As you would expect from the name, a pack and ship service handles merchandise. Generally, they focus on providing services to independent retailers who are either incapable of shipping items themselves or plainly don’t want to. They are a good substitute to running your own dispatch center.

Pack and Ship vs. Fulfillment Services

Pack and ship services generally do not warehouse inventory, but focus instead on shipping services. Invoices, payments and all communications with the customer continue to be done by the business owner instead of the service. These services are especially important if you need to ship hard to package items or items that need special shipping or insurance.

Many pack and ship operations deal with multiple carriers – FedEx, USPS, UPS, DHL and others. They can also arrange local transport and may handle custom drop-offs at airports. Most will pick up items as well as send them, so they can function as virtual mail boxes.

Fulfillment services often offer storage facilities as well as shipping. They may also pick and pack thereby satisfying all your shipping and storage needs. The biggest difference between fulfillment services and pack and ship services is that a fulfillment service may offer to store a reasonable amount of stock for you. Fulfillment services charge for processing orders as well as packing and shipping.

Pick-up is a service rendered by pack and ship operations. However for any high volume, a fulfillment service might be the better choice – just because they offer a complete service, from warehousing right through to shipping.

Specialty Services

Some pack and ship services will specialize in overseas shipping. Their familiarity with insurance, import and export laws and international shipping costs can be very useful. In addition to this some offer:
•    Guaranteed delivery – same day, overnight and two-day.
•    No size limitations and custom crating for fragile and unique packages.
•    Cargo insurance at many levels – essential for time-sensitive deliveries and perishables as well as foreign country shipping.
•    Package tracking
•    Office add-ons on site: fax, mail boxes, supplies, copies and even notary services.
Many small, locally owned pack and ship services will hold items in hand (if you rent a mailbox) and ship them on your command. However, they are not typically set up for any warehouse functions and only small item sellers would find this practical.

Fulfillment services usually provide a specialty service that most pack and ship services don’t: customer contact – receipts sent to your customers, order confirmation, tracking information and in the case of some fulfillment services, billing services. This can be a great convenience when the only customer contact required is a polite follow-up email.

Deciding between pack and ship and fulfillment services

Pack and ship companies are good if you only ever ship odd items or if you need to send very few expensive items. They also offer the additional benefit of both sending and receiving packages. They typically have many more shipping options than most fulfillment services. This becomes very important for valuable items, when the loss of even a single piece might adversely affect your bottom line. In this case, insurance and tracking are much more important than the ability to store large amounts of inventory.

Pack and ship companies allow you greater control over the order. Because you begin the process you can decide when the item should be shipped. Depending on where the item is and where the customer is, a pack and ship company could be the only way to get something to your customer’s doorstep overnight.

Jeff Ehrlich is the head of FulfillmentPlusNY which delivers <A href=”http://www.fulfillmentplusny.com”>fulfillment services</a> for a wide range of customers~clients~accounts~companies~businesses} nationwide.Contact Jeff for <A href=”http://www.fulfillmentplusny.com/direct-to-consumer/picking-and-packing.cfm”>pick, pack and ship</a> services.