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This review cuts through the hype of this new service, while providing a realistic evaluation of what it offers and its key benefits. It also covers how to get started with Whitebox Fulfillment today!
The “how much does it cost to open a fulfillment center” is a question that has been asked before. This article will give you an overview of the costs associated with opening up a new fulfillment center.
Whitebox is a one-of-a-kind 3PL (third-party logistics) firm that offers small and midsize enterprises full-service marketplace management solutions (SMBs). Whitebox is made up of two parts: an order fulfillment operation and a marketing agency. The two are frequently utilized in combination by Whitebox customers.
Although it can fulfill multichannel orders and promote non-Amazon merchants, the company’s primary concentration is on Amazon. Whitebox’s complete 3PL services provide businesses with a hands-off sales procedure.
Pay a visit to Whitebox.
When Should You Use Whitebox?
From listing generation to order fulfillment to post-sales service, Whitebox manages the whole ecommerce sales process. This one-of-a-kind, hassle-free method is designed for sellers that wish to outsource as much of their business as feasible.
Whitebox received a 3.02 out of 5 rating in our review of the top order fulfillment services. Pricing was one of the most strongly weighted criteria in our assessment, and the company’s score deteriorated as a result of our inability to correctly estimate its worth. It’s worth noting that Whitebox did well in the majority of the other areas, earning points for its wide choice of services, simplicity of use, and software capabilities.
Whitebox is especially recommended for:
- Amazon sellers: Whitebox’s platform was created with Amazon sales in mind. Because the firm uses Amazon’s Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) fulfillment network, every order it processes qualifies for Prime. Whitebox’s Agency for Growth analyzes data from your Amazon sales to help you improve your content, marketing strategy, and supply chain. Additionally, Whitebox goods are featured on the company’s own Amazon seller account, which has 26,000+ positive evaluations and has a 98 percent positive rating.
- Multipreneurs: For time-crunched entrepreneurs with other businesses to run, outsourcing to a full-service marketplace management firm is a great option. It’s pricey, but it covers a lot of different duties that would otherwise take up time in your day (or labor costs out of your Conclusion).
- Dropshippers: In addition to your typical shop, Whitebox can handle your dropship business (s).
- Manufacturers: Amazon marketplace fees, FBA expenses, and Whitebox fees will all eat into your profit margins. As a result, Whitebox is the best full-service partner for product producers with 250 percent or higher markups.
- Planned expansion of brick-and-mortar shops online: Store owners may devote their time and resources to retail sales by engaging Whitebox to manage all online operations.
When to Use a Substitute
- Outsiders don’t have access to Whitebox’s price, but based on the luxury services offered, it’s reasonable to conclude that it’s not the most cost-effective fulfillment choice. We advocate operating FBA on your own for thrifty Amazon merchants.
- Other fulfillment partners, such as Red Stag, have business structures suited to special-handling demands, which means your shipping savings will be deeper and your fulfillment expenses will be lower. Furthermore, Red Stag assures 100 percent accuracy and zero shrinking, which is critical when dealing with delicate and/or precious items.
- Well-established businesses: If your company has grown to the point where it has its own logistics and/or employees, Whitebox’s high charges are unlikely to be justified. Similarly, if you’re able to reduce the time and costs of operating your own shop, a more typical fulfillment partner—we suggest ShipBob—will be a better fit for you.
- Whitebox has the infrastructure in place to accommodate multichannel sales, and its services may be used on any sales channel. However, unless Amazon is your principal marketplace, it isn’t the ideal option for small enterprises. We propose utilizing FBM (Fulfillment by Merchant) via ShipBob for small-scale merchants who want to reach Amazon consumers but prefer to concentrate their business on other selling channels (such as their own website).
- Many startups and new enterprises are unable to deal with Whitebox because of the 1,000-order minimum necessary to utilize their services. To get started, there are no minimum criteria, and ShipBob even provides a Growth Plan to assist shops who sell less than 400 items each month grow.
Overview of the Whitebox
Pay a visit to Whitebox.
Whitebox is the most straightforward and hassle-free method of selling Prime-eligible products on Amazon. The full-service, turnkey 3PL firm offers your goods on Amazon and other sales channels for you, controls stock and shipping through Amazon’s FBA on your behalf, and then pays you earnings for things sold each month, minus costs.
The following services and functionalities are available via Whitebox:
- Warehousing: Although Whitebox primarily uses FBA’s system as its own distribution and warehousing network, merchandise may also be held in one of Whitebox’s three fulfillment centers in Baltimore, Maryland, Memphis, Tennessee, or Las Vegas, Nevada. With bin and pallet choices, storage is prorated on a daily basis.
- Order fulfillment: Thanks to Whitebox’s superior WMS, orders are chosen and packaged with 99.9% accuracy (warehouse management system).
- Whitebox works with four shipping carriers—FedEx, UPS, USPS, and DHL—all of which provide lower prices in addition to Amazon Logistics.
- Whitebox can handle all of your sales channels and give omnichannel insight via its dashboard, even though it focuses on Amazon sales.
- Client support: Each account is assigned to a dedicated representative that remains with your business for the long haul. They may be reached via phone or email Monday through Friday during regular business hours, or you can send an email to the company’s primary customer service email.
