For ecommerce businesses, selling across multiple online sales channels – including Amazon.com, ecommerce marketplaces, brand websites, and social media stores – can fuel revenue growth.
One ecommerce business that has seen significant success selling across multiple online channels is Fishers Finery, which designs and sells its own line of silk pillowcases, athleisure, and luxury clothing.
Founded in November 2013 in the US, Fishers Finery started off selling exclusively on Amazon.com and using Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) to pick, pack, and ship its orders to customers. The company’s sales really took off, totaling around $300,000 in the last two months of 2013 and over $2 million the following year.
Commenting on his company’s launch on Amazon.com, Fishers Finery’s co-founder and chief operating officer Craig Barnell said: “The barrier to entry for any ecommerce business to start up on Amazon.com is very low. When we launched Fishers Finery, we didn’t have to invest in infrastructure or logistics resources. All we had to do was procure products, and we were able to start selling on Amazon.com right away with a modest investment. And not only is the barrier to entry low, the ability to scale is almost infinite.”
Buoyed by their early burst in sales on Amazon.com, the Fishers Finery team decided to expand their business across another ecommerce channel – their Shopify-based brand website, which was launched in 2014.
The Fishers Finery team soon realized that they needed a third-party logistics (3PL) provider that could help them:
- Handle fulfillment for orders from their brand website and other channels, like social media stores, that they were starting to sell on.
- Manage inventory for their growing product portfolio, which expanded to encompass a wide array of ready-to-wear, sleepwear, and athleisure clothing, pillow cases, and other products made from the finest silk, cashmere, organic cotton, and bamboo viscose.
- Maintain a consistent customer experience – with first-class service and on-time deliveries – across all their ecommerce channels.
- Unlock operational efficiencies and cost-saving opportunities across their end-to-end supply chain, through which products that were manufactured overseas were shipped to warehouses in the US and then distributed to fulfillment centers before being picked, packed, and shipped out to customers.
Fishers Finery needed a 3PL that could help the company address these and other challenges and fuel their multi-channel business growth. And, as a merchant that was already operating in the Amazon ecommerce ecosystem, Fishers Finery didn’t have to look far to find a 3PL that would meet its needs.
In 2014, Fishers Finery – which had just launched its Shopify-based brand website and was starting to sell its products on social media stores – discovered that Amazon offered a 3PL service that could help the company drive expansion across these new ecommerce channels: Amazon Multi-Channel Fulfillment (MCF).
MCF provides fast, reliable fulfillment for orders placed through off-Amazon channels including brand websites, social media stores, and other ecommerce marketplaces.
Fishers Finery decided to engage MCF as its 3PL - and this choice was actually an easy one as working with MCF enabled the retailer to benefit from:
A global fulfillment network: By using MCF, Fishers Finery could leverage Amazon’s global fulfillment network, which encompasses over has over 2,000 facilities (including more than 200 fulfillment centers), 120,000 trucks, vans, and planes, and 1,275,000 associates and partners.
“With Amazon’s two 3PL order fulfillment services, MCF and FBA, our ability to scale was essentially unlimited. We didn’t have to buy warehouses, trucks, planes, or other logistics resources – we could rely on Amazon to provide that. We didn’t have to worry about packaging, labels, shipping or anything else – we could rely on Amazon’s expertise to provide that,” Barnell said.
A single pool of inventory: Fishers Finery was able to consolidate its inventory into a single pool that could be used to fulfill Amazon.com orders (with FBA) as well as its orders from other ecommerce channels (with MCF).
“To be able to run one continuous pool of inventory for FBA and MCF has been ridiculously beneficial for us. The ability to use products to fulfill orders from all our channels has created faster inventory turns, greater operational efficiencies, and significant cost savings. I can’t think of any case that would cause a seller not to use FBA and MCF hand in hand,” Barnell explained.
Optimized inventory distribution: Amazon automatically distributes Fishers Finery’s inventory across its fulfillment network – so that the right products are in the right locations at the right times to satisfy demand from any ecommerce channel.
“One of the beautiful things about Amazon is their ability to get your products as close as possible to your customers,” Barnell stated, “Amazon automatically rebalances and redistributes our inventory all the time, all over the US, so our products are near to our on- and off-Amazon customer base – and we don’t pay for that! This inventory distribution has helped us drive down costs and improve delivery speeds.”
Automated order fulfillment: Fishers Finery implemented one of MCF’s integration apps, WebBee, which seamlessly connects the company’s Shopify-based website with MCF, syncs inventory and orders, and automates the fulfillment process from click to delivery.
