Ship-from-Store: Definition, How It Works & Pros and Cons
This article is part of a larger series on Retail Management.
As ecommerce increasingly grows its foothold in the retail industry, retailers are finding new ways to utilize their physical stores. One strategy is turning stores into fulfillment centers and creating ship-from-store workflows.
So, exactly what is ship-from-store? Ship-from-store is when businesses keep ecommerce merchandise in their physical stores. As online orders come through, they pull items directly from their sales floor or back stock and ship them to customers straight from the storefront.
Let’s take a closer look at how ship-from-store works, along with a few examples of ship-from-store in action and the pros and cons you should consider before deciding if this strategy is right for you.
How Ship-from-Store Works + Example
At its core, the ship-from-store process is very similar to standard fulfillment. The biggest difference is after the order is placed online, everything takes place in-store rather than at a secondary fulfillment location.
Did you know? The National Retail Federation found that more than 50% of retailers currently offer, or plan to offer, ship-from-store capabilities.
Taking the process in steps:
- The customer places an online order: From the customer’s end, there is no difference. They simply go to your ecommerce site and buy something to be shipped to their desired location.
- Order received: There is, again, no difference here. The order simply comes through and whoever is in charge of receiving online orders will see the order in their POS or other order management system.
- Order assigned to store: From there, the order’s fulfillment is assigned to a store location. If you only have one store, this process is simple. However, if you have multiple stores, you will want to choose the location that has the ordered item(s) in stock and is closest to the order’s destination.
- Pick and pack order: Once assigned, the store will pull the ordered items from their sales floor or backstock, pack them up, print the shipping label, and send the order out.
Depending on the volume of your ship-from-store orders and your store’s business, you will either want to assign a staff member to handle them as their entire job/shift assignment or you can simply let sales associates handle the orders on top of their normal workflow.
5. Order received: The order is then received by the customer, typically in less time than if the order had to go through standard fulfillment procedures.
Example: Inspyre Boutique
Inspyre Boutique offers ship-from-store services to maximize in-store inventory availability. (Source: Cherry Creek North)
My former store, Inspyre Boutique, offers ship-from-store services. For us, the ship-from-store process looked like this:
A customer would place their order on our ecommerce site, and Inspyre’s owners would receive a notification with the order info. The owners would then text the order’s contents to the store phones’ group chat that each store manager was in charge of monitoring.
Each store manager would then check its inventory to see if they had the order’s contents, and reply if they had the pieces. Once claimed, the store that had the order’s pieces on hand would receive a shipping label from the store owner and would package the items to be picked up by the carrier.
Stores that become shipping hubs will need shipping supplies on hand. Check out our guides to packaging materials and custom packaging to find inspiration and resources.
As a business that relied primarily on brick-and-mortar sales, we decided that rather than have a separate warehouse for ecommerce goods, we would keep all inventory in stores and then ship items straight from our various storefronts. This meant that we could keep more inventory in stores and avoid stockouts and save the business money on warehouse costs.
Be sure you are getting the best deals on shipping rates with our guide to the Best Shipping Software for Small Businesses in 2023.
Ship-from-Store Pros & Cons
While there are a lot of benefits to offering ship-from-store, there are some potential drawbacks that you should also consider.
| PROS | CONS |
|---|---|
| Save on shipping time and costs | Unpredictable |
| Exhaust all inventory before declaring stockout | Difficult to anticipate staffing needs |
| Save on warehouse costs | Can require additional in-store staffing |
| Keep more inventory in-stores | Duplicate packaging needs/costs across store locations |
| Fewer supply chain middlemen | Less oversight |
| Avoid fulfillment centers | Interrupt in-store operations |
| Offer faster shipping times → Higher conversion rates | Additional in-store storage needs |
| More complex inventory management | |
Offering ship-from-store services will save you on shipping costs, times, and distances as well as warehouse needs. These shorter shipping times will contribute to higher conversion rates and by turning your stores into fulfillment centers, you are able to avoid supply chain middlemen and keep more of your inventory in-store so you can avoid stockouts.
The difficulties with ship-from-store come with handling the procedures. Making your brick-and-mortar locations into fulfillment centers comes with additional in-store storage needs, a demand for shipping materials at every location, more staffing in some cases, and additional complexities in inventory management.
While you should consider all of these factors, your goal should be to mitigate them, and they should not deter you from offering ship-from-store services.
Did you know? 42% of shoppers expect a 2-day shipping option for every online purchase they make.
Ship-from-Store Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Click through the questions below to get answers to some of your most frequently asked ship-from-store questions
Businesses that have the in-store space and can meet the fulfillment staffing and space needs within their storefront can offer ship-from-store.
Regular shipping is fulfilled at a fulfillment center or another out-of-store location whereas ship-from-store is fulfilled and shipped straight from a storefront.
The process is simple. You just need to figure out a system of getting online orders to the brick-and-mortar locations and then ensure they have the staffing and shipping supplies necessary to complete the order and get it sent out.
Businesses that offer ship-from-store save on shipping costs, times, and distances as well as warehouse needs. Additionally, by turning their stores into fulfillment centers, they are able to avoid supply chain middlemen and keep more of their inventory in-store so they can avoid stockouts.
Ship-from-store can cost money because you might need additional staffing and to set up your stores with shipping supplies to fulfill orders. However, it will save you on shipping costs and, because you can achieve faster shipping times, higher conversion rates.
Bottom Line
By converting stores to fulfillment centers, ship-from-store is a great way to decrease shipping times and costs. While you will need to take time to create procedures to get orders out the doors of your storefronts, the work you put in will generally be returned in cost savings and higher conversion rates.
