Order Fulfillment Service - is there a demand?

I am trying to gauge the demand for an order fulfillment service for small businesses in Sheffield. We are an online retailer so send out lots of things already by courier and having used one of these services previously and had a terrible service, orders not going out, no idea of stock levels, them not taking us seriously because we are a small company compared to some of their other clients and them charging a fortune for it. We thought we could provide a better service to small businesses. We have some extra space coming available in a couple of months and we thought this may be a good way of utilising it. Would anyone be interested, or does anyone know of companies who would be interested?

Sleep Well......

Being close to the M1 corridor there are loads of distribution warehouses that are used by high street shops. Many have custom designed barcode systems for sending out between 10,000 and 100,000 items per day & night.

What size space do you have available?

Do you have racking for boxes and pallets?

What system are you using?

What is your output capacity?

We have about 6,00 square foot with racking for parcels and boxes. As I stated in my first post we have used one of the companies you describe and they boasted of their barcode system, how many parcels they send out and the money they spent on their facilities. However their service was awful, parcels not going out on time, stock going missing and no one caring. We care, people who buy from We Love Sleep get an excellent service and we want to offer that to other small companies. As you know there are plenty of people offering an order fullfillment service but as far as I can see no one offering it for new and small businesses.

If you are genuinely interested please PM me and I can answer any further questions you may have......

I can imagine small businesses want to keep their overheads down and operate with the staff they trust within arms reach.

Such as service is remote and could be prohibitively expensive for a single business so I can see your point for offering a service to a collective of businesses.

Offering 500 sq foot (10ft x 50ft) of double shelving with a centre corridor 3 shelves high (3ft height per shelf) could work out at 900sqft of stock space for 12 businesses.

This should work out well for online businesses who have outgrown home working. Amazon offer a similar service so you could look at their rates.

Businesses that are importing might need some help this way so you could contact services that offer advice on importing goods. Small workshop manufacturers might need some extra space and to take care of online orders too.