Our San Francisco Bay Area 3PL warehouse is making it inexpensive and hassle free for small business start-ups and entrepreneurs to manage their supply chain & logistics activities.

We are the one-throat-to-choke in the supply chain through our end to end logistics services from pick-up of goods at your manufacturer or supplier all the way through to delivery to your customer.

To hear directly from our CEO about how our 3PL order fulfillment and supply chain services capabilities are jumpstarting small business start-ups and entrepreneurs, follow the link!
http://www.nextslide.com/CFWServices/cfws-entrepreneur-startup-presentation

      In todays’ retail environment, financial pressures on the vendor community to deliver supply chain efficiency are at an all-time high. Retailers are applying fines and chargebacks at a painful rate. The ability to stay current in handling these deductions can be a never-ending battle – however it doesn’t need to be.

Large and small retailers have processes in place to track vendor compliance against a wide range of criteria including:…  Click the link for the full article. docs/Seven_Proven_Methods_to_Reduce_Retail_Chargebacks1.pdf

Customer First Warehouse Services is a Bay Area 3rd party logistics company specialized in retail compliant order fulfillment.  With full RF barcode scanning coupled with direct systems integration to over 1,500 retailers and transportation company’s, your compliance is rest assured and retail chargebacks won’t keep you up at night.

In today’s competitive business world, entrepreneurs need innovative and cost-effective ways to springboard their ideas into a business quickly. They need the tools and expertise to ensure they hit the ground running. They need almost immediate optimization in marketing, a full SEO website and EDI capabilities to integrate e-commerce and retail platforms that will garner the attention of consumers and big-box retailers alike.

Formed in 2008, Customer First Warehouse Services is a single warehousing and order fulfillment resource that addresses these and many other needs of small businesses. This Balboa Capital blog entry gives you an overview of Customer First Warehouse Services and their unique business model, and is followed by a brief overview of our financing capabilities.

Warehousing and Fulfillment Services… Simplified
Customer First Warehouse Services , a Bay Area 3PL warehousing & order fulfillment services company, offers entrepreneurs order fulfillment and product returns services using leading-edge technology, systems integration and industry best practices. The company’s warehouse management system is electronic data interchange (EDI) connected with most shopping carts, 1,500 retailers and various ERP’s. Customer First Warehouse Services’ owner comes from a global logistics company and has acquired state of the art systems and tools, and built a scalable solution to help start-ups  grow to fortune 1000 companies without ever having to experience growing pains.

Customer First Warehouse Services provides integrated transportation solutions through its partnerships with Federal Express, UPS, the US Postal Service and a number of other carriers. With all of its customers’ combined shipping volumes, Customer First Warehouse Services is able to achieve significant carrier discounts that can be shared throughout its client base.

One Solution for Many Business Specialists
Customer First Warehouse Services has built an established network of trading partners that spans across a wide variety of business sectors. Customer First Warehouse Services refers customers to their trading partners for highly specialized business services such as e-commerce, accounting, retail, packaging supply and freight forwarding. Every business resource that is part of the Customer First Warehouse Services community is reputable, experienced and has a proven track record of outstanding work and customer service.

Helping Provide Customers with a Competitive Advantage
Today, Customer First Warehouse Services is taking it to the next level by launching its own social community to further enhance the customer experience. Its customers will have increased access to tools, trading partners, technology experts and retailers, along with opportunities to collaborate with our current customer base to cross-sell and up-sell.

This gives Customer First Warehouse Services’ customers a significant competitive advantage in the marketplace. Additionally, the big-box retailers are ecstatic about the collaboration and innovation amongst Customer First Warehouse Services’ customers, and therefore have been more inclined to buy.

Financial Flexibility
Customer First Warehouse Services’ core competency, which is order fulfillment and reverse logistics, includes a month-to-month agreement and 100% variable pricing with no minimums. This flexibility means that Customer First Warehouse Services’ customers only pay for what they use. This is great for small businesses, especially those with seasonality concerns.