“Setting up MCF was incredibly easy,” Barnell said, “We use WebBee, and this integration allows us to pipe all our orders from our Shopify website automatically to MCF for fulfillment,” Barnell added.
Fishers Finery started using MCF in 2014, and the engagement between the retailer and 3PL has flourished over the years – with MCF now fulfilling the vast majority of Fishers Finery’s off-Amazon orders.
“Of our 4,000 SKUs, all but around 15 of them (which we send out ourselves) are fulfilled by MCF for orders from our website and social media channels. And we use FBA for our Amazon.com orders. We are all in on Amazon!” Barnell explained.
Fishers Finery also uses Amazon’s upstream storage and distribution service – Amazon Warehousing and Distribution – to efficiently store the company’s inventory and distribute it to Amazon fulfillment centers (where it is ultimately picked, packed, and shipped out to customers by FBA or MCF).
Fishers Finery has been using MCF to fulfill its off-Amazon orders since 2014, and the business relationship is still going strong after almost 10 years.
In 2021, Fishers Finery did – for a short period of time – engage another 3PL along with MCF, but quickly realized that the other provider could not give them the same operational and bottom-line value that MCF can.
“We did briefly try using another 3PL to handle a small selection of our Shopify orders, but soon discovered that they could not offer us the advantages we get from MCF in terms of operational efficiency, inventory consolidation and distribution, and cost savings. MCF is a very cost-effective 3PL provider for us. So we went back to using MCF exclusively,” Barnell explained.
In late 2022, Fishers Finery started working with the MCF’s newly formed Account Management team. The company was assigned a dedicated MCF Account Management representative, who serves as the direct point of content and assists with all aspects of order fulfillment operations.
“We’ve been working with MCF for nearly a decade, and perhaps the most significant change we’ve seen in MCF’s services is the addition of dedicated account management. The MCF Account Management team is exceptional, and provides great value from a support standpoint,” Barnell commented.
By engaging MCF as its 3PL, Fishers Finery has been able to transform its order fulfillment operations and achieve:
Multi-channel revenue growth: Fishers Finery’s off-Amazon business – which constituted only 2% of the company’s sales when it first engaged MCF in 2014 – now makes up of 26% of total revenue (25% from its Shopify-based website, 1% from social media stores). Fishers Finery’s off-Amazon business generates approximately $4 million in revenue annually, marking a 988% increase in the company’s compound annual growth rate since Fishers Finery started working with MCF.
“MCF has been instrumental in helping our ecommerce business branch out across new ecommerce channels. Over the past five years, our Shopify website growth has exploded and we’ve seen steadily increasing order volumes – and MCF has been there every step of the way to help us handle this demand,” Barnell commented.
- Reduced operating costs: MCF has helped Fishers Finery cut operating costs by optimizing:
- Inventory management: With MCF, Fishers Finery has decreased storage costs by using a single pool of inventory for its MCF and FBA orders and shipping costs by distributing its products across Amazon’s fulfillment network so they’re as close as possible to customers.
- Order fulfillment: Fishers Finery has found that MCF’s pricing structure – with one, simple fee that includes pick, pack, and ship – has enabled it to reduce order fulfillment costs by up to 40% (compared to what the company pays to fulfill orders itself).
“When you look at all the fulfillment cost savings and layer on top of that the fact that we’re using a continuous pool of inventory (which is distributed strategically across the US) for both our FBA and MCF orders, it’s obvious that MCF is the best choice for us for our off-Amazon orders,” Barnell explained.
Improved on-time delivery performance and customer satisfaction: With MCF, Fishers Finery has been able to delight customers with a 98% on-time delivery rate – even during the busy end-of-year peak holiday shopping season.
“A crucial moment to ingratiate ourselves to our customers is when they receive their packages, and MCF helps us ensure that we invoke a positive response by providing fast, reliable fulfillment,” Barnell commented, “With MCF, we have been able to exceed customers’ expectations for speedy deliveries. We regularly get emails from customers saying, ‘I can’t believe how fast our package got to us!’”
Fishers Finery plans to expand its business across new off-Amazon channels – including other ecommerce marketplaces – and will use MCF to power its order fulfillment as the company grows.
“MCF is Fishers Finery’s 3PL provider of choice. We found MCF to be by far the most affordable, efficient, and scalable 3PL out there,” Barnell said.