- Software: The typical dashboard for the service provides omnichannel visibility, inventory control, and order management features.
- Whitebox has connections with Amazon, Walmart, Shopify, WooCommerce, and BigCommerce, as well as application programming interfaces (APIs) that allow for the creation of bespoke integrations with any platform or tool.
- Kitting, bundling, reverse logistics, international shipment, bespoke package development, and more are all available with Whitebox.
Whitebox’s platform is somewhat different from that of other 3PLs. Here’s a rundown of the extra features and services it provides in addition to basic fulfillment.
- Quality control: Whitebox collaborates with you to generate a checklist-formatted document for each of your items, which its warehouse staff uses to ensure that each shipment meets your store’s requirements.
- Whitebox anticipates product demand when onboarding new companies and utilizes these data to estimate the initial stock required to start. As sales progress, the organization monitors market trends and notifies each customer of the amount of stock required to maintain adequate inventory.
- Whitebox receives, counts, and inspects your product for any damage or quality concerns before shipping it to Amazon FBA, and then accurately packages and distributes it to Amazon’s warehouse system in accordance with FBA criteria.
- FBA stock maintenance: The organization evaluates stock requirements on a regular basis to ensure that correct levels are maintained in Amazon FBA without incurring excessive storage costs.
- Professional photographers shoot a picture gallery for each of your items, and copywriters produce SEO-targeted product descriptions to sell on Amazon, eBay, your website, or other chosen sales channels.
- Market goods and enhance listings: Whitebox tracks and optimizes listing search results across sales channels and organic search to boost ranks and brand exposure.
- Whitebox’s customer care professionals manage all post-sale questions and returns for all of your channels.
- Transparency: Through a client interface, Whitebox delivers payment statements as well as sales channel and inventory information.
How Whitebox Compares to Other Fulfillment & 3PL Companies
Pricing in the Whitebox
The price structure of Whitebox differs from that of most other fulfillment firms. Clients pay a monthly “all-in fulfillment price” that includes all relevant services, including receiving, pick and pack, shipping, and account administration, rather than being invoiced for each service separately. The “all-in fulfillment fee” excludes storage fees, which are charged separately.
A monthly subscription is also charged for the company’s order management software. Omnifi, a sophisticated cross-channel data-management program, is also offered for a fee—or for free to customers that fulfill a minimum billing threshold.
Whitebox is said to charge a flat, universal fulfillment price of 10% of the client’s sales, plus a $3,000 onboarding fee, according to reports elsewhere online. These statistics are incorrect, according to the firm, since its fulfillment services are not commission-based, and onboarding is free.
Unfortunately, Whitebox has not revealed how it estimates each client’s fulfillment expenses, and its personnel have been unwilling to talk with me about the topic in general. It’s impossible to assess the company’s cost-effectiveness since I didn’t obtain any precise figures or samples of client-specific pricing.
Agency for Growth services are paid separately from fulfillment services by the firm. It’s invoiced on a commission basis, with a predetermined proportion of the client’s sales being charged.
To work with Whitebox, you’ll need to sign a contract, which is usually for six months.
Key Features of Whitebox
Here are some of the characteristics that distinguish Whitebox from its rivals.
Services for Market Place Management
Whitebox is essentially an Amazon seller that uses FBA to sell and fulfill products on your behalf. This may be seen in the Whitebox client listing below, which shows an item that was “sold by” Whitebox Inc. and fulfilled by Amazon.
Under its highly acclaimed Whitebox Amazon seller account, Whitebox promotes and sells your brand.
Whitebox customers’ brand awareness and loyalty are unaffected by the fact that they aren’t developing their own Amazon seller persona. The Whitebox platform increases listing exposure by focusing on seller rating rather than identification, which is one of the ways the firm maximizes listing exposure—the company is a Top 200 Amazon Seller.
Listing development (including product photography, description authoring, profitability analyses, and SEO), fulfillment, customer care, and marketing are all handled by Whitebox’s team of ecommerce experts. It gathers useful information from Amazon using proprietary technologies that can be used to all of your other channels as well.
Agency for Growth
Whitebox is a platform that integrates fulfillment operations with a full-service marketing agency. It starts with assigning you a professional data and content manager that compares your store’s data to seasonal Amazon reports to identify consumer search patterns and buying behavior that are unique to your product inventory.
Your content manager (together with the rest of Whitebox’s Marketplace Services Team) assesses the top-ranking rivals in your product categories using this information. Then they determine the most successful keywords and material to use in your product pages’ title, bullet points, descriptions, and backend keyword fields.
The marketing team keeps a careful eye on these listing adjustments in order to assess their effect and develop more useful information. Over time, they will be able to give information on:
- Offering product configurations
- Incentives for shipping to encourage shopping cart activity
- What is the most probable price to result in a purchase?
- Keyword research and optimization
Analytics
Whitebox’s Omnifi software, which defragments marketing, sales, and logistical data, takes multichannel management to the next level. Advanced analytics are possible with the platform, including return on ad spend (ROAS) and customer behavior data.
