Outsourced Fulfilment for Businesses Ready to Hand Off the Warehouse

Move from in-house operations to a 3PL provider that runs your storage, picking, packing and shipping for you, so your team can stop fulfilling orders and start growing the business.

You built the warehouse. You hired the team. You worked out the carrier rates and the slotting and the peak-season shift patterns. And now you've reached the point where keeping it all running in-house is costing more than it's worth. That's the moment outsourced fulfilment starts to make sense.

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Gonini fulfilment warehouse with a stock received notification

Structured transition plan, no operational gaps

Capacity for 100 to 50,000+ orders a month

Dedicated onboarding team for first-time outsourcers

UK and EU coverage from a single account

Five signs you've outgrown in-house fulfilment

Running fulfilment in-house makes sense at first. You know your products, you can control quality, and you don't trust anyone else to get it right. But every operations director eventually hits the same set of warning signs:

Sign 1

Your warehouse lease is the biggest line item on your P&L

Rent, business rates, racking, MHE leases, utilities and insurance. The fixed cost of having a warehouse you only fully utilise three months a year is harder to justify with every quarter.

Sign 2

Peak season has become a recurring crisis

You're hiring temp staff in October, training them in November, and watching them leave in January. Every year it costs more, takes longer, and your error rate climbs at the worst possible time.

Sign 3

You can't expand into new countries without doubling the operation

Selling into the EU or the US requires duties, customs, returns infrastructure and warehouse space you don't have. A 3PL provider gives you that footprint without the capex.

Sign 4

Your team is fulfilling orders instead of growing the business

Senior people are dealing with picking errors, carrier escalations, and HR for warehouse staff. They were hired to build the brand, not to manage pallets.

Sign 5

The cost of scaling in-house is now higher than scaling with a partner

Once you model the all-in cost (labour, space, software, carrier rates, returns, write-offs, peak surge) against a 3PL provider's transparent per-order pricing, outsourcing often wins on cost alone, before you factor in the operational gains.

If two or more of those sound familiar, you're in the territory where outsourced fulfilment usually pays back inside the first year.

Everything your in-house operation does, run by us

When you outsource fulfilment to Gonini, you're not just handing off picking and packing. You're handing off the full operational stack: the people, the space, the software, the carriers, and the headaches.

Warehousing and inventory

Your stock moves into our secure UK fulfilment centres. Real-time inventory visibility through your dashboard, configurable stock alerts, and proper SKU-level tracking so nothing gets lost or miscounted.

Pick, pack and dispatch

Every order picked, packed and shipped to your spec. Branded packaging, custom inserts, kitting, bundles, fragile handling and gift-wrap all supported. Same-day dispatch on orders placed before cut-off.

Carrier management

Access enterprise-tier rates with Royal Mail, DPD, Evri, DHL, FedEx and UPS without negotiating them yourself. Each order ships via the optimal carrier and service based on its size, destination and SLA.

Returns processing

Returns received, inspected, photographed if needed, then restocked, refurbished or quarantined according to your rules. Returns data feeds back into your dashboard so trends are visible, not buried.

Multichannel order orchestration

All your sales channels (Shopify, Amazon, eBay, WooCommerce, B2B portals, marketplaces) feed into one order pool, fulfilled from one inventory. No more allocating stock manually across platforms.

International fulfilment

Add EU and US fulfilment without setting up new entities or warehouses. Stock can be split across regions, or routed cross-border with full duties and customs handling.

Moving from in-house to outsourced fulfilment without breaking the operation

Most first-time outsourcers complete the move in four to eight weeks. The exact timeline depends on your SKU complexity and volume, but every transition follows the same structured plan.

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Step 1

Discovery and scoping

We work with your operations lead to understand SKU count, order volume, peak patterns, packaging requirements, integrations and SLAs. This becomes your transition plan. You get a quote that reflects your actual operation, not a generic price list.

Step 2

Account and integration setup

Your Seller Portal is configured, your sales channels are connected, and your SKUs are imported. Pre-paid postage rules, packaging instructions and dispatch SLAs are all set up before any stock moves.

Step 3

Inventory transfer

Stock is moved from your warehouse to ours, in tranches if needed so you're never offline. Every SKU is goods-in checked, scanned, and made available in your dashboard before going live.

Step 4

Phased go-live

Many first-time outsourcers start with a subset of SKUs or one sales channel, then ramp up over two or three weeks. By the end of the transition, every order routes through us automatically.

Step 5

Optimisation phase

In the first 60 days, your account manager reviews carrier mix, packaging efficiency, error rates and cost per order. Quick wins (better carrier routing, lower box sizing, fewer split shipments) typically free up another 5 to 10 percent on shipping costs.

