Red Stag Fulfillment Review: Order Fulfillment Made Easy

Is Red Stag Fulfillment Right for Your Business?

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If you’re starting an online business selling merchandise of any sort, shipping is probably at the forefront of your mind. As a newbie to the industry, you might be unsure about how you handle shipping. Or perhaps, you're an established business looking for a more scalable and convenient way to manage your shipments? Either way, our Red Stag Fulfillment review might help you find the answer.

Third-party logistics companies don’t provide a one-size-fits-all solution to your fulfillment needs. When you’re looking for a fulfillment partner, you need to find one that has expertise in packing and shipping products like yours. In addition, your fulfillment company should offer the services that you need and your customers expect.

So, with that in mind, we’ve taken a look at how Red Stag handles order fulfillment. Are they an excellent choice for your business? Let’s find out…

Who Is Red Stag Fulfillment?

Red Stag takes your orders, gets the product(s) ready, and ships it directly to your customers. If you’re selling physical items, order fulfillment is a crucial step in the transaction process. You might not have the facilities to store all of your products, or perhaps your company is still small and doesn’t have the staff to take care of order fulfillment. If you can relate to these issues, a company like Red Stag Fulfillment can handle that work for you.

Simply ship them the products you want to store in their warehouse, link your order processing software with them, and Red Stag will pack and ship your orders to your consumers quickly and accurately.

The company was founded by two entrepreneurs boasting extensive eCommerce experience with a desire to remedy the struggles online store owners face today. When they outsourced order fulfillment to a third party, they soon realized that a lousy shipping company could kill a business. Orders were delayed by weeks, packages were unsent, and customers were unhappy.

As a result, the entrepreneurs decided to launch and run their own order fulfillment center. Red Stag Fulfillment has been growing ever since. Its focus is on heavy, oversized, and high value product fulfillment. It has one of the most aggressive same-day and next-day cutoffs in the industry. Red Stag has helped hundreds of ecommerce businesses grow and succeed, even (and especially) during COVID-19.

Red Stag Fulfillment

Who Does Red Stag Fulfillment Cater To?

Red Stag Fulfillment focuses its services on retailers shipping heavier and bulkier parcels, and orders that need assembling before shipping. Many of Red Stag's users deal in flat-pack furniture, desk chairs, electronics, or cases of smaller items.

Red Stag Fulfillment's service best caters to merchants processing fewer orders at a high price point. The company provides specialized boxes and packaging, but any items that require additional assembly or packing might incur an extra charge. Red Stag has a minimum order requirement of 200 orders per month, though that is somewhat flexible.

Red Stag Fulfillment

Red Stag Fulfillment: The Pros and Cons

Let's start with the upsides of using Red Stag Fulfillment…

Red Stag Fulfillment’s Pros 👍

  • Red Stag Fulfillment boasts an high order fulfillment accuracy (99.98%).
  • The company will pay you $50 any time it does make a mistake in packing or shipping.
  • Red Stag offers a same-day order fulfillment with cutoffs at 3 pm and 5 pm Eastern time.
  • You can make faster business decisions because you can access live and accurate order processing and inventory information through the easy-to-use dashboard.
  • Speedy return processing.
  • Access to discounted shipping rates.
  • Each Red Stag Fulfillment client gets a dedicated customer service agent. The company prides itself on its quick response to client questions.
  • The company provides specialty services, like kitting and light assembly.
  • You have the option for seller-fulfilled Prime.
  • You can send your products to Red Stag Fulfillment for a free 30-day trial.
  • Red Stag Fulfillment charges month-by-month, so there aren't any lengthy contracts or commitments.
  • Red Stag Fulfillment offers a robust suite of automation features.

