Marketplace fulfillment, or how to delegate stock management

The development of marketplace sales requires efficient stock management. As managing this yourself is not always so easy, marketplaces have thought of everything: thanks to marketplace fulfillment, you can now delegate you stock management tasks.

Supply chain aspects are the most important when selling products on marketplaces. At any given time, you must be able to fulfil the orders placed via various platforms – which requires having enough available stock and be able to dispatch quickly. This is no easy feat when lacking in storage space or when orders all come in at the same time. From now on, to ensure more efficacy, you can delegate this task to the marketplaces themselves: this is known as marketplace fulfillment.

Principles of marketplace fulfillment

The idea behind marketplace fulfillment is simple: the platform takes charge of your supply chain, from storage to dispatch and return management. Your goods are stored in distribution centres located all over France (and other European countries). Your inventory is directly managed by the marketplace, who receives the orders, prepares them, takes care of packaging and dispatches products.

Several marketplaces offer a marketplace fulfillment service (namely Amazon and Cdiscount). With Amazon, the programme entitled “Dispatched by Amazon” (or Amazon FBA) can also be used to manage orders placed via third-party channels. In return, costs are less competitive.

Advantages of marketplace fulfillment

Marketplace fulfillment boasts three main advantages:

• By delegating your stock management, you will be circumventing the obstacles distributors are usually faced with. No need to find room for storage, no warehousing fees, no transport stress, no time lost in managing returns, etc.
• By opting for this solution, you will no doubt stand out from competing vendors. Some platforms offer advantages to loyal customers, such as free delivery or quicker transport options (like Amazon Prime), and your products can draw benefits from this.
• Marketplace fulfillment is also the perfect opportunity to access international markets without having to cover foreign warehouse management or dispatch goods to far-away locations – as marketplaces have their own local distribution centres.

Marketplace fulfillment therefore offers many benefits for vendors selling on marketplaces. What about you? Have you opted for this service?