I made a statement earlier that resonated with DTC folk.

The e-comm order fulfillment business isn’t the shipping business. It’s the exceptions management business.

Shipping a lot of packages is actually fairly easy.

When we started @texashumor, pouring a drink and turning myself in to a robot that shipped 100 orders was easy.

But as you grow, customers need order changes, carriers lose packages, and suppliers drop the ball.

The 100 packages stay easy, but the 5 that have an exception eat up all of your time.

Maybe you dropped all 100 of your orders off at the post office.

When you get home you open your email and see that a customer needed a change, but you were too busy to notice.

Now that package is on its way AND you have to ship an updated one tomorrow.

That’s an exception.

Or maybe your products show up without being folded or needing some assembly you hadn’t planned for.

That’s an exception.

These exceptions drive people to get starter warehouses and hire one or two people to help.

That’s what we did.

The problem is, those employees are a cost to your business regardless of how seasonal it is.

And most small businesses don’t have firm enough strategies to scale up or scale down to protect their margin.

You kill your margin and growth potential.

We solved that by starting @SaucedaHQ.

We offered fulfillment services to store owners who knew they didn’t want to directly manage the types of exceptions I listed above.

Because as your store scales, inevitably so does it’s complexity. With scale comes more exceptions and with complexity comes different types.

I know of very few marketing-minded business leaders who started stores so they could firefight logistical challenges every day.

Most want to spend all of their time evangelizing their brand.

In my case, I just happened to have a uniquely suited background at the intersection of creativity and logistics.

I was a commercial photographer that produced large shoots for ad agencies.

Commercial advertising photography is 10% creative and 90% logistics.

Nail this creative brief using your people, their budget, someone else’s location, on a specific day. It’s all exceptions.

So do you want to run a store or a warehouse?

Is the opportunity cost of your shipping your own orders worth it?

Are you a great marketer AND labor planner/HR department?

For me, starting a 3PL wasn’t a massive departure.

But for you, I’d ask yourself, “am I spending most of my time doing what I’m great at and what I love to do.”

If the answer is no because you’re still shipping your own orders, call a 3PL.

I’ve got one I highly suggest.