Red Stag Fulfillments’s Cons 👎

  • The user interface isn’t the sleekest. Red Stag prioritizes plain data over visual design.
  • The service isn’t ideal for sellers with small, lightweight products or items that sell at lower prices.
  • There isn't an international warehousing option – Red Stag Fulfillment has only US warehouse locations. However, the company can ship parcels to international destinations and works with foreign companies for their US fulfillment.
  • The company offers shipping discounts to all clients, but to qualify, you need to ship using the company’s accounts via FedEx/UPS.
  • Red Stag Fulfillment only has two warehouses in the US. So, if same-day delivery is crucial, this isn't achievable for everyone – it all comes down to where you're located.

How Does Red Stag Fulfillment Work?

When a customer places an order via your eCommerce store, the order information is routed directly to Red Stag Fulfillment. There, the ordered is picked from  the warehouse shelves, packaged and handed to the shipping provider. Red Stag takes videos and pictures of all the products they receive to ensure there are no questions as to the condition of your inventory or returned products.

Red Stag Fulfillment focuses all its efforts on fast and efficient order fulfillment. They concentrate on getting items packed and shipped correctly, for satisfied customers every time. Red Stag's order cutoff time is as late as 5 pm, if you want to benefit from their same-day order fulfillment promise.

You can bulk-ship your products and items to Red Stag Fulfillment’s warehouses and leave the order fulfillment to them. Simple, right?

Red Stag Fulfillment integrates with all major eCommerce platforms to receive your customer's order automatically. Alternatively, you can opt for single-order reporting (where you send orders over manually) or CSV format orders (where your orders are displayed in a spreadsheet).

Red Stag Fulfillment provides you with a digital dashboard where you can view your inventory. Here you can track daily, weekly, and monthly sales data and estimate when your stock at Red Stag's warehouses will need replenishing. You can also monitor your damaged products and customer returns from your dashboard.

Red Stag Fulfillment also offers customized solutions to match your return policy. You can choose whether they ship returns to you for refurbishing or re-packaging, or process returns on your behalf.

Red Stag Fulfillment

How Much Does Red Stag Fulfillment Cost?

Red Stag Fulfillment charges on a month to month basis, which provides a degree of flexibility. Because you don’t have to enter into a lengthy contract, you won’t be stranded with hefty financial losses if you need to discontinue your partnership with Red Stag for any reason.

To get an accurate estimate of how much Red Stag Fulfillment will charge you for their services, contact them directly to receive a quote. But we've done some searching around the web, and found some of the costs you might expect (depending on the services you require):

  • For receiving, Red Stag Fulfillment may charge $13.25 per pallet.
  • For storage in one of their warehouses, it costs $2 per bin or $15 per pallet per month.
  • Pick and packing services cost $2.25 to $2.65 for the first item, plus +30 cents per additional item.

The company also offers special kitting and packaging services on a per quote basis, and return and restock fees are based on a returns plan.

As we've already mentioned, Red Stag Fulfillment offers a 30-day free trial, so you can send your items to its warehouses and sample its services for free. You'll also be pleased to hear; there aren't any stock-keeping unit (SKU) fees, account management costs, or setup expenses (yay!)

Red Stag Fulfillment

Guaranteed Results, or $50 in Your Pocket

Red Stag Fulfillment proves its confidence in its services with its fulfillment guarantee. If the company makes a mistake packing or shipping any of your orders, they promise to pay you $50 as compensation. This applies to every item that's picked, packed or shipped incorrectly.

This $50 compensation also covers the receipt of your inventory if Red Stag takes longer than 48 hours to move your shipment from the receiving dock to the warehouse shelves. The order processing guarantee once again pays out $50 (and no shipping costs on that item) for any order that hasn't been shipped according to your chosen service level (Next business day, 3 pm cutoff, 5-pm cut off).

Red Stag Fulfillment also doesn’t have the ‘inventory shrinkage’ clause that's common with other providers. For those who haven't heard of this before, this is a clause in your contract that allows for a percentage of inventory that can be damaged or go missing as an ‘acceptable margin' . But, Red Stag Fulfillment believes that no inventory loss is ever acceptable. As a result, this fulfillment company promises to compensate you for the wholesale price of any items that get damaged or go missing in their warehouses.

