Let’s set the scene—a fairly common one in certain parts of Honolulu:
You’re an importer without access to a loading dock. Your footprint is small. There’s nowhere to drop a container. In fact, your space may even be too tight to hold a container’s worth of goods for sorting, segregating, and repackaging for delivery to your retail partners.
Even if you could find the space and the right equipment to sort, segregate, palletize, and shrink-wrap your goods, doing it all yourself might not be the best option.
Instead, you might consider partnering with a dedicated expert for these types of warehouse logistics services. By outsourcing, you’ll be able to leverage your partner’s larger footprint (without paying their rent!), save on labor costs, and, ultimately, deliver a better experience for your retail customers.
Let’s take a look at what that might mean for your business.
How Do Warehouse Logistics Services Work?
The faster you get your goods out of their container and on their way to your retail partners, the faster you realize revenue.
However, if you’ve asked your supplier to floor-load your container, you’ve got a significant amount of work in front of you. Unloading a 40′ container of palletized goods might only take ~30 minutes. However, it can take two to three hours of hard work to unload a floor-loaded 40′ container.
If you choose the right partner for your warehouse logistics services, they can take care of all of that for you (and possibly more!) including:
- Picking up the container at the port and moving it to their warehouse.
- Offloading all the goods, then sorting and segregating them according to your instructions.
- Palletizing and shrink-wrapping everything for transfer to your retail partner, which makes for easier delivery, movability, and storage.
- Loading pallets into your trucks—or managing all the deliveries for you.
By outsourcing these services, you’ll enjoy a number of benefits, including:
Expanding Your Footprint (Without Expanding Your Lease)
Picking a partner to take care of these warehouse logistics services allows you to reap the benefits of their square footage. You get to leverage your partner’s footprint to receive the container, plus their warehouse space to offload goods, sort them, and transload them for final delivery.
However, whereas they’re paying for the yearly lease on all this square footage, you’re simply “renting” that floor space when you need it.
By the way, the same is true of the equipment your partner has invested in. You might not own a shrink-wrap machine, a pallet jack, or a fork lift to double-stack pallets. However, by outsourcing your warehouse logistics services, you essentially get to make use of your partner’s equipment when one of your shipments arrives.
In other words, outsourcing your warehouse logistics services allows you to keep your overhead low, while paying only for what you need.
Outsourcing can also keep your expenses low in another arena.
Saving on Labor Costs & Focusing Your Efforts Where They Matter
If you’re receiving floor-loaded containers from Asia, unloading is a labor-intensive process that can take several hours. If you have the space at your location, you probably could sort and segregate these loads yourself—or with the help of a team member.
However, is that really the best use of your time? Could you and your team spend that time making an impact in another area of your business that only you can do, such as:
- Finding new suppliers in Asia to source different types of goods your retail partners will love?
- Negotiating purchase agreements and freight costs to keep your margins stable?
- Cultivating long-term relationships with your current retail partners?
- Establishing relationships with new Hawaii-based retailers to expand your operations?
In other words, why not focus on what you do best—growing your business—while allowing a logistics partner to do what they do best—handling goods? This allows everyone to work in an area where they can excel, creating new efficiencies.
Additionally, outsourcing these logistics services to an expert may prove more cost-effective than trying to execute these functions internally, allowing you to save on your overall labor costs.
Delivering a Better Experience for Your Retail Customers
Finally, by leveraging a partner to execute warehouse logistics services, you’ll be able to deliver goods to your retail partners the way they want to receive them: sorted and segregated, palletized, and shrink-wrapped. This allows for easier unloading, with a much lower chance of damage. Additionally, once your retail partner has received the goods, palletized goods are much easier for them to both move and store.
In other words, by prepping and palletizing your goods, you’re offering significant convenience for your end customers, which contributes to stronger relationships for the future.
How Much Do Warehouse Logistics Services Cost?
Many Hawaii-based businesses are surprised to learn how cost-effective outsourcing warehouse logistics services can be, especially when they’re bundled with drayage from the port and final delivery. Before you assume outsourcing these services is out of your price range, run some numbers with a potential partner to get a true sense of the cost. Consider that cost alongside the benefits, and you’ll discover the real value that outsourced warehouse logistics services can have for your business.
Want to run some numbers for your business? Request a free consultation, and our freight experts would be happy to put together a proposal for you. We’d love to show you how our warehouse logistics services can make it easy for you to receive goods from suppliers and prepare them for your retail partners.
