Fulfillment Company

[OnyxNeko]

Hi all. I thought I'd post in here in hopes that anyone has any good experience with a fulfillment company you go with. I'm looking for a fulfillment company that does shipping, storage, returns processing, and take orders or deal with customers' inquiries via phone/call center or online chat. I can't do these because I'm home based online retailer. My business core is apparel retail so the inventory is small and for now I'm going with Zen Cart as my ecommerce site but would like to know the choices out there that can be integrated with Zen Cart? I noticed that most paid ecommerce hosting with cart are compatible with many fulfillment houses but what about Zen Cart or other open source shopping carts? I don't want Shipwire, which I've checked and their prices are pretty high for just few SKUs. I'm looking at eFulfillment Services, WeFulfillIt, 3Linx, and so on. Any recommendations? TIA!

[barnabythecat]

The key to successful outsourcing project is automation - both ways. A lot of shopping carts have the ability to send emails with the order requirements. However that makes it really difficult for a fulfillment company to provide an effective service. A good fulfillment company will work with a data stream you can provide them with. My company integrates to a number of shopping cart and accounting solutions and provides integration services to ones we don't service currently. However we are based in Australia that may not help you.