For more information regarding Customer First Warehouse Services and how your small business can become part of the exciting new social community, visit  or email elemoine@cfwservices.

More Ways to Achieve Small Business Success
Balboa Capital is one of the nation’s largest independently owned and operated financing companies, and we offer a number of solutions to help small businesses grow. Balboa Capital’s capabilities include equipment leasing, working capital loans, merchant cash advances and franchise financing.

Since 1988, Balboa Capital has helped many thousands of small businesses acquire the funding they need, and we can do the same for you. Balboa Capital affords you several key benefits that are hard to find in today’s world of big banking and finance. These include a simplified application process, rapid funding and outstanding customer service from financing specialists with many years of industry-specific experience.

To get started with Balboa Capital, click the Quick Quote button below. There is no obligation whatsoever.

My understanding of how my role needed to evolve happened in 2002 after the effects were felt from the dotcom bubble burst.  We lost large dedicated 3PL warehousing & fulfillment deals in telecom & technology where money was flying around everywhere and we did all we could to keep up.  Then, suddenly in 2002, went from 168,000 sq.ft of robust warehousing & fulfillment activity to 15,000 sq.ft of scared customers and employees – myself included.

Well, my strategy to survive not only kicked in, it worked and we grew exponentially in size going from 15,000 sq.ft to 220,000 sq.ft. over the next 4 years.  Here’s how I did it:

Since our Bay Area 3PL warehouse is “shared” across multiple industry verticals and within those verticals, multiple handling & value add requirements, it was my job to find out from Sales what the potential customer will be interested in seeing.

Based on that feedback, a “floor tour” was developed to bring the customer through the areas of the warehouse that were of most interest and closely aligned with their own operation.  We also added a few stops through our value-add areas to highlight our capabilities in kitting, assembly, labeling and our reverse logistics operation as well.  Yes, along the way, I learned the value of the upsell.

I also continued to refine and improve our presentation during the “floor tour” by going from a Sales led tour and discussion to an Operations led tour and discussion – I instructed Sales to take a back seat. This was far more effective and impactful to the customer.  It showed our local know-how and passion by having the day-to-day operations guy talk through the process each step of the way.  Then we took it one step further and implemented “Don’t talk about it, be about it”.  During the “floor tour”, we involved our associates on the floor to provide real time systems and operational demonstrations along with brief Q&A’s between associate and potential customer which highlighted our commitment to people and process.

The icing on the cake was showing the potential customer the results of our commitment to people, process and our passion to learn our customers businesses.  We did this through posting and reviewing KPI’s as part of the tour in each department, showing things like on-time shipping, fulfillment accuracy, cycle count accuracy, and on time receiving or “dock-to-stock”.  We also made sure they understood that these KPI’s were not published until they were blessed by our customers as we used these metrics as part of our quarterly business reviews with clients.

My point to all this is to now tell you how this should be taken a step further with your operations team.  In this day and age of social media, us operations guys now have a platform to demonstrate our thought leadership, know-how and passion before the customer even get through the door.  Not only that, the operations guy who is tweeting & blogging is sending leads to the Sales team.  If you are not taking advantage of this valuable resource, shame on you!

We’ve implemented this social media strategy with our Ops team over the past 12 months and as a result have tripled in growth and will triple again during arguably the worst economic downturn.  We’re also implementing referral commissions to our Ops team when a prospect contacts us because they love the content on their blogs and tweets.

For more information or questions, please feel free to interact with us here or on our social media.  You can also fill out ourcontact form.

Although our specialty is providing warehousing and order fulfilment services, we are also a start-up, entrepreneurial company.  So, feel free to ask us about our journey and join our social community, which will be launching soon.

Networking!

Networking is about making connections and building enduring, mutually beneficial relationships.  We are constantly bombarded with advertisements, emails, status updates, special offers, and sales pitches creating a cluttered message. Personal relationships enable you and your organization to stand out, rise above the noise and remain top of mind.

To succeed you must continually connect with new people, cultivate emerging relationships and leverage your network.  CFW operates as a catalyst to ensure you meet the “right” people to include in your network and expand your sphere of influence.

