Subscription Box Fulfillment Services

Subscription Box Fulfillment Guide

While a subscription service can be an incredibly successful offering for a company, there are many details that must all come together on a monthly basis with consistency, variety, and value for the end user. Here’s our subscription box fulfillment guide for businesses looking to enter this exciting business model:
Like many e-commerce systems, subscription boxes have become dramatically more popular in recent years, with demand showing no sign of decreasing as purchasers enjoy the convenience and cost savings of receiving a box of assorted products on a monthly basis.

What is a Subscription Fulfillment Service?

Starting long before a box of exciting, carefully curated products arrives on the front porch of a subscriber, there are a myriad of decisions that must be made and steps that must be taken. Subscription box fulfillment services provided by a 3PL expert allow a business to concentrate on those strategic elements without getting bogged down in the details of print, kitting, and shipping.

• Contents of a subscription box can be highly varied, giving a pleasant surprise to the customer each month.
• A subscription service can also serve to allow a customer to replenish their supply of predictably consumable products.
• With fulfillment outsourced, your team can focus on planning the contents of each box months ahead of time.

Subscription Box Fulfillment Center of Spectra

Spectra’s subscription box fulfillment center is the perfect partner for any company that wants to send boxes of content to its members on a monthly basis without the hassle, inefficiency, and expense of assembling, addressing, and shipping those packages in house. The subscription model continues to rise in popularity with consumers who enjoy receiving a new delivery at home every month, but if not handled in an expert manner, it can become a negative financial endeavor for the business.

Fulfill your subscription boxes requirement with Spectra that can help your business exceed your subscribers’ expectations while generating a profit through highly efficient fulfillment processes.

Types of Subscription Boxes

Subscription models vary widely, from systems that help the business save money by simplifying the subscription box order fulfillment process to systems that are highly complex and that differ from month to month.

• Subscribe and Save: The most familiar model of this subscription system, Amazon Prime, clearly illustrates its business case. In return for paying a monthly subscription fee, members gain access to certain perks, such as free or discounted shipping, lower prices on products, or special access to products before non-subscribers. In this model, the customer places orders personally as desired rather than receiving shipments on a regular basis.
• Replenishment Subscription: In this model, the subscriber sets up regular shipments of the same product–most frequently a consumable item that is needed at predictable intervals of time.
• Curated Subscription Boxes: Subscribers sign up to receive a unique combination of products on a regular basis (usually monthly), with the contents selected by the provider.

Advantages of Spectra’s Subscription Box Fulfillment Service

• Highly accurate inventory management system with predictive capabilities. With Spectra in charge of your inventory, you always know exactly what is in your subscription box fulfillment center, in what quantities, and the metrics related to past subscription fulfillment projects. We’ll help you eliminate unnecessary costs incurred through overstock and understock.
• Expert pick and pack staff. Our professionals are trained and supported with quality control processes to make sure that each subscription box that leaves our facility contains the right products and is packed carefully in subscription box order fulfillment to avoid damage during shipment. Your subscribers will love opening each package that they receive from our fulfillment center!
• Stringent address accuracy controls. Barcoding and numerous checks along the way make our subscription fulfillment process incredibly accurate. Our many years in the fulfillment industry serving industries like healthcare and government agencies prove our capabilities in address accuracy, so that you can have confidence that the right box will reach the right end user.
• Reverse logistics services. Returns are a common trouble topic for ecommerce companies, and assessing the condition of items and restocking them in inventory takes time and resources. We take care of these complex and time-consuming tasks
• In-house print facility. With an integrated print facility, it’s incredibly easy for you to include high quality printed materials with each subscription box, from special offers to account notifications to catalogs and everything in between. Even short run book printing is available. With our print capabilities in house, this is another important area of cost savings for Spectra clients.
• Versatile services. At Spectra, we make it a priority to flex our services to meet the unique set of needs that every partner brings to us.

Challenges of Subscription Box Fulfillment Services

While getting a package at the front door like clockwork may seem simple to the subscriber, there are many subscription box fulfillment challenges for the provider to overcome in order for that to happen. A provider that fails to deliver consistently, ships packages missing products or containing the wrong products, or simply disappoints the subscriber with boxes that don’t meet their expectations will find its subscription numbers and revenue falling quickly.

One of the greatest advantages for the provider of a subscription is recurring revenue–that is, monthly income that is predictable, consistent, and nearly guaranteed, allowing for sustainable growth and financial security. However, a provider that doesn’t take its responsibility seriously cannot count on that recurring revenue continuing in the coming months! In many cases, it only takes one address inaccuracy, damaged shipment, or other mistake to prompt a customer to unsubscribe.

With the help of our expert subscription box fulfillment services, on the other hand, you can rest assured that the technical details of the fulfillment process will be taken care of with extensive quality control measures. This support leaves you free to create better offerings for your customers, expand your sales, and increase that recurring revenue every month.

What Do Subscription Box Fulfillment Companies Do?

A good way to summarize the key advantages in working with a 3PL provider for subscription box services is in terms of efficiency, consistency, and cost savings.

• Efficiency: With decades of experience in printing, shipping to complex address lists, and integrating these services seamlessly, we know how to accomplish these tasks quickly and smoothly.
• Consistency: Subscription box customers expect their packages to arrive on time and in good condition every month. Inconsistency in this area risks the loss of subscribers and negative word of mouth that can harm future sales.
• Cost savings: Maintaining stock for a complex system like a subscription service is difficult for most organizations and often wastes money.

What to Look For In a 3PL For Subscription Box Fulfillment

Once you have decided to partner with a third-party logistics provider (3PL) as your subscription box fulfillment center, it’s critical to decide on the right provider. Here are some key factors to consider as you assess your options:

• Capacity: Is the 3PL’s fulfillment center large enough and equipped to handle not only the volume of your current business, but the volume that you hope to grow to as well? Switching fulfillment providers is an expensive and difficult process, and you don’t want that to be an unnecessary hindrance to growth later on.
• Accuracy and commitment to quality: Particularly with subscription fulfillment services, it is necessary that each box be packed in a way that is both safe and attractive. The better the box looks when opened by the customer, the more likely it is that the subscription will continue and that word-of-mouth recommendation will lead to more sales.
• Streamlined process: A process that involves many different companies is one that is vulnerable to delays, which is an enormous problem for a subscription delivery system. Spectra is an end-to-end fulfillment solution, with printing, inventory, packing, and shipping all housed within the same 3PL.
• Teamwork: The goal in working with a 3PL is for your provider to function as closely as possible with your business’s goals, values, and processes. Ideally, your subscribers are unaware that there is a third party involved in the fulfillment process, and this can only happen when that third party understands how to incorporate your branding and other unique characteristics into your projects.

How 3PLs Can Address Subscription Box Fulfillment Challenges

Perhaps the most fundamental element with the power to make or break a subscription box fulfillment center is inventory capability. If a 3PL is not able to order and inventory all the needed products for a given subscription box project on time, it is impossible to ship the subscription box order fulfillment. As a highly experienced full service fulfillment partner, the team at Spectra knows how to monitor stock, place orders well ahead of time, and track those orders to make sure that everything is ready to go by the time the subscription box is due to be kitted and shipped.

Labor is a common pain point for e-commerce businesses that attempt to handle their fulfillment processes in-house. The periodic nature of subscription fulfillment services means that there may be a need for many experienced workers to pack boxes at certain times, while at other times the services of those workers are not required. Solving this labor puzzle is extremely difficult, and in most cases outsourcing the manpower to a 3PL partner is significantly less expensive and more dependable than grappling with the challenge every month.