An overview of Omnifi’s features and UI. (Image courtesy of Business Wire)
Omnifi is a part of Whitebox’s Agency for Growth service, which is not included in a standard fulfillment partnership. The software is available for free to clients who meet a minimum volume requirement or at an additional cost to all other partners.
Omnifi is praised by Whitebox users, including the renowned lozenge business Ricola, for being intuitive, engaging, and user-friendly. Ricola said that the platform’s valuable insights aided in the development of its ecommerce strategy and gave a competitive edge on rival marketplaces such as Amazon.
Omnifi helps businesses utilize global sales patterns, generate new product offers, review the customer journey, and find lucrative growth locations by focusing on marketing and ad strategy.
Service after the sale
FBA, which has its own staff of customer service agents who address questions regarding your purchases, is a big part of Whitebox’s business strategy. Sellers, on the other hand, are often left to fend for themselves when it comes to more specialist assistance or multichannel maintenance.
Whitebox offers a staff of people that manage your clients’ demands as part of its end-to-end service platform. They may be reached via phone or email during regular business hours. The firm claims on-brand and frictionless delivery, as well as 100 percent client satisfaction with their level of assistance.
Shipping in two days
Whitebox collaborates with UPS, USPS, FedEx, and DHL (together with Amazon Logistics) to provide two-day delivery to 99 percent of US clients. Cost-effective delivery is made possible by the company’s strategically positioned facilities.
Services for the Specialized
The company provides standard Services for the Specialized—such as kitting, bundling, reverse logistics, and international shipping—in addition to a host of other offerings such as:
- Advanced inventory management: Whitebox provides inventory suggestions, making the replenishment process easier. Warehouse personnel will request a quantified shipment based on sales projections and stock levels across FBA and Whitebox facilities on a monthly or biweekly basis (depending on your sales volume).
- Product selection testing: The Whitebox platform uses consumer data to recommend lucrative multi-pack and variety-pack kitting choices. Sellers may thus test potential offers without incurring any upfront costs, ensuring that they don’t spend money until they generate money.
- Whitebox specializes in subscription box fulfillment programs that bundle and advertise subscription boxes.
Integrations with Whitebox
A Whitebox employee supplied us with the following list of integrations. The company’s turnkey integration portfolio is, however, somewhat restricted.
- Amazon, Walmart, Shopify, WooCommerce, and BigCommerce are ecommerce systems and marketplaces.
Whitebox does provide API and EDI capabilities for bespoke connecting with systems for which it hasn’t yet established connectors.
Ease of Use of Whitebox
- Support: Each Whitebox client is set up with a dedicated account manager, plus a separate data and content manager to handle actions from the Agency for Growth. Service hours are 9 a.m.–5 p.m. Monday through Friday Eastern time.The company reports that these individual partnerships are long-lasting to promote knowledge and understanding of the retailer’s operations. It is rare that an account manager will be reassigned—unless requested by the client.
- Whitebox’s mistake procedures are not available online, and we were unable to get any explanation from the company’s employees. Your clients’ happiness is guaranteed, according to the company’s website, however no more explanation is supplied.
- Whitebox claims to have a 99.9% accuracy record in delivering orders, with 99.8% of shipments arriving on time.
Alternatives to Whitebox
What Whitebox Users Have to Say
Whitebox fulfillment evaluations on the internet are varied. Many people praise Whitebox’s responsiveness and professionalism, while others claim to have contacted the company for weeks without obtaining assistance.
Many of the one-star reviews on the company’s Google site are vague, but some of the negative reviews give extensive accounts of a bad experience. Clients say they have to keep an eye on the company’s activity on their account all of the time to prevent unshipped goods, overcharges, and long delays.
Whitebox has received positive feedback for its workforce, delivery speed, and warehouse efficiency. As previously stated, Whitebox’s Amazon seller account has excellent reviews and ratings, with 98 percent lifetime positive feedback from over 26,000 ratings. This clearly shows that Whitebox’s clients’ consumers are typically happy.
- More than 15 reviews on Facebook give it a 4.7-star rating.
- Google: Nearly 20 reviews yielded a 3-star rating.
Conclusion
Amazon is one of the most successful sales channels for many companies, yet managing Amazon listings and FBA goods effectively can be a full-time job in and of itself. For busy entrepreneurs and multichannel merchants, Whitebox overcomes this challenge by managing the full sales process from start to finish—and beyond.
Whitebox’s turnkey 3PL services take the pain out of ecommerce and help you grow your company the most. However, that degree of convenience comes at a price.
Whitebox’s broad offerings aren’t the ideal fit for startups with a tight fulfillment budget and a need for complete control over their operations.
Outsourcing end-to-end marketplace management might be costly, but it covers many separate functions that would otherwise take time out of your day (or labor costs out of your Conclusion). This makes Whitebox an excellent choice for product manufacturers that have large markups of 250% or more and multipreneurs with other profitable ventures.
If you’re looking for a more conventional fulfillment partner, FulfillmentCompanies.net, a broker site, may match your precise requirements to 500+ pre-screened organizations to discover the greatest fit for your company. Furthermore, the service is entirely free to use.
Go to FulfillmentCompanies.net for more information.
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