Why fulfillment centers won't talk to you until you have 500+ orders per month
You've made the decision: you want to outsource your shipping. Full of confidence, you start looking for a fulfillment partner. You fill out contact forms, make calls, and keep getting the same answer: "How many orders per month? Oh, then we're not the right partner for you yet."
It's a frustrating reality for many growing webshop entrepreneurs. You're too big to keep doing it yourself, but too small for established fulfillment parties. Welcome to the gap in the market.
Why fulfillment centers have minimum volumes
To understand why this works this way, you need to look at the business model of a fulfillment center. They earn per picked, packed, and shipped order. Every client involves onboarding, system integration, inventory management, and customer service. Those fixed costs need to be recouped — and that only works with sufficient volume.
Most fulfillment parties in the Netherlands require a minimum of 300 to 500 orders per month. Some only start at 1,000. Below that, it's simply not profitable for them.
The problem for growing webshops
For a webshop processing 50 to 200 orders per month, this means a stalemate. You feel the growing pains: mistakes in orders, delayed shipping, no time for your core business. But the solution you need isn't available at your current scale.
Many entrepreneurs then try to keep doing it themselves. They rent a small storage space, hire someone part-time to help with packing, or work even harder. But those are band-aids on a structural problem.
The power of collective purchasing
The solution lies in bundling. As an individual small webshop, you don't have enough volume. But if you bundle your orders with those of dozens of other webshops, you do reach the volumes that fulfillment partners need.
That's exactly the model of weunitebrands. By bringing webshops together on one platform, orders are bundled and everyone gets access to professional fulfillment — regardless of individual order volume. You might process 80 orders per month, but together with other webshops on the platform, that becomes a volume that fulfillment partners are happy to work with.
What does this mean in practice?
No minimum volume requirements for your webshop individually. Professional pick, pack & ship. Real-time inventory management. And rates that you as a small entrepreneur would normally never get. The difference is in the collective — together you're stronger.
So the next time a fulfillment center says "call us back when you're bigger," you know there's an alternative. One that's specifically designed for webshops in your growth phase.