Choosing a Fulfillment Company When You Have High SKU Counts

If you’ve interacted with a fulfillment company for price quotes in the past, you might have experienced some of the key things that they look for when signing up new business – order volume metrics, certain types of products, etc. But one other little known characteristic that fulfillment companies look at in order to determine if they’ll be able to help is your overall SKU count. Many fulfillment companies prefer low SKU counts and high volumes since it’s easy to process and the volumes create profit. But what about companies that have large SKU counts and not necessarily high volume of orders? Are their fulfillment companies out there that can help? In this article, we’ll discuss high SKU count customers, what to look for in a fulfillment company and tips for selecting the best firm.

What is a SKU?

For those of you that don’t know exactly what a SKU is, we thought it would help to start out with a simple explanation. By definition, a SKU (or a stock keeping unit), is a product identification that allows the product to be tracked uniquely in inventory. Usually, companies provide a unique SKU number for each product in inventory. As an example, a company that produces t-shirts might have a SKU of “Fantastic Men’s Shirt-M-BL” for its men’s, medium, black ‘fantastic” t-shirt. They would simply update the code for different sizes and gender varieties. By tracking each unique SKU separately, the company can ensure adequate controls over inventory tracking and order fulfillment processes, thereby minimizing errors.

Why Do Fulfillment Centers Sometimes Focus on Small SKU Customers?

In some cases, fulfillment centers focus on trying to obtain new customers that don’t have large SKU counts in their inventory. There are a couple of reasons they prefer smaller SKU count clients. First, it takes less time to set up a new customer in their warehouse when the new client only has a few SKUs – from adding the items to inventory in their warehouse management software program to setting up spaces in their racking systems. Second, the fewer the SKUs, the lower the chance of ‘mis-picking’ orders. If there are a large number of SKUs, especially when the SKUs are similar in size and appearance, there is a much greater opportunity to pull an item incorrectly when picking an order. As an example, our Fantastic Men’s Medium Black t-shirt can easily be mistaken for a Fantastic Men’s Large Black t-shirt. Third, it takes a lot less time to receive product when it hits the dock and is comprised of only a few SKUs. Fourth, it takes a lot more space in the warehouse to organize all of the products if there are a great number of SKUs. Most fulfillment centers operate in a way that segregates “bulk” storage from “pick” space. The “pick” space is organized in such a way to easily pick and package orders, oftentimes organized using bins or shelving. The more SKUs, the more “pick” area needed.

What is Considered High SKU Count and What are Some Examples?

Fulfillment companies that shy away from high SKU count customers generally start getting a little more uncomfortable once the SKU count approaches 50-100 SKUs or more. Of course, there are many companies that have hundreds, thousands, and even more SKUs in inventory. It’s quite common to see high SKU counts. In fact, any product business could potentially have quite a large SKU count in inventory, depending upon how many products they’ve decided to sell. Some examples include apparel businesses, some vitamin and supplements companies, certain food products merchants, automotive business, many consumer products companies, pet and toy products producers – it could literally be any type of business!

Last Step

Since 2005 We’ve Been Helping Companies Just Like Yours

Your contact information is held in the strictest of confidence. We will contact you before we connect you with vendors so that we can learn about your situation, obtain any of your contact preferences, and answer any of your questions.

YOU have control over your contact details:

• No unwanted contacts – you control how vendors respond to you
• Remain confidential if you wish
• No commitment to choose any of our vendors
• Ask our Fulfillment experts any questions you have!