Fulfilment companies

[Guest WeirdGear Dave]

My wife and I run an online business using CubeCart and we have other jobs as well (hopefully we can do this full time one day). Our flat is starting to look like a warehouse with boxes all over the place. We also have our stock supplies delivered where we live which is not the best solution, as we never know when the courier is going to arrive.

When I started our business last year, I used a manned warehouse to receive deliveries to begin with until I established a better relationship with my suppliers. Although it was great help, it was still an expense I could do without as I only really used the warehouse to receive deliveries whilst I was doing my main day job. I would go down to the warehouse after work, collect the delivery and take back to the flat.

This company offer a fulfilment service, sounds like a great idea;

www.shipwire.com

Just wondered how everyone goes about shipping/posting packages and whether they have or already use a pick and pack service. It sounds great in principle but I am not sure I like the idea of random warehouse handling our stock.

[Guest shipwire fulfillment]

Hey Dave!

When we first started Shipwire one of our first customers was extremely happy to get all of his products out of his garage and into our Los Angeles facility. His wife was even happier. We designed the service for merchants like yourself and it scales up to merchants moving through millions of dollars in inventory.

I hope you consider testing out Shipwire. If outsourcing receiving and product fulfillment is nerve racking, consider just testing with a few products. The free trial is designed for this purpose, it allows you to send in a few products, go through the process, see how the product inventory is displayed. You can ship the products right back to yourself to check the packaging and speed of the distribution from the warehouse. OR, perhaps fulfill a few live customer orders directly. As you get more comfortable you can send more product. The trial works with any of the warehouses in Los Angeles, Chicago, Reno, Vancouver, Toronto or outside London in the UK.

As of today (Oct 28th, 2009) I am not aware of a connection between CubeCart 3.x or 4.x and Shipwire's web fulfillment API's (http://www.shipwire.com/api). So unless you can code to the order submission API I would recommend using our web interfaces, PayPal or excel spreadsheet upload to submit orders into the system.

[Note, if there is a developer on this forum that would like to work with me directly to integrate CubeCart and Shipwire; please reach out to me directly here or via partner (at) shipwire.com. I would like to get CubeCart integrated with all four of our API's, especially the Shipping Rate API].

Dave, I'm also going to reach out to CubeCart directly to see if Shipwire is possibly on their roadmap.

Let me know how we can help and good luck with the business this holiday.

Best,

Nate G.

Shipwire partner team