Supplier-integrated versus independent 3PL
An independent 3PL receives your inventory from your supplier, then ships it. A supplier that also fulfills skips that transfer: stock is already where it will ship from, so there is no inbound freight, no receiving delay, and no second party handling temperature-sensitive material.
What to establish before committing
- Cut-off time and what happens to an order that misses it
- Whether your SKU is segregated or pooled with other clients’ identical stock
- Who supplies packaging, and whether inserts are yours
- What appears on the label and the return address
- Lot traceability: can they tell you which lot went to which order, months later
The one that gets forgotten
Lot traceability. It costs nothing to ask about at setup and is impossible to reconstruct afterwards
when a customer asks which lot they received.