The Fulfillment Lab Review: Is This the Fulfillment Solution for You?

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With so many fulfillment options on the market, how can businesses decide which offers the best overall service?

In this article, we discuss one option worth considering: The Fulfillment Lab. 

But if you don’t have time to read this entire The Fulfillment Lab review, here’s a quick summary:

The Fulfillment Lab has a fantastic range of customizable, expedited, and white-label fulfillment options. However, I think they could benefit from being more transparent about their pricing.ย 

Quick verdict:

Overall, The FulfillmentLab stands out as one of the top choices for fulfillment services. Not only does this company provide fast and efficient service, but it also remains dedicated to helping businesses reduce costs in their fulfillment and logistics strategies.

With that said, let’s dive into the nitty-gritty of this review:

What is The Fulfillment Lab?

Founded in 2012, The Fulfillment Lab is a US-based logistics and third-party fulfillment solution.

Their unique selling point is combining fulfillment marketing with their order fulfillment services, which works wonders for businesses looking to build brand awareness. This involves fast shipping, customizable packaging, order tracking, and more to ensure a superior customer experience.

Their service comes with their proprietary fulfillment software, Global Fulfillment System  (GFS). GFS integrates with major eCommerce platforms and allows you to import your products easily. The software also matches you with one of its 14 domestic and international fulfillment centers (across China, the EU, and the US) to ensure your products are shipped same day and can arrive to the consumerwithin three days (on average). In addition, you can customize packages by adding branded inserts and/or using your own custom packaging. 

Finally, once fully up and running, you can manage and track your shipments and more from one centralized place. 

The Fulfillment Lab review

Sending Inventory to The Fulfillment Lab

As you may have already guessed, to benefit from The Fulfillment Labโ€™s streamlined fulfillment services, youโ€™ll need to send your inventory to one (or more) of their warehouse locations. 

Hereโ€™s how:

  1. Sign up for a The Fulfillment Lab account. 
  2. Integrate your eCommerce platform with GFS using one of many of its turn-key integrations.
  3. Choose your fulfillment centers. GFS recommends the most strategic fulfillment centers for reducing shipping costs and boosting delivery spreads. 
  4. Send an advanced shipping notice (ASN). This document tells The Fulfillment Lab what inventory is being shipped and when it will arrive. You can create an ASN within the GFS portal.
  5. Ship your inventory to the correct warehouse. We recommend opting for a tracked delivery service.
  6. Provide The Fulfillment Lab with your tracking information. 
  7. Contact The Fulfillment Lab if you have any questions. The Fulfillment Lab has a team of experienced professionals who can help you with any questions.

What Type of Features Does The Fulfillment Lab Offer?

With the basics covered, letโ€™s take a deeper look at The Fulfillment Labโ€™s core features:

Shopping Cart Integration

As Iโ€™ve already hinted, The Fulfillment Lab makes integrating your existing eCommerce platform easy. There are plenty of turn-key integrations available, including the following popular solutions:

  • BigCommerce
  • Amazon
  • Magento
  • Shopify
  • Squarespace
  • eBay
  • Ultracraft
  • Limelight
  • WooCommerce

…and many more. 

You can integrate The Fulfillment Lab with your chosen eCommerce platform within minutes. Then once youโ€™re up and running, you can customize mass-volume fulfillment orders and manage inventory and shipping with total transparency. The Fulfillment Lab tracks the entire fulfillment process for end-to-end visibility, including:

  • When a product is shipped
  • How itโ€™s shipped
  • The productโ€™s origin (which warehouse itโ€™s fulfilled from)
  • Transit milestones (such as passing from one carrier to another or reaching local warehouses before being delivered to the customer the next day)
  • The orderโ€™s destination

All of the above information is available to you as well as your customers!

At this point, itโ€™s worth highlighting that if you require  GFS to integrate with other software in your tech stack, donโ€™t worry! The Fulfillment Lab offers an API with full documentation so you can easily integrate with other third-party tools.

Personalized Fulfillment Services

The Fulfillment Lab will process, pick, pack, and customize your order (according to your specifications) on the same day it gets placed, allowing your customers to receive their orders within three days or less.

Itโ€™s also worth noting that when you integrate The Fulfillment Lab with your eCommerce store, it uses your customer information to customize how orders are fulfilled. For instance, letโ€™s say a customer has a birthday coming up; The Fulfillment Lab can put a personalized message in their box with coupons for future purposes. 

You can customize order fulfillment on a case-by-case basis or create customization rules for customer segments. For example, you might insert promotional coupons into packages only for customers with a high average spend.

You can segment customers according to location, purchase history, and even language to dictate the following:

  • Box color and design
  • Inserts
  • flyers
  • Filler paper
  • Coupons

Whitelabelling

You can white label your packaging so that it appears you sent the order directly from your warehouse. This might include adding your logo and brand colors to your packaging.

The Fulfilment Lab collaborates with manufacturers to provide a range of over 40 white label products on demand, including gummies, creams, capsules, and more. These products span a variety of categories such as nutraceuticals, skincare, weight loss, and others.