Since CFW, operates a 3PL Bay Area “shared” warehouse & order fulfillment service, one of the best places to continually meet new people is through our network of 52 customers and growing by 10 each month.  Our clients range from start-ups & entrepreneurs just getting their business model in place to established fortune 1000 companies who work with big-box retailers such as Walmart, Target, Costco, professional sports teams and many more.

In the past, to help facilitate networking engagements, we held mixers on-site at our facility.  Well, times have changed and so are we.  Soon, we are launching a social network that will provide all of our customers a social community where they can network, collaborate, share best practices, form partnerships & find out who to contact at the big-box retailers.  It will help get your foot in the door with a large retailer when you are introduced by an exisiting vendor versus cold calling.  You can also collaborate and bundle products with our other clients to make your products even more unique and appealing to retailers and even to the direct-to-consumer market.

Since our systems and current customers are already connected and sharing information via EDI (electronic data interchange) with the big-box retailers & many shopping cart/ ecommerce platforms, this becomes a simple plug and play versus your current process of cold calling, hoping you get the time of day and in the event you do, figuring out how to quickly set up your IT infrastructure to communicate PO’s and ASN’s electronically with them – and let’s not forget about the vast amount of retail compliance, routing guides etc. that each one requires & the charge-backs you’ll incur if not followed!

Another great advantage especially for entrepreneurs and start-ups working with us, is in the area of setting up your company structure, not just warehousing.  We’ve spent the past few years, as a startup ourselves, sourcing and forging great relationships with like-minded entrepreneurial companies  As such, one of the forums in our social network will contain a resource center where we share our best practices and provide information on vendors we work with in the areas of payroll, HR, office supplies, transportation, janitorial, legal, along with accounting systems & accountants, just to name a few.

So, we make it much easier to form the relationships and in the process receive discounts when you mention us as the referrer.  We’ll also be encouraging our vendors/partners to offer discounts right on our site page to make it even easier.

This will truly be a great community where we all reach the same common goal of growing our respective businesses profitably  by giving each other a competitive advantage in the market place.

We are also a very transparent company.  Please check out our pricing posted on our site, which is something no other 3PL warehouse services company does!

Please leave a comment, provide feedback or ask a question so we can continue to improve our content.  For more information and updates on our social network, please follow us on our social media and fill our our contact form.

I started my career with a global provider of 3PL & order fulfillment services and noticed that with the mimimum start-up and minimum recurring fees, it priced out small start-up companies and entrepreneurs.  What also lacked was an understanding of the mindset and background of the entrepreneur.  Most, if not all, 3PL companies target Logistics or Supply Chain departments within organizations.  So, it’s easier to convey their value proposition and without much hand-holding, close the deal.  They all speak the same language!  We speak in layman’s terms in a way that speaks to the overall success of your company, not just your supply chain.  We’ve founded our company on this principle and forged partnerships with like-minded entrepreneurs to close the gap between the have’s and the have not’s.

As a San Francisco Bay Area 3PL services company, we are well positioned to target entrepreneurs and start-ups here in Silicon Valley.  It also helps that VC’s want their investments close to them!  However, we are having a tremendous amount of success with entrepreneurs throughout the U.S. regardless of where they are based or whether or not they are VC backed.  That is because most contract manufacturing is done overseas and we are right here on the west coast ready to take in ocean containers, which costs much less and takes much less time to get product in stock and ready for fulfillment.

We also do not have any start up costs or minimum fees.  So, our pricing model is 100% variable meaning you only pay for what you use.  If you don’t have any orders for a given month, your fulfillment charge is $0.00 (nothing).  This is a great advantage for entrepreneurs.  Giving them the chance to shrink and grow based on the ebbs and flows or seasonality of their business.

Another way we support our entrepreneurs is assisting with the selection of an accounting system, ERP, and/or shopping cart and then connecting those systems to our warehouse management system for fast, seamless order fulfillment.  The connections can also be replicated to work with other trading partners and the best part is we’re connecting our entrepreneurs to over 1,500 retailers, many of whom require systems integration.  So, we’ve got you covered, all for around 600 bucks when you let us provide the guidance!