Red Stag Fulfillment: Its Key Features

Same-Day Order Fulfillment

Same-day order processing is provided with an order cutoff time as late as 5 pm Eastern time.

Standard Shipping

Red Stag Fulfillment’s warehouses offer standard delivery to 97% of US households inf two days or less.

Discounted Shipping Rates

Red Stag Fulfillment works closely with shipping providers like FedEx and UPS and has negotiated shipping discounts, especially for oversized or bulky packages.

Kitting and Assembly

Red Stag helps you sell personalized products by providing a reliable kitting service and light assembly. Red Stag Fulfillment can add labels or tags, combine products, add custom lettering or numbers, and assemble any parts of your product(s) before shipping.

Inventory Planning

Red Stag Fulfillment provides inventory management as a service. They can help you optimize your profits by offering real-time data that you can access via their online dashboard. With their zero shrinkage guarantee, Red Stag's inventory turnover ratios are always based on accurate data.

Ecommerce Logistics Expertise – Applied to Your Orders

Red Stag Fulfillment offers to analyze your current order fulfillment provider’s processes, and help you find potential savings through a combination of standardized package consolidation and shipping discounts.

Red Stag Fulfillment does this by maximizing the number of items you ship per package, hence saving on unnecessary shipping costs. In fact, they were able to help one of their clients reduce their packages per order by 22%. This saved them several thousands of dollars a month in shipping costs alone!

The company also offers custom packaging. This ensures that each of your orders ships in the optimal box, to reduce the likelihood of goods getting damaged during transit. With precautions like these in place, you'll find fewer customers ask for returns and refunds. Interestingly, Red Stag Fulfillment was able to decrease one of their client's eCommerce shipping claims by over 70% with their custom packaging!

Red Stag Fulfillment

Integrations

Red Stag Fulfillment integrates with all major ecommerce platforms, including Amazon, Shopify, Magento, Netsuite, BigCommerce, OpenCart, WooCommerce, Paypal, and many others. It also integrates with Quickbooks and other accounting software for easy consolidation of your books.

National Fulfillment

As we've just said, Red Stag Fulfillment has two warehouse locations in the US. The warehouse locations have been carefully picked to guarantee 97% of US customers can be delivered to within 1-2 days and 99.9% within three. These warehouses are located in Salt Lake City, UT, and Knoxville, TN.

Red Stag Fulfillment's Customer Service

Red Stag Fulfillment prides itself on its customer service. You can contact them via the phone and direct your questions to their friendly support team, where you will receive helpful advice.

Red Stag Fulfillment

Let’s Conclude. Is Red Stag Fulfillment the Best Order Fulfillment Provider for Your eCommerce Business?

There's plenty to like about Red Stag Fulfillment's services. We especially like their transparent and generous guarantees. Red Stag Fulfillment believes in its work wholeheartedly – with accuracy, receiving, and processing guarantees, as well as the zero shrinkage promise, Red Stag Fulfillment elevates itself above many of its competitors.

This company is best suited for eCommerce businesses that ship oversized or bulky items. Thanks to their deal with FedEx, businesses that ship furniture or large electronics can benefit from steep shipping discounts.

Red Stag Fulfillment also makes sense for businesses generating high-priced orders at a lower rate of turnover, as well as anyone that wants to send bundles or kitted packages with lightly assembled items.

However, Red Stag Fulfillment isn't suitable for anyone selling high volumes of cheaper items. This is because you won't benefit from the shipping discounts and your products aren't compatible with the company’s specialist approach. So, if that's you, you'll need to look elsewhere.

If you’re interested in employing Red Stag Fulfillment to handle your order fulfillment, why not get in touch? Or why not give their 30-day free trial a go? With no processing fees, you have nothing to lose and everything to gain by giving them a try. Good luck!

Who are you relying on for your order fulfillment? Let us know in the comments below and share your experiences. Speak soon!

Rosie Greaves

Rosie Greaves is a professional content strategist who specializes in all things digital marketing, B2B, and lifestyle. She has over three years of experience crafting high-quality content. Check out her website Blog with Rosie for more information.

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