All articles tagged with “Small Business Logistics”.
Most Canadian e-commerce shops start by fulfilling orders from a garage, a closet, or a desk. Once you cross 50 orders a week, that stops working. You either hire staff you can barely afford, or you move inventory to a 3PL.
Running e-commerce fulfillment from a Canadian warehouse isn't about finding the cheapest square footage. It's about dock-to-stock timelines, drayage window coordination with Port of Montreal, cross-dock cutoffs that don't slip, and a 3PL that knows the difference between a PARS release and a RMD. Most small importers don't.
Small businesses scaling e-commerce can't afford 10-day fulfillment windows or inventory rot in a bonded warehouse. The difference between a working 3PL and a slow one is dock-to-stock SLA — 48 hours or better — and pick-pack cycle time. If you're handling your own SKUs, you need to know what the warehouse actually measures.
E-commerce fulfillment in Canada looks straightforward until your SKU count hits 800 and you're trying to hit next-day delivery from a warehouse 1,100 km from your customer base. Most small business owners misjudge what their fulfillment operation needs to cost, and by the time they realize it, they're locked into a 3PL SLA that doesn't flex with seasonal demand.