This is an excerpt from Ryder E-commerce’s latest ebook “Unleashing the power of creative channel expansion for D2C brands” by Pipe17, a solution that enables brands to connect their backend systems for seamless order and inventory management. Check out the full ebook here.
“Go where your customers are.” It’s a common saying. But where exactly are they? These days this could be Amazon, TikTok, Instagram, Walmart, Wayfair, Etsy, or simply just your own DTC site.
So, while selling on your own site may be the best-case scenario for a brand, there is so much more market share to be had.
Every time you launch a new channel, your brand reach increases – but you also add an increased layer of complexity to your business. So, how do you control your costs (and your headaches) with the added complexity of channel expansion?
Sadly, most of your selling channels will wind up being disconnected data silos. They take in the order, but then what? There is no way to route the orders to fulfillment centers based on geography, tags, SKUs, kits, bundles, or inventory levels.
Most e-commerce tools excel at their specific function, like receiving orders, pick-pack-ship, or managing financials. But very few were designed with the end-to-end e-commerce journey in mind. Subsequently, they were not built to work seamlessly across your stack. Many tools lack “brains” or logic.
So, what are the options?
The spreadsheet
Spreadsheets are the #1 way that merchants usually start solving the problems that channel expansion inflicts on their order operations. They can download orders as a csv file from the selling channel, manipulate/transform them in Excel, and then upload them to their fulfillment center’s WMS. However, this has to be done every day or risk backlogging customer orders and bombarding customer…
This is only a snippet of a eCommerce Article, please visit the Authors Website and Read the Full Article