Apparel Fulfillment Pricing

Every 3PL quote is a model of your business. If the model is wrong, the quote is wrong, and you find out on the first invoice. The way to get a quote you can trust is to give the warehouse the same numbers you would use to run the business yourself.

For an apparel brand shipping a thousand orders a month or more, these are the inputs that matter most. Send them together and you will get a quote built line by line, instead of a headline number that changes later.

Give the same inputs to every warehouse you are comparing. Then the differences between quotes come from the warehouses, not from what each one guessed about you.

Here is a made-up apparel brand to show how the line items behave. It ships 3,000 orders in a normal month, averages just under two units per order, carries 600 active variants, and sees a meaningful share of orders come back for size.

Notice that the brand controls most of what moves the bill. Clean inbound cartons, a trimmed variant list, right-sized mailers and a better size chart all show up on the invoice. A good 3PL will point these out to you instead of quietly billing for them.

For a fuller walk-through of building a landed cost per order, see what each apparel order really costs.

Dead variants

A style launched in eight colors and seven sizes is 56 locations. If three colors and the extreme sizes barely sell, you are paying to store and count stock that does not earn its space. Review sell-through by variant every month and retire what does not move. See dead stock in apparel.

Slow seasonal stock

Storage is billed on the space you use, every day. Last summer's boardshorts sitting through winter are a cost. Decide in advance what gets marked down, bundled, sent to an outlet channel or sent back to you.

Messy inbound

When factory cartons arrive with mixed sizes, no labels and no advance shipping notice, receiving turns into sorting. Ask your factory to bag and label each unit by size and color, and to pack one SKU per carton where possible. See how to prep apparel inventory for a 3PL.

Returns that sit

Returns left in a pile for weeks cost you twice: storage on unsellable stock, and lost sales on sizes that are actually on site. At OC3PL returns are processed and logged within 48 hours of receipt.

Over-packing

A single tee in a box built for three adds shipping cost on every order. Right-size the mailer to the item, and keep boxes for multi-item orders and anything that crushes.

Minimums elsewhere

Some contracts include a monthly minimum spend. A slow month then costs you the difference. OC3PL has no minimums and no long-term contract, so ask every provider what its monthly floor is in plain terms.

Pick and pack fees look easy to compare until you notice that one quote includes standard mailers and another bills every bag and box separately. Before you put two quotes next to each other, find out which materials each one includes.

• Standard poly mailers and boxes: included, or billed per unit?
• Your branded mailers and boxes: is there a handling charge to use materials you supply?
• Inserts, stickers and thank-you cards: per piece, per order, or included?
• Tissue and folding: billed as a touch, or part of the standard pack?
• Suffocation-warning poly bags for channels that require them: who sources them?

At OC3PL, packing follows your own instructions for folding, bagging and packing, and branded materials you supply are used at the packing station. Ask for each special step to be listed in your quote so you can decide which ones your customers actually notice. More on this in apparel packaging and unboxing.

Customers order two sizes and send one back. A brand that ships thousands of orders a month will receive a steady stream of returns, with a spike after every drop and every holiday. The cost of handling them belongs in the quote from day one.

Ask each warehouse how a return is priced: per return, per item, or per return plus a charge for extra items in the same package. Ask how fast returns are processed, because a slow return is stock you cannot sell and an exchange you cannot ship.

Returns are processed and logged within 48 hours of receipt, and many are handled the same day. Each item is inspected and restocked, discarded or donated by the rules you set.

Monthly reports show return reasons by SKU, so you can find the one style that is running small and fix the size chart. That single fix can take more off the bill than any rate negotiation. See apparel returns and exchanges and what apparel returns really cost.

1. Send every provider the same inputs, from the table above.
2. Ask for a complete price list, including materials, returns, kitting, account management and peak surcharges.
3. Ask for a sample invoice for a brand like yours.
4. Build one month of your real orders through each price list, line by line.
5. Add the storage for your real inventory, including slow stock.
6. Divide the total by your orders. That is the number to compare.
7. Then ask who you call when something goes wrong, and where that person works.

The last step is not about price, but it decides what a problem costs you. A late drop, a wrong size shipped to a few hundred customers, or a retail order that misses its window costs more than any fee difference. All client requests are acknowledged within two hours, and support is never outsourced. Your account manager is on site, and account management is not billed as a separate monthly fee.

For more on reading fees, see pick and pack fees explained and how transparent line-item billing works.

All OC3PL invoicing is weekly. For an apparel brand that sells in bursts, that matters. The week of a drop shows the labor of the drop, and the quiet week after shows a quiet week. You are not waiting a month to find out what a launch cost.

Storage is pro-rated daily and calculated on the space you use. When a big inbound lands a week before a release, you pay for that space from the day it arrives, and when the drop sells through, the storage line falls with it.

Shipping is billed at what the carrier charges. Carrier peak surcharges are passed through and itemized. A transparent partner tells you about them as soon as carriers publish them, so they show up in your plan before they show up on an invoice. See apparel peak season.