The holiday season may be months away but retailers are preparing early for the much-anticipated surge in orders. Online retailers and smaller eCommerce stores are gearing up to secure fulfillment partnerships and finalize operations. But for some brands, it may be too late.
Online commerce is rebounding after COVID-19 and in a big way. Experts estimate that U.S consumers will spend $933 billion in 2021, up 17.9% from last year. Unfortunately, the new surge comes with some difficulties.
Other national shipping carriers have recently announced that it is going to put shipping restrictions on large retailers like New Egg, Macy’s, and Gap to name a few. The closer we get to Black Friday and Cyber Monday (BFCM) the more expensive shipping and fulfillment becomes for companies large and small.
And that’s only half the problem. The other challenge is that these large carriers run out of capacity and need to literally deny shipping your packages. That’s why most brands are flocking to regional shipping carriers that can lock in their costs and shipping capacity for the holiday season.
Here at X Delivery™, we’ve solved these problems for our customers. When you switch to X Delivery™, you get the benefit of 5-6 regional shipping carriers, with just 1 national shipping carrier solution (that’s us!).
And in this post, we’re going to show you exactly how we do that.
Let’s dive in.
Decrease Your Shipping Costs
The holiday season has gotten much longer in the last few years. It used to start around Thanksgiving time. In the last few years the peak of the season shifted to Black Friday on November 26th, and Cyber Monday on November 29th. Most brands start their sales as early as the end of October. Back to school is in September and some brands start ramping up their advertising even then.
Shipping becomes increasingly more expensive earlier in the season and that’s why brands need to lock in contracts with fulfillment providers early on. Postage rate charts for 2021 show a sharp increase and that’s why brands should compare shipping rates and make sure that they’re not being overcharged. X Delivery™ leverages a network of in-motion supply chain assets all around the country to help brands ship 1-10lb packages in a very fast window, on a consistent basis. We keep your costs low with flat rate shipping and lock them in for you before the shopping surge, so you can focus on the other vital parts of your business.
Increase Shipping Carrier Capacity
The second challenge that brands face is that traditional shipping companies run out of shipping capacity the closer it gets to the holiday season. Brands are left scrambling to find other shippers, frantically having to communicate with their various warehouses and re-route shipments.
Here at X Delivery™, we use smaller and more flexible shipping carriers that can fulfill your products with the same 2-day delivery, without having to use bulky backward-thinking carriers. We’ve delivered several million packages in just 1 year with as fast as a 2-day average delivery nationwide.
Use a Flexible Tech Solution for Full Transparency
Brands that send more than five hundred orders per day often get bogged down with multiple warehouses, software tools, and marketplaces. Business resources and personnel are quickly depleted by having to communicate with each individual service provider and the challenge of synchronizing them all.
Also on the business side, it’s hard to align operations with revenue and optimize them both. Even if you do get a handle on the fulfillment piece, it’s hard to consolidate the data and make the right business decisions to increase your margins and optimize your marketing campaigns for the next holiday season.
That’s why at X Delivery™ we have an open API that lets you seamlessly integrate all of your software and manage it in one place.
Our open API for shipping carrier optimization helps you get your operations, logistics, and customer service teams all on one page. We can fly packages through unused cargo/luggage space on domestic commercial flights and complete the final mile with a curated network of ground delivery partners. We integrate with 13 shipping software, fulfillment, and tracking software partners (and counting). Our dashboards allow you to get full transparency on your entire shipping process from A-Z.
Integrations include: Shipstation, EasyShip, EssentialHub, Ordoro, Fishbowl, Narvar, and many others.
Recap
With great power comes great responsibility. If your brand wants to reap the incredible rewards of the shopping surge during the holiday season then you need to be prepared. Make sure that your fulfillment partners are set up, that your rates are locked in, and that your carriers won’t run out of capacity.
With X Delivery™ you get access to a better shipping strategy, and a unique software solution to manage your fulfillment. We save businesses anywhere from up to 75% – 92% on shipping and fulfillment costs.
Check out what X Delivery™ can do for your efficiency and profitability. Sign up now.