An independent UK 3PL, based in Essex.
One provider for everything between your stock arriving and your customer opening the box.
As a third-party logistics provider we take on the physical side of order fulfilment - storing your stock, picking and packing orders, dispatching them with a courier and handling what comes back. You are not leasing a warehouse, hiring pack staff or negotiating carrier accounts to do it.
"3PL" is simply the logistics industry's name for that arrangement. If you are weighing up 3PL fulfilment services in the UK, this page covers what the model actually involves, when it is worth switching to one, and how we run it day to day.
What is a 3PL fulfilment service?
A company that holds your goods and moves them, so you can stay in the business of selling them.
In eCommerce, a 3PL fulfilment company takes delivery of your stock, stores it, and processes orders as they land from your store - picking each item, packing it and shipping it. The term sits inside a set of logistics models, and the number says how much of the job somebody else is doing.
First-party logistics
You move your own goods, in your own vehicles, with your own people. The kitchen table and the Saturday post office run.
Second-party logistics
One service, bought in. A courier that carries a parcel from A to B, and nothing either side of that.
Third-party logistics
Warehousing, pick and pack, carriage and returns under one contract, with one point of contact. This is what we do.
For most online retailers the 3PL layer is the right one: one provider, one contract, one person to ring for everything between goods-in and the doorstep. Our eCommerce fulfilment services page has the full breakdown of what is included.
How 3PL fulfilment works with us.
Four steps at the start, then it runs without anybody rekeying anything.
Connect your store
Orders, stock levels and tracking sync straight between your shop and our warehouse. See the platforms we connect to.
Send us your stock
Book a goods-in slot. We receive, count and putaway within 24 hours, and it appears in your dashboard as it reaches the shelf.
We pick, pack and post
Every order placed before 4pm is picked, packed and dispatched the same day, on whichever courier suits that particular parcel.
You watch it happen
Live stock and order status in the customer portal, and a named account manager instead of a ticket queue.
When should you switch to a 3PL fulfilment company?
Usually at the point where time and space run out, not at a particular order count.
Packing has eaten the week. Hours that should go into marketing, buying or product development are going into boxes and tape instead.
The stock has outgrown the room. The spare room, the garage or the unit round the corner is full, and the next order of stock has nowhere to land.
Mistakes are creeping in. Wrong items, missed dispatches, a stock figure that no longer matches the shelf. Volume finds the cracks in a manual process.
You want to sell somewhere new. A new market, a new channel or a new country - without signing a lease and hiring a team to find out whether it works.
None of these require reaching a particular size first. We work with brands of every size on the same rate card, with no minimum order volume - there is more on that on our fulfilment for small business page if you are outsourcing for the first time.
In-house fulfilment vs a 3PL fulfilment service.
The honest version, including the part that counts against us.
Running fulfilment yourself keeps control of every step, but it carries the fixed costs of space, staff and carrier accounts whether the month is busy or quiet. A 3PL turns most of that into a variable cost tied to what you actually ship.
A lease or a room you have already outgrown, paid for every month.
Space by the pallet or the shelf, up and down with your stock.
Hiring, holiday cover and quiet weeks paid at the same rate as busy ones.
Packing is in the per-order price, so a slow month costs less.
Your own accounts, on your own volume, negotiated one carrier at a time.
Multi-carrier rates across DPD, Royal Mail, Evri and FedEx, on our combined volume.
Mostly fixed. The bill arrives whether you shipped 200 orders or 20.
Mostly variable, tied to what you actually ship that month.
You find the extra hands and the extra space yourself, in October.
Capacity agreed in advance and staffed by us.
Total. Every decision, every parcel, in the building with you.
Handed over - which is why live stock and order visibility is the thing to judge a 3PL on.
That last row is the trade-off. You are handing the physical process to somebody else, which is why account visibility matters as much as pick-and-pack accuracy - a 3PL is only a good decision if you can still see what is happening to your stock and your orders in real time. How we do that is covered on our eCommerce inventory management page.
What makes Waypoint different.
Geography, a single rate card, and a phone that somebody answers.
Fulfilment is a geography business before it is anything else. Every mile between the port and the shelf, and between the shelf and your customer, is a day and a cost that somebody pays for.
3PL fulfilment, asked and answered.
The questions that come up on the first call.
What does 3PL stand for?
3PL stands for third-party logistics: a company that stores, picks, packs and ships orders on behalf of another business, rather than that business handling fulfilment itself.
Is a 3PL the same as a fulfilment centre?
A fulfilment centre is the physical warehouse where stock sits and orders are processed. A 3PL is the company that runs one, and provides the service around it - goods-in, stock management, dispatch and returns.
Do I need a 3PL if I am a small business?
There is no minimum size. Plenty of small businesses move to a 3PL because packing orders is taking time away from running the rest of the business, long before order volume becomes the reason.
How is pricing structured for 3PL fulfilment services?
We work from a single rate card covering storage, pick and pack, and carriage, so you can see what an order costs before you sign - rather than a headline rate with surcharges added on later.
Can a 3PL handle international shipping?
Yes. Alongside UK-wide dispatch at domestic speeds, we ship tracked into the EU from our Essex site, minutes from the Channel crossings and the container ports.
How long does it take to move to a 3PL?
Most brands are live within 48 hours of signing a rate card. The longest part is usually the stock arriving with us, not the setup.
Get started with a 3PL fulfilment company.
Tell us what you are shipping and how many orders you send a month, and we will have a rate card back to you within one working day.