Nearly half of all U.S. consumers looking to buy vitamins and supplements are now shopping online thanks to eCommerce growth and lingering impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. To succeed, businesses like yours must have an eCommerce supplement fulfillment strategy that gets the correct goods to your hungry audience before they decide to go elsewhere.
As supplement companies scale and look to increase sources, suppliers, and storage space, your supply chain becomes even more complex. Managing those logistics is difficult without a guide to help you understand opportunities and avoid threats. Red Stag Fulfillment is a leading supplement fulfillment support guide, and we wanted to speak with you for a moment about how, together, we can tackle the long-term changes and customer needs in today’s health and nutrition marketplace.
Sales growth and reliability
Supplement and vitamin customers are very particular about their orders and what’s inside your products. That’s great because it means they’re typically willing to spend more for a specific brand or blend that they trust. The risk is that any wrong order, shipment, or product will lead to a swift return and a potential lost sale. You can rely on your 3PL to get the orders correct so that you can maintain relationships for their recurring shopping and leverage the trust you’ve worked to build.
Great fulfillment creates a positive customer experience. That means your fulfillment efforts need to be accurate, fast, and affordable for every order. We believe fulfillment should never cause a negative review or get in the way of the love your customers have for you – or inhibit the sales growth those enable. It’s one of many established ways your 3PL can boost your reach and capability.
Done right, fulfillment helps you create a business where every order leads to another. Let Red Stag guide you to that process as a positive.
Supplement fulfillment to minimize disruption
Supplement and vitamin sales require a high degree of trust. Your customers must trust you significantly to buy products they’ll put in their bodies — and failures all along the sales process can harm that trust. There’s no reason to let your fulfillment impact the trust-building you’ve done to get customers to visit, shop, and click the “buy” button.
Fulfillment partners can help you minimize and address sales disruption by smoothing out processes and steps in the shopper’s journey. These can start with reliable integration, so you always have a clear idea of what’s in stock. That reduces the chance of stockouts or pushing people to backorders and can reinforce sales data so that you know when to reorder supplies. You’ll also get help creating a backup plan to avoid congestion, delays, and other common risks.
Integration with your shopping cart and store also helps you deliver the best experience to your customers. They know what’s in stock and can order, plus get estimates on shipping speeds and costs right within the shopping cart. Keep the experience hassle-free for your customers. A good fulfillment partner should collaborate with you to make that a reality.
Protecting your products
All the great work on generating sales and protecting relationships goes out the window if customers receive spoiled products. You’re an expert on the market, and it’s time to turn to an expert on fulfillment and storage to keep products secure and people happy. Talk with your fulfillment partner to know precisely what they do and don’t offer.
Match partner capabilities to your needs. That may mean storing goods in clean, dry spaces. Your products may have specific handling requirements so that they’re protected and never crushed or stacked too high. In some cases, supplement fulfillment requires refrigerated and other controlled settings. Not having your goods secured against the environment can lead to issues that impact your sales potential or even the health of your customers.
Stick with fulfillment partners who treat your customers’ health and safety as a top priority.
Protection also includes help tracking your goods in storage to avoid sending expired goods to customers. Tracking lots and expiration dates, plus FIFO fulfillment options, helps you deliver high-quality goods to people with every order. Demand attention to the details that matter.
Supplementing FBA fulfillment
Amazon’s FBA service is often a launching point for supplement and vitamin operations. They provide you with access to a large market and can help you build initial momentum. Unfortunately, supplement brands struggle to break free and establish their own unique store reputation. Instead, many are trapped as just a faceless seller that consumers see as part of Amazon.
You can leverage a 3PL to avoid that fate by offering clients on every platform the same benefits. These companies can fulfill to nearly all American households within two business days, giving you the same reach as Prime and similar marketplace-owned solutions. Give your customers the access and speed they demand while building more branding and creating a personal connection.
With Red Stag, you’ll still get FBA prep support so you can have the channel available. But we add in fulfillment services for every other place a customer can find you. Don’t drive customers to Amazon. Drive them to you.
An added bonus of working with an FBA prep company is that they’ll know more about shipping your specific products. For supplement fulfillment, this starts with understanding Amazon’s requirements alongside federal, state, and local laws. Labelling, checking expirations, verifying that you have proper documentation and certifications, and more.
Getting you back to what you do best
The most significant way a 3PL can assist supplement fulfillment and business growth is by entirely taking fulfillment off your plate. By managing it with professional care and getting it done right so often that you rarely think about fulfillment, a 3PL like Red Stag frees you up to focus on your expertise.
Do customers come to you for the latest supplements? Are your suppliers the best and most affordable? Or maybe you provide such good support after the sale that they couldn’t imagine going anywhere else. Whatever your strength, you need a supplement fulfillment partner to get order accuracy and speed correct every time. That way, you’re always ready to do what you do best.