You can also add on-demand white label products directly to  GFS, and customize fulfillment as you would with your own products. 

Kitting

The Fulfillment Lab also offers kitting services. For the uninitiated, this means they can assemble individual products (or SKUs) into a bundle for you. This is handy to increase the overall order value or reward VIP customers by gifting them a small item in their order. 

Kitting can also extend to assembling multiple small parts required for one product. One example is furniture, which might need screws added to the package.

Similarly, The Fulfillment Lab can assemble and ship subscription boxes on your behalf. 

You can add kitting services to your fulfillment service at any point with a simple 30-minute onboarding process and an integration wizard to assist you. 

Kitting incurs an additional cost. But as The Fulfillment Lab doesnโ€™t display pricing on their website, youโ€™ll have to contact them directly to determine how much this will set you back.

Customer Support

The Fulfillment Lab has call centers in the US, UK, Canada, Hong Kong, and Panama. You can also schedule a meeting, contact them via live chat, or send a support ticket via their website. 

The Fulfillment Lab also has a social media presence across Meta (Facebook), Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube. In addition, they also have a blog covering topics related to eCommerce, fulfillment, customer experience, and warehouse facilities.

The Fulfillment Lab review

Pricingย 

Currently, The Fulfillment Lab doesnโ€™t list its prices online. However, businesses can contact the company’s sales team to discuss their needs and receive a custom quote for their required services.

The Fulfillment Labโ€™s Pros and Cons

Pros ๐Ÿ‘

  • Customization: The Fulfillment Lab offers a variety of customization options, including white-labeled packaging, inserts, flyers, coupons, filler paper, and more. As mentioned, you can even create customization rules for specific customer segments.
  • Transparency: The Fulfillment Lab provides a clear overview of the fulfillment process at all times, including order status, shipping times, and inventory levels, allowing businesses to track their fulfillment performance every step of the way and make necessary adjustments.
  • Fast shipping: Thanks to its 14 fulfillment centers worldwide, most orders can be fulfilled and delivered within three days.
  • Customer service: The Fulfillment Lab offers a team of experienced customer service professionals and a variety of support channels for users to choose from.
  • Kitting: The Fulfillment Lab can handle complex order requests, assemble bundles with multiple SKUs, and handle subscription boxes.

Fulfillment Lab Alternatives

If youโ€™re unsure whether The Fulfillment Lab is the right fulfillment solution for you, donโ€™t worry! Plenty of alternatives are on the market, many of which have been tried and tested by hundreds of merchants before you. Below Iโ€™ve listed a few examples:

ShipBob

The Fulfillment Lab review

ShipBob is a global eCommerce fulfillment service used by more than 7,000 companies. It offers fulfillment in the US, UK, Canada, Australia, and the EU. Across the US, ShipBob facilitates express two-day shipping times and expedited international shipping with a delivery time of one to six days. It also lets you brand your product packaging.

Read into our insightful review to learn more about ShipBob.

Deliverr

The Fulfillment Lab review

With over 40 warehouses across the US, Deliverr is an excellent option for US-based sellers. They offer two-day shipping; if you opt for this, you can display a fast-shipping tag on marketplaces like eBay, Wish, and Walmart. Deliverr also provides value-added services like kitting, whereby multiple SKUs can be assembled into one order.

Read into our insightful review to learn more about Deliverr.

Shipmonk

The Fulfillment Lab review

Shipmonk also has warehouses in the US and EU, making it a suitable alternative for global sellers. You can customize orders with custom packaging and gift messages. Shipmonk also explicitly offers fulfillment services for crowdfunding campaigns where you need to fulfill orders and backer rewards at a high volume. The platform also comes with an automated claims portal so customers can easily register issues and returns for you to approve at your leisure. From there, Shipmonk can handle things for you.

Read our ShipMonk review for more info.

The Fulfillment Lab Review: My Final Verdict

The Fulfillment Lab offers all the services you would expect from a 3PL. For example, they will receive and store your inventory, integrate with your preferred eCommerce solution, and handle order fulfillment for you from start to finish. 

But what makes it stand out are its customization services, including inserts, branded and different colored packaging, coupons, flyers, and more. But the most noteworthy feature is the ability to customize orders based on existing customer segments. So once youโ€™ve made your wishes clear, you can lean back and thank high spenders, wish customers a happy birthday, encourage first customers to buy again with a coupon, etc., within your packages!

The Fulfillment Lab offers a combination of small business service and large facility optimization. With a strategic approach to warehousing and specialized software,

However, I would suggest proceeding with caution. The combination of unknown pricing and a lack of online feedback doesnโ€™t instill confidence, but that doesnโ€™t indicate the company does a bad job. Iโ€™m certainly intrigued to see how this service shapes up over time!

Thatโ€™s all for my The Fulfillment Lab review. Have you used The Fulfillment Lab before? Or are you considering using this service? Tell us all about it in the comments box below!

Rosie Greaves

Rosie Greaves is a professional content strategist who specializes in all things digital marketing, B2B, and lifestyle. She has over three years of experience crafting high-quality content. Check out her website Blog with Rosie for more information.

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