A week before the weekend that includes Black Friday and Cyber Monday, Dhruv Saxena, co-founder and CEO of ShipBob, was on the road to see what was happening in the company’s fulfillment centers.
ShipBob is a global fulfillment platform for small- to medium-sizes businesses (SMBs) in eCommerce, and Saxena found that its inbound docks were full — a welcome sign that products are coming in from the ports during these times of worldwide supply chain disruptions.
“We are trying to receive it and put it on the shelves so that our merchants have that product ready to be sold online before the Black Friday weekend,” Saxena told PYMNTS. “I think some of the Black Friday deals have already started, and it’s going to be one of those crazy big seasons. I think it’s going to be much bigger than last time.”
This year, he added, SMBs are trying to source products closer to home in order to avoid the logjams that have been seen at the ports. They are also making the information about their supply chains more transparent to consumers, allowing their products to command a premium for customers looking to buy from local SMBs.
“That’s the biggest change that we are seeing on the front end, where merchants are positioning themselves to be more home drawn, locally sourced raw materials and products, which also allows them to bypass some of the supply chain constraints,” Saxena said.
Accessing All the Different Channels
The company offers tools and services to help customers sell their products to both consumers and other businesses. On Nov. 11, ShipBob announced the launch of its B2B Fulfillment Suite and new application programming interface (API) capabilities. These, the company explained, enable merchants to sell through the entire B2B ecosystem, powering retail drop shipping and wholesale shipping.
Read more: Logistics Startup ShipBob Unveils B2B Fulfillment Suite
For a direct-to-consumer (D2C) brands that have, for example, created a website through Shopify and marketed themselves on social media, ShipBob offers next-day and two-day shipping solutions. When those brands grow and want to get into brick-and-mortar retail locations, ShipBob provides B2B services such as drop shipping. If that retailer then wants to warehouse the products at its own distribution centers, ShipBob provides B2B electronic data interchange services. The company also helps brands adhere to big retailers’ strict compliance rules.
“So, if I’m an eCommerce entrepreneur, now I have access to all the different channels that I hope to be able to sell into all through one single platform, which is ShipBob,” Saxena said. “That’s a massive enabler for these brands to keep growing and keep scaling their own businesses without having to find a different partner solution for each channel of their business.”
Meeting Promises to Customers
To ensure products get to customers in the ever-quicker timeframes they now expect, ShipBob built the infrastructure, systems, processes and partners to make it happen. Saxena said the company works backward from what’s been promised to the customer to ensure the product gets on the truck at the right time. The company’s merchants generally transact through credit card and ACH, and ShipBob’s software platform automates payments.
Saxena said the company works to deliver on this promise: “Can we use technology as an enabler for any eCommerce brand, no matter what its size is, to help them meet the customer promise, which is predominantly driven by the Walmarts and the Amazons which keep shrinking the promised window?”
Saxena suggested that small retailers looking to boost sales this holiday season — and in the future — improve marketing, have the majority of inventory already on the shelves at fulfillment centers, plan for much more than their forecast predicts and then find a way to hit it.
“It’s never too late,” Saxena said. “We are still receiving inventory on our docks. We’ll try our level best so that our merchants have a successful and a phenomenal Black Friday weekend.”
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