For many eCommerce businesses, shipping products to customers in a timely fashion is needed to continue to grow as a business. The first step in inventory growth is to seek out warehousing space. The most important part in finding the correct warehouse is the location. Picking the wrong location can quickly drive up expenses and can cause you to break delivery-speed promises to customers.
Another way to cut expenses and increase delivery speed is to think about not just one warehouse location but two. If a warehouse outgrows its first warehouse, it needs to expand into another, or multiple if necessary. By adding more warehouse locations, your eCommerce business has the ability to be closer to your customers than ever before. However, the same goes into one warehouse as it does with two. It’s important to think about perfect locations to accurately establish cross-country warehousing.
But, why is the location so important? Like mentioned before, it can cause your eCommerce business to experience an increase in costs and hurt your delivery speeds. How do two warehouse locations combat these problems? Well, let’s discuss it.
How can cross-country warehousing help your eCommerce business?
As your inventory increases, your customer base might increase as well. To handle the increase in sales, you need the space to not only store products but also ship out products as fast as possible. The best way to hit both issues is by looking into multiple warehouse spaces that span across the country. Why? Well, here are the reasons that cross-country warehousing might be beneficial for your eCommerce business.
Increase customer reach
As your customer base increases, you’ll start to get order requests from all across the country. By opting in multiple warehouse locations, you have the ability to be closer to your customer than ever before. Thus, reducing shipping times and giving your eCommerce faster delivery. Faster shipping can make customers happier. With 48% of shoppers worldwide wishing they could change their shipping speed, your company has the ability to answer their problems.
Let’s think about an example. Red Stag Fulfillment has two strategically located fulfillment warehouses across the United States. By doing this, we have increased our 1-2 day shipping reach to 99.602% across the contiguous United States. Now our clients have the ability to reach their customers faster which in turn can increase customer satisfaction.
Reduced costs for your business.
You might think it’s strange that opting for a multi-warehouse strategy can reduce costs, but it can. By reaching your audience faster, the amount you pay for shipping costs also is reduced. Think about your core audience. If you were to only have an East Coast warehouse location but a lot of West Coast customers, your business will run into additional shipping fees to ship your product cross-country. Adding a second warehouse location on the West Coast will eliminate the additional expedite fees that your business would incur.
Protects your business from unpredicted disruptions.
As we are now well aware, predictability is a term that is not often used anymore when it comes to operating a business. From supply chain hiccups to natural disasters, your business can experience unpredictable disruptions that can turn your business on its head. How does cross-country warehousing protect your business from this?
By operating your business through warehouses cross-country, you’re able to avoid limitations that could arise if you opted for a single warehouse. Let’s run through an example. If you operated through a single warehouse located near the coast in North Carolina, you would need to factor in potential shutdowns or evacuations due to hurricanes or other natural disasters that might affect the area. By doing so, you could see your products not making it on time to your customers or simply not at all. If you had an additional warehouse in the scenario, you can still provide shipping to your customers without putting your business on hold.
Achieve the gold standard of eCommerce: free shipping
Seeing the words ‘free shipping’ on your eCommerce company’s website can put a smile on any customer’s face. Warehouses located closer to your customers could allow for businesses to budget in free shipping. Saving enough money on shipping costs can allow you to offer free shipping for some or all of your products. Cross-country fulfillment can boost your bottom line by increasing your sales.
Cross-country warehousing can increase customer satisfaction.
The bottom line for a business is to have happy customers. Happy customers equal more revenue and return buyers. With the benefits that cross-country warehousing has to offer, your customers can feel happy about their purchase. With the combination of fast and sometimes free shipping and the reliability that their package will make it to their front door, customer satisfaction will increase for your eCommerce business.
How Red Stag utilizes cross-country warehousing
With an increase in growth, Red Stag Fulfillment looked into adding another warehouse location. By creating a West Coast fulfillment strategy, Red Stag was able to provide ideal two-day coverage of the U.S. population on the West Coast. Our Knoxville, TN and Salt Lake City, UT warehouses provided us with better shipping for all of the U.S. — reaching more than 96% of American homes within two business days.
From there, our business continued to grow, so a third warehouse is planned to open in Sweetwater, Tennessee later this year. Our decision for our cross-country warehousing was to provide our clients more coverage and also more space for their products while also meeting our accuracy, on-time, and zero shrinkage guarantees. If you’re looking to expand to other warehouse locations, click the link below to learn more about how RSF’s strategic locations can help our business.
