipping costs – you also benefit from logistics expertise. Your fulfillment center's infrastructure and technology should be suited for retail fulfillment – with adequate pallet storage capacity, dedicated B2B packing stations, and trained staff who are already familiar with the requirements of leading retail companies.
Technical Integration
Your fulfillment partner should offer seamless integration with your shop or ERP system. This is the only way you can automate B2B shipping and always have visibility into your inventory and order status.
EAN/GTIN
A basic requirement for selling in retail is officially registered EAN/GTIN numbers for all your products. You can request and reserve these from GS1 Germany. Both your fulfillment partner and the retailer identify your products by scanning the EAN. It's therefore essential that your products have this barcode so they can be scanned correctly in the retail fulfillment process, at warehouse intake, and finally at the checkout.
Retail Packaging Units (VPE)
Your retail partners often order your products on demand and short notice. So your fulfillment service can ship these orders as quickly as possible, it's important that you stock entire retail packaging units. This way, your products don't need to be picked individually – they can be allocated in units like 48-count boxes.
Know the Delivery Terms
Each retailer has slightly different delivery terms. Sometimes delivery must be pre-notified in the retailer's system or special documents must be included with the shipment. Often there are minimum and maximum dimensions for packages and pallets. It's important that you understand your retail partners' delivery terms – otherwise shipments may be rejected or you'll face additional costs and delays in the intake process. If your fulfillment service already has retail fulfillment references, you can benefit from their expertise and save yourself valuable time.
Start Small and "Scale As You Go"
The biggest risk in retail fulfillment is trying to serve too many partners at once. Start with 1–2 retailers to gain experience, then gradually expand your partnerships.
Zenfulfillment – Your Retail Fulfillment Partner
With our years of experience processing orders for leading DTC brands, we understand retail fulfillment requirements. We guide you on your journey and provide recommendations for building your retail business. We've also developed specialized processes designed to supply well-known retail chains according to their delivery terms.
End-to-End Software Solution
The Zenfulfillment Operating System integrates seamlessly with all leading shop and ERP systems. This ensures seamless transmission of order data, inventory, and tracking information. You can focus completely on your core business while we handle your retail order shipping.
Expert Experience in Retail Fulfillment
Through our references and partnerships with leading retailers, we can significantly shorten your learning curve. We support you in planning, making the right outreach to retailers, and fulfilling B2B shipments.
We ensure you meet all important requirements and handle everything from order intake through picking, packing, and shipping.
Automated Fulfillment Center
Our warehouse infrastructure lets you execute your retail orders as efficiently as possible. It starts with our automated storage system, which ensures your products and packaging units are stored space-efficiently and available immediately when a B2B order arrives.
After your goods are retrieved from storage locations and transported to picking stations, robotic arms pick them and distribution robots sort them to the respective orders. Our automated packing machine then packages your items with precise fit and individual customization, minimizing packing material.
Experten-Erfahrung im Retail Fulfillment
Durch unsere Referenzen und die Zusammenarbeit mit den führenden Retailern können wir deine Lernkurve signifikant verkürzen. Wir unterstützen dich in der Konzeption, dem richtigen Outreach an die Retailer und dem Fulfillment von B2B Sendungen.
Wir achten darauf, dass du alle wichtigen Voraussetzungen erfüllst und kümmern uns um den operativen Ablauf vom Auftragseingang, dem Kommissionier- und Verpackungsprozess sowie dem Versand.
A Team of Fulfillment Experts Stands by Your Side
Our most important mission is to make your logistics as smooth and simple as possible. Our fulfillment experts serve as an extension of your operations team.
You can think of them as part of your team – a resource you can use to establish new processes or optimize operations. If you have special needs, we'll work with you to find a solution together and support your growth.
Retail Fulfillment: Free Audit
We're happy to review your current data structure and future plans so we can develop an action plan together for expanding into the retail business. Contact us today to discover the potential in your brand.
