Upgrading Our In-House Fulfillment Process

Retired Boards Appdev Fulfillment Api
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Topic summary

A sports supplement business owner seeks advice on optimizing their in-house fulfillment process as order volume increases.

Current Setup:

  • Products stored on shelves
  • Shopify native features for shipping labels and packing slips
  • 2-per-page sheet labels
  • Manual matching of labels to packing slips

Desired Improvements:

  • Pull products directly from boxes instead of restocking shelves
  • Better shipping room organization
  • Evaluate thermal label printers for efficiency

Key Recommendation:
One commenter suggests outsourcing to a 3PL (third-party logistics provider) like Amazon FBA or ShipBob, emphasizing that owners often delay outsourcing too long. Specific tactical advice includes:

  • Batch processing orders at set times
  • Using peel-and-stick labels
  • Writing SKUs on boxes with markers for quick picking
  • Organizing carrier pickups with bulk discounts
  • Having suppliers handle as much packaging as possible

Current Status:
The business operates in a transitional phase—growing enough that fulfillment is becoming burdensome (~20 SKUs), but not yet reaching the volume threshold (5,000+ units/year) where 3PL storage fees become cost-effective. The owner acknowledges 3PL is the eventual goal but seeks interim optimization strategies.

Summarized with AI on November 6. AI used: claude-sonnet-4-5-20250929.
1

I’d love your feedback. We are starting to grow or sports supplement business a little faster finally. I want to figure out how to improve/streamline our in-house order fulfillment. See below for our current setup. Please share what you do and what you tried and doesn’t work.

Current Setup:

  • We have shelves with our products
  • We buy shipping and print orders and labels from Shopify native features.
  • I buy the sheet labels with 2 per page.
  • I match up the packing slip with the shipping label, grab the products, and box them up.
  • When the shelves get empty, we pull boxes of product from the warehouse and restock shelves.

What I’d Like:

  • I’d like to pull products directly from boxes so I’m not stocking shelves, then filling orders.
  • Are the thermal label printers more efficient? If so, how do you match up the label with the packing slips?
  • I’d love any feedback on shipping room setup as well. How to optimize the process.

Thanks for your help in advance.

2

What about using a 3PL and shipping your product in bulk to them, have them automate shipping, and you use the time saved to focus on scaling your business?

When I ran a store and we started doing volume, we used a combination of Amazon FBA + ShipBob. Here are the steps I used to upgrade our fulfillment: How to Automate Shopify Order Fulfillment with Amazon MCF / FBA

I found that as an owner I’d always been slow to hire / scale / outsource. Once I realized that was a bottleneck, it opened up a lot of paths and led to success, or more fun handling a diversity of tasks.

When self-shipping products, these tasks helped:

  • Batch process: set a time aside each day to handle all the orders in bulk, rather than throughout the day

  • Use stickers for labels, easy to peel and slap on

  • Write the sku on the box in magic marker, organize the space in a way to just look and grab

  • Ask your supplier to handle as much of the packaging as possible (or in your case handle any bundling or organization in a way you can just open boxes and grab the items)

  • Organize pickup from the shipping carrier (call your local carriers, set up an account with any that do pickup, ask about bulk deals)

Hope something there helps you.

3

We want to use a 3PL. But not quite big enough yet, I don’t think, We have about 20 skus, so paying the storage fee is where we get dinged until we can be up to shipping over 5,000 units a year . At least, it seems that is about the mark that it makes sense for our business to go to a 3PL.

We are in the weird spot where we are growing so shipping is becoming a pain, but not big enough to go 3PL yet.

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