Shipping Speed Expectations for Apparel Customers

Delivery time is processing time, from order to the carrier’s first scan, plus transit time, from first scan to the door. You control the first through your warehouse. The carrier controls the second, and it depends on the service and the distance.

At OC3PL, orders imported by 12 PM PST ship the same day. Transit then depends on the service chosen and where the customer is. See what same-day fulfillment means and how shipping zones work.

1. Look at your real delivery times by region for the last few months, measured from order placed to delivered.
2. Set your published promise at what most orders achieve on a busy day, not your best day.
3. Show the cutoff on the product page or at checkout, in the customer’s terms.
4. Offer an expedited option for customers who need it.
5. Set different expectations for drops, preorders and holidays, and say so clearly.

Every promise on your site has to be true in the warehouse. If your site says orders ship the same day, the warehouse cutoff and your store’s order sync need to make that true.

• Drops: a huge spike in one hour. With a forecast, labor is planned and orders ship as usual. Without one, expectations should be wider. See apparel drop fulfillment.
• Preorders: the ship date depends on production, not the warehouse. Show an expected date, not a transit time. See apparel preorders.
• Holidays: carriers publish last ship dates for each service. Put them on your site early. See the apparel holiday shipping calendar.
• Exchanges: the customer has already waited once. Ship the replacement quickly.

Measure from the time the order was placed to the carrier’s first scan, and from first scan to delivery, every week. A warehouse that measures from label creation can look on time while boxes sit on the dock. See the KPIs to get from your 3PL.

When the numbers slip, ask your account manager why, and fix the cause before you change the promise. Your account manager works on site at our Anaheim fulfillment center, in the same building as your inventory. When something is urgent you call and talk to a person who can walk to the shelf and fix it. Call anytime. We are here. We got you.

Processing time starts the moment an order is placed. The order has to sync to the warehouse system, be picked, packed, labeled and staged before the carrier collects. A two-way integration that syncs orders continuously, not in batches, keeps orders from sitting in a queue before anyone sees them.

Inbound speed matters too. A new style cannot ship until it is received. Every style is slotted by size and color, so a picker reaching for a medium in black is not digging through a bin of mixed sizes. A new collection is slotted and ready to ship within one business day of receipt.