Shopify opens its own fulfillment network

 Shopify has closed deals and signed contracts with warehouses and logistics service providers spread across the US to receive storage space and processing capacities. The internet company is opening its own fulfillment network that it will rent out to webshops that use its software.

Last week, the software company announced the opening of the Shopify Fulfillment Network. In this start-up phase, a first select customer group is allowed to test whether the systems work as planned. They are able to outsource between ten- and ten thousand packages a day, which eventually should be scaled up to between three- and thirty thousand.

The storage and processing areas are located in California, Georgia, New Jersey, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Texas. In terms of reachability, they cover the largest part of the United States.

Smart software keeps track of where stocks are located and how big the demand is in certain regions. Inventory management is automatically set up, based on that type of data. There is nothing known about the rates yet, although Shopify will battle with competitor Amazon.

Shopify is continuously working on further internationalising its service, by translating the online dashboards. In addition to Dutch, Danish and Finnish, Norwegian and Swedish have recently become available in Europe next to five Asian languages.

Foreign traders on the platform have seen the combined turnover in the first quarter of 2019 double compared to 2018. Shopify’s sales have increased from 214 million to 320 million dollars in that period.