Brands starting out fail at logistics for two reasons: ordering stock without knowing where to keep it and promising lead times they cannot meet. A provider from day one is not a luxury: it turns the warehouse into a variable cost and lets you sell.
Published · Vialog Fulfillment
Dropshipping: no stock investment, no control over lead time, packaging or experience. Own stock: investment, but your brand arrives as you want and within 24 hours. For a brand with a name, own stock with a provider is the normal route.
Catalogue with SKUs and barcodes. Packaging chosen and bought. Shipping methods per zone with prices. Stock received and put away a week before. A test order to your home. Returns policy published. And someone looking at the portal every morning.
It depends on your product, budget and your manufacturer’s lead time, but the prudent rule is the same: just enough to cover the first weeks of sales plus the time a reorder takes, without betting heavily on sizes or colours you have no data for. Once you see the real pace of the first orders, you adjust the next purchase.
To sell on Amazon and most marketplaces, yes: they ask for registered EAN codes, which you obtain by joining GS1. For your own website they are not mandatory, but every variant needs some scannable code; if your product does not come with one, the logistics provider can label it on arrival.
Start from what each shipment really costs you by zone and weight band, packaging and handling included, and decide how much you absorb. The usual approach is to charge for shipping and make it free above an order value that still leaves margin. What you should avoid is a made-up flat price that loses money on every order to the islands.
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