Retail giant Amazon continues to make tremendous strides in online customer fulfillment orders. Retailers in every industry face a common challenge: how to fulfill customer orders as fast as possible while remaining profitable. Other retail titans, such as Home Depot and Walmart, are trying to keep up with Amazon. Their solution? Buy online and deliver from stores, or BODFS as it’s referred to in fulfillment services.
Home Depot and Walmart are both using their already-established local retail locations to pack and ship online orders. Walmart alone is leveraging 80 of its 4,500 U.S.-based stores as new fulfillment centers for online customer orders. (Business Insider) This is in addition to Walmart’s five massive online order-only distribution centers and 100 small-scale ecommerce facilities in the U.S. Those numbers may sound impressive, except Amazon already has 180 U.S.-based fulfillment centers.
Home Depot reports that approximately 42 percent of its online orders are already picked up from its stores. Home Depot introduced its BODFS program in 700 of its 2,200 U.S.-based stores in 2016 and grew the service to all locations by January 2017. Brick-and-mortar stores, like Home Depot and Walmart, are making the switch to managing more online sales. Will they gain ground in 2017?
The greater question is what this shift to BODFS fulfillment services means for your local business. Is your business positioned to fulfill customer orders with a timely pick, pack, and ship services? Accent is a full-service 3PL provider with over 20 years of fulfillment experience. We understand the demands of delivering online orders within a customer’s timeframe.
Our Warehousing and Custom Fulfillment Services is located in St. Louis to give strategic shipping advantages anywhere in the continental United States. Accent Fulfillment is constantly researching and implementing the latest in warehousing technology to meet our customers’ needs. You need a reliable fulfillment solution, a service we are confident is competitive within any industry or marketplace.
Your first step is connecting with one of our team members. We can help you find the right fulfillment arrangement for your company at a price you can afford. Click here to talk with an Accent team member today.