A 3PL provider built for the handover, not just the steady state

Choosing your first 3PL provider is harder than switching from one to another. You're not just signing a contract, you're letting go of an operation you've built. Here's what makes the handover work.

Dedicated transition team

First-time outsourcers get a named onboarding lead from kickoff through go-live. They've moved hundreds of operations across to outsourced fulfilment and know where the friction points are before you do.

Transparent, per-order pricing

No long-term commitments, no minimum monthly spend, no opaque storage surcharges. You can model the all-in cost against your in-house run-rate before you commit to anything.

Operational visibility you didn't have in-house

Live inventory, order status, SLA tracking, cost per order, returns data and carrier performance, all surfaced in one dashboard. Most operations teams find they get sharper data once they outsource than they had running it themselves.

Capacity that flexes with your peak

No more Q4 staffing crises. Our fulfilment centres are sized for surge, so your peak volume is our normal week. You pay for the orders you ship, not the bodies you had to hire.

Single platform across the UK and EU

As you expand, you don't add a second 3PL provider. Stock can be held in multiple locations, but it's still one account, one dashboard, one set of integrations.

Connects to your existing stack

Gonini integrates with 30+ e-commerce platforms, marketplaces and order management systems, so your tech stack stays in place. Common integrations include Shopify and Shopify Plus, Amazon Seller Central and Vendor Central, eBay, WooCommerce, BigCommerce, Squarespace, Magento / Adobe Commerce, TikTok Shop, Wayfair and other B2B marketplaces, plus custom APIs and OMS integrations on request.

Is now the right time to outsource your fulfilment?

Our outsourced fulfilment service is built for established e-commerce businesses that are:

Running their own warehouse (owned or leased) and feeling the cost or complexity of it

Shipping anywhere from a few hundred to several thousand orders a week

Planning to expand into new markets without doubling the operation

Facing a lease renewal, peak-season hiring round, or warehouse capacity ceiling

Looking to free up senior team time for brand, product or growth work

Considering their first 3PL provider and want a structured, low-risk way to make the move

If any two of those describe your business, a conversation with our team is worth having.

Outsourcing fulfilment for the first time, answered

How do I know if outsourced fulfilment will actually save us money?

Build the all-in in-house number first: warehouse rent and rates, racking and MHE, software, warehouse labour (including benefits and management overhead), packaging consumables, carrier costs, returns processing, peak temp staff, and write-offs from picking errors. Compare that to a 3PL provider's per-order rate at your volume. For most businesses shipping 5,000+ orders a month, outsourcing wins before you factor in the operational gains. We can run that model with you during scoping.

What happens to our warehouse staff?

Most businesses redeploy senior operations people into supplier, inventory or customer experience roles, where they add more strategic value. Warehouse-floor roles tend to wind down through natural attrition during the transition period, or with planned redundancy. We can advise on the timeline but the people decisions stay with you.

How long does the transition from in-house to outsourced take?

Typically four to eight weeks from contract signature to full go-live, depending on SKU count, order volume and how phased you want the handover to be. The longest stage is usually inventory transfer, which we plan around your sales cycle so you're never offline.

Will we lose control over how orders are packed and shipped?

No. Packaging spec, insert rules, branded materials, dispatch SLAs and carrier preferences are all configured to your standards. Many brands find their packing consistency improves after outsourcing, because a 3PL provider runs to documented SOPs rather than relying on individual operators' memory.

Can we outsource only part of our fulfilment?

Yes. Many first-time outsourcers start with a single sales channel (often Amazon or one marketplace) or a subset of SKUs, run it for a couple of months, and ramp up from there. It's a sensible way to de-risk the move.

What if our volumes are seasonal?

That's one of the strongest cases for outsourced fulfilment. With a 3PL provider, you pay for the orders you ship, so a quiet month costs you less and a peak month is absorbed without you having to staff for it. The fixed-cost trap of in-house disappears.

How do we move our stock without going offline?

Inventory transfer is usually phased over one to three weeks. We bring stock across in tranches, check it in, and switch order routing channel by channel as each tranche goes live. You keep shipping the whole way through.

What if we want to bring fulfilment back in-house later?

You can. Service is month-to-month with no long-term lock-in. If you ever want to move back in-house, or to another provider, we'll help you transfer your stock out cleanly and provide the data exports you need.

Ready to plan your move to outsourced fulfilment?

Start with a scoping call. Tell us about your SKUs, your volumes, your warehouse footprint and your peak. We'll come back with a transition plan, a fully costed quote, and a side-by-side comparison against your current in-house run-rate. No commitment, no pressure.

Get Your Quote and Transition Plan →