Can I use a Fullfilment Company for my rental based business??

[AussieMike]

Hi guys,

I am a reseller and I run an online rental based business where the customer is able to rent my products (information based) for much cheaper than the cost of buying outright (which they have the option of doing also). Currently the customer has different rental period options and these obviously differ in cost depending on the length. At the moment all first time product orders (those which i have never rented out before) are shipped from the wholesaler to me on a per request basis and then I mail out to the customers. Once the product is returned after the rental period I then warehouse them myself and send them out once ordered again. It isn't until after the second time a product is mailed out that i usually cover the intial purchase costs and profit in my venture.

anyway...

I have recently read the 4 hour work week and have decided to look at using a fullfilment company to handle the order processing and distribution, etc. (which is 95% of what consumes my time)

My question is this...Is it possible for a fullfilment company to not just send out orders but also handle rental returns and all the stuff associated with this, (i.e. Re-warehouse returned products, keep tally of returns so that wherever possible the re-warehoused products are distributed instead of purchasing and shipping new product, chase up overdues and credit charge the overdues as per purchasing terms on website, order new product from wholesaler as per my model of ordering, grant rental extensions and charge accordingly, etc)???

Are these functions that a fullfilment company is able to handle?

Any help on this one would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers,

Mike

[kamakiri]

You can outsource anything. It is just a matter of looking hard enough. One thing that struck me though. Why is fulfillment taking up so much of your time? Go out and buy The Goal, a novel by Dr. Eliyahu M. Goldratt, Find your bottleneck, and get rid of it.

Fulfillment should be done once a week, and be the process of collecting addresses, boxing the products, and sticking address labels on the FedEx boxes.

I would bet that any outsourcing/fulfillment agency would have soooo much oversight, that your profits would be completely eliminated. In the sense that they are not set up to do exactly what you want them to do, and the result would be a huge inventory of products because it is far easier to req a new one than to find the one on file. You are instantly out of money if a single product is mislabeled or misfiled.

Practice a bit of kaizen and find where your time is going, then evaluate it to see if it is necessary before taking the next step, because outsourcing your problems is a sure way to make them multiply.

[Sven]

A commercial fullfilment company could very well be too expensive. But you may be able to find non commercial ones.

I use one for my windvane business. It is sort of a daycare center for mildly disabled people. They love labour intensive jobs and they have a lot of time!