Achieving flawless fulfillment and a customized experience

The challenge

Fosdick Fulfillment, a national leader in the fulfillment space for nearly 60 years, is a tech-focused 3PL specializing in pick, pack and ship, assembly and retail distribution. Fosdick’s bicoastal connections allow brands to reach customers faster—with their help, 95% of the U.S. population is reachable via ground carrier in just 3 days. Fosdick offers a variety of shipping methods, both nationally and internationally, and has established relationships with preferred carrier partners FedEx, DHL, UPS and OSM.

While Fosdick was already a highly capable operator in the fulfillment space, they realized they could use a little extra help when it came to continuous growth. Fosdick noticed two problem areas that could be improved.

The first: scalability.

Fosdick was an early player in the direct-to-consumer (DTC) world. However, whenever there was a sudden influx of online DTC ordering, they could hardly keep up. Due to the nature of the business, Fosdick must pay extremely close attention to details like warehouse space and inventory, but with an overwhelming number of orders, their existing system wasn’t intuitive enough to stay ahead. With other resources in the company already strained, a lack of scalability left them with a decision to make: build their own program or buy new tech.

The second: customization.

As Fosdick increased their technical capabilities, they found themselves using systems that were better, but still unable to customize certain aspects of their order process—a crucial part of their business strategy. In need of quick solutions, team members started manually creating workarounds within their system. While these solutions worked at the time, the process was far from sustainable.

To keep customers happy with the service they were used to, Fosdick needed a better answer.

The solution

In 2019, to address the scalability and customization challenges while continuing to grow their business, Fosdick entered into a strategic partnership with SPS Commerce.

Fosdick implemented SPS Commerce Fulfillment, an automated EDI solution that works directly in their back-end system and integrates 100% with their WMS. With this integration, Fosdick is able to create 100% customizable processes through a system that scales with their growth. The employees who previously worked on finding solutions for each individual problem that arose are now able to focus on higher-value tasks and reduce manual data entry.

With SPS Commerce Fulfillment, Fosdick has sped up their onboarding process by weeks at a time, while continuing to offer the same excellent service that their customers expect. Newly onboarded partners of Fosdick have immediate access to the SPS retailer network, which boasts some of the biggest names in retail and is a value-add for brands of all sizes.

The results

With SPS Commerce Fulfillment, Fosdick Fulfillment has increased order processing and onboarding speed, eliminated manual data entry and keeps their customers happy with the personal, top-tier service they deserve.

“We love SPS Commerce because our customers love working with you. We have total confidence that you will provide the best solutions for our customers, who appreciate quality and efficiency.”

– Chris Grillo, Director of New Business and Inside Sales

Fosdick leveraged the boosted efficiency that SPS Commerce Fulfillment provides to continue expanding across the country and meet varying customer and trading partner requirements. As Fosdick achieves new levels of growth, SPS Commerce will continue to support them.