For our entrepreneurs in the direct-to consumer business, we’ve partnered and are integrated with the United States Postal Service (USPS).  This means that if you were using or planning to use FedEx or UPS, we’ll be saving you another $2.50 per order on shipping since the USPS does not charge a residential delivery fee and shipping boxes are free.  So, you get the same great service, including tracking information.

Just because you’re small does not mean you don’t get the same great service as the big boys.  We boast RF handheld, barcode scan technology, retail compliance, ISO certifications, an online dashboard for inventory viewing and best of all, at a lower cost.  That is because we’ve done our homework on the best-in-class technologies and transportation methods to deliver fast, cost-effective solutions.  We work with other entrepreneurial companies who understand what it’s like to start from scratch and have developed ways around many of the financial roadblocks that prevent entrepreneurs from being competitive and highly successful.

As a side note, we are turning 3 years old ourselves on December 19th!!

For more information, please also visit us on Twitter and Facebook.

FAQ:  How Much Do 3PL Services Cost or to be more blunt, how much do 3PL’s charge?

I’ve visited alot of 3rd party logistics websites to see what my competition is doing and what I recently discovered is what they are not doing!

3PL companies are not telling you how much their services will cost you until you make contact with them.  Well, I’m changing that, especially for potential customers who are looking for aSan Francisco Bay Area 3PL services company.

To keep the warehouse storage and services pricing simple and easy to understand, I am going to give an all-in rate for ease of use and budgeting.  The all-in rate includes receiving (devanning), put-away, picking, packing, flyer insert & labeling. By the way, this also helps with cash flow since we will not bill you until you send an order to your customer!  Therefore, you are getting paid before you’ve sent a nickel to us.  So, here goes:

Small Parcel Orders:  $4.00 per order.

LTL (less-than-truckload) Orders:  $105.00 per order

TL (truckload) Orders:  $295.00 per order.

Returns:  $4.00 per order.

Yes, this also includes retail compliance to ensure Walmart, Target and the rest of the big retailers won’t hit you with charge-backs.

As a reminder, this also includes storage charges so there will be no surprises or hidden charges when your invoice arrives.  Simply multiply the # of orders shipped times the rate by order type above and it will equal the invoice amount.

For more information, please visit us.

When companies contemplate outsourcing their warehousing and order fuflillment activities to a 3PL services provider, they immediately focus on the core functions of their distribution center such as receiving and shipping activities to see if they can find a less expensive alternative.

Usually, they find that 3rd party logistics service providers can perform these tasks more efficiently, thus cheaper.  However, there may be more important reasons for companies to outsource rather than simply cost savings on manpower and storage facilities.

Here’s a list of core competencies your company may not possess and therefore should be key reasons to outsource your logistics activities.  It just might save you double to triple your current annual spend in your distribution center.

1. Employee Safety Programs = Workers Compensation claims
2. Forklift Operator & Maintenance Training = Damaged equipment leading to replacement, costly repairs or insurance claims
3. Proper Warehouse Security Measures = theft of assets or inventory leading to insurance claims
4. Pest & Sanitation Control Programs = Loss or damage to goods leading to insurance claims to replace product
5. HR Training In The Distribution Center = Employee turnover and possible lawsuits for misconduct
6. Documented & Current Warehouse Processes = mis-ships leading to customer dissatifaction or loss of business.
7. IT Solution = Using an ERP or Excel as a warehouse management system ( WMS ) can cause late or inaccurate shipments, missing inventory and no visibility to warehouse activities

As you can see, since your company’s core competencies are not in the warehousing and distribution industry, a lack of the above mentioned programs or initiatives will affect a company’s profitability, insurance policies and drive up administrative costs greatly.

Since most 3PL’s have these programs in place, not only do they assume liability in these areas but they also have lower insurance premiums, which are in turn passed onto their customers.

Yet another benefit of outsourcing that is often overlooked.