How Can Kitting and Co-Packing Benefit Your Business?
If you’re looking for more time to focus on your product and your business, one simple solution is to hand over your product to kitting and co-packing experts who will:
- Provide primary or secondary packaging
- Rework goods (clothing, household goods, food packs, gifts)
- Personalise items
- Store, if required
- Create point-of-sale inserts, or personalised letters
A 3pl provider like Prolog has a very specific expertise, and an infrastructure to match. We live and breathe kitting and co-packing in order that the eCommerce brands we work with can focus on developing new product lines, growing their market share, or scaling their business.
When’s the Right Time to Outsource?
Prolog Fulfilment mostly works with high-volume brands, but we also support businesses that are at the point when outsourcing co-packing is more cost-effective than maintaining or extending their in-house infrastructure. The symptoms that signal you’ve reached this tipping point could be:
- You have a short-term requirement and outsourcing is the logical solution.
- Your packaging needs are labour intensive and you’re looking for an alternative.
- You don’t have the packaging equipment you need.
- You have goods stored that need assembly.
- You need help with distribution.
- You’re ready to scale your eCommerce business.
Doesn’t Kitting and Co-Packing Increase Costs?
The key benefit of partnering with a 3pl for kitting and co-packing is that they become an extension of your business. They’re not simply an outsourcing facility; they’re a partner in whose interests it is to reduce costs, increase efficiency and create a long-term business relationship that will benefit both parties.
The infrastructure your 3pl partner provides serves to reduce the cost of your in-house operations, increase the efficiency of processing them, and enhance the quality of customer service you can provide. Not only that, our expertise means that we can manage the returns process and – over time – reduce the costs associated with this element of your business.
5 Tangible Cost Benefits of Co-Packing Services
Once brands start working with Prolog, they experience a whole range of unexpected cost-benefits:
1. Eliminate the Need to Hold Inventory
Dependent on your requirements, Prolog can provide cross-docking at the point of goods in. This involves unloading goods from the manufacturer, or a specific mode of transportation, and loading them directly onto alternative transport, or shipping directly to the customer. There is little or no need for storage in-between, eliminating the requirement to hold inventory, and utilise long-term storage.
Products can be delivered directly into our warehouse, sorted, re-worked, and labelled for shipment instantly. This allows for reloading onto stationary vehicles or scheduled collections/shipments. This is a great method for handling time sensitive or perishable goods.
2. Reduce Damage to Goods in Transit
If you regularly ship cosmetics, or luxury goods, one of the ongoing problems you face will probably be damage to goods in the shipping process. Prolog provides customised packaging designed to keep your product secure, so that they arrive safely and in perfect condition. This means less returns, and more happy customers.
Our design specialists optimise brands’ packaging to reduce waste, streamline their packages for transit and make improvements to storage capability. We also design for minimal environmental cost by maximising the potential for kerbside recycling.
3. Fast Response to Customer Demand
If there’s a sales opportunity you want to take advantage of, or you need to rethink the way you’re selling your product, your co-packing partner is on hand to make it happen. With an extensive infrastructure available to you, and a workforce that quickly responds to change, you can make business decisions fast, and keep ahead of developments in your market sector.
Currently there is growing demand for customisation of products amongst brands we work with. We have recently invested in a range of machinery that offers our partners the opportunity to provide personalised sportswear, clothing, beauty accessories and gifts.
4. Co-Packing Expertise Increases Efficiency
A 3pl offering kitting and co-packing will be experts when it comes to the supply chain, which means they’ll be able to help with yours. Aside from the packaging, they’ll be able to advise on barcoding, product, or swing tag labels, tape, kitting automation, distribution, and print. Their initial audit of your process will offer opportunities for streamlining your operations and making efficiencies across your entire supply chain.
5. Kitting Expertise
Prolog continually invests in its infrastructure, in order to support clients’ requirements. Our kitting operation uses automation where possible, and our dedicated kitting area is furnished with conveyor belts, collation tables, labelling and taping machines. This supports our professional kitting team, allowing them to deliver high volume quality output for one off co-packing activities, and regular kitting or subscription models.
Why Work With Prolog?
Prolog works with a variety of premium brands; in each case the solution we provide is tailored to their requirements. We offer brands the following benefits when working with them as kitting and co-packing partners:
- The flexibility to scale up fast.
- Inbuilt quality controls.
- The expertise to create cost-efficient, streamlined processes.
- Cost Control.
- Warehouse Management System for data integration and transparency.
- The immediate resource to implement/source/rework into primary or secondary packaging requirements.
Are You Ready to Work With a Kitting and Co-Packing Partner?
If you’re an eCommerce brand that’s outgrown your in-house facility, or you’re ready to scale your business, we would love to talk to you. Prolog has an established fulfilment centre, located in the heart of the UK, with flexible warehousing and a trained, highly motivated workforce. Most important, we continually invest in innovative new technologies in order to keep abreast of new developments in eCommerce fulfilment,
Why not let us give you a tour around our fulfilment centre? We’ll introduce you to our 3pl team, and talk through what it is you require from a 3pl partner. If you feel that Prolog is the right partner for you, we can proceed at your pace to work with you in making the switch happen seamlessly.
