Tag: Medallion

Posted on

Bi-Coastal Fulfillment: Slash Shipping Times & Costs

Modern shoppers expect their online orders to arrive almost immediately, and they certainly do not want to pay extra for the privilege. As a business owner, trying to satisfy these steep demands can feel like a constant battle against rising carrier fees and logistical headaches. Shipping a package across the country eats into your profits and tests the patience of your buyers.

Optimizing your supply chain is the clear path forward. If you only operate out of a single warehouse, you are effectively handicapping your business. Shipping a package from New York to California forces you to pay the highest possible postage rates while guaranteeing a slow transit time.

By utilizing bi-coastal fulfillment centers—specifically by placing inventory in both Los Angeles and Boston—you can reach the vast majority of the United States within two days. This proven strategy protects your profit margins, eliminates your most expensive shipping zones, and provides the fast delivery speeds your customers crave.

The Consumer Expectation: Beating the “Amazon Effect”

Online retail has changed dramatically over the past decade. Shoppers have grown accustomed to the “Amazon Effect,” an industry-wide shift where two-day shipping is viewed as a standard baseline rather than a premium perk. If your checkout page shows a delivery window of five to seven business days, a significant portion of your potential buyers will abandon their carts and look elsewhere.

You need to provide rapid, reliable delivery to maintain a competitive advantage. However, absorbing the cost of expedited air shipping on every single order will quickly bankrupt a growing company. The secret to offering fast shipping without destroying your margins is placing your products physically closer to your end consumers.

Geography is Strategy: The Power of Los Angeles and Boston

Operating dual-hub facilities on both coasts is an innovative approach to nationwide logistics. When you utilize a fulfillment center in Los Angeles alongside another in Boston, your geographic footprint instantly covers the most densely populated regions of the country.

Instead of forcing a single warehouse to serve the entire nation, you divide and conquer. Your Boston facility handles orders from the East Coast, the Midwest, and the South. Your Los Angeles facility takes care of the West Coast, the Pacific Northwest, and the Southwest. This tailored setup allows you to deliver packages to almost any domestic address in just one to two transit days using standard ground shipping.

Automatic Order Routing Technology

You might wonder how your online store knows which warehouse should fulfill a specific order. The answer lies in automatic order routing.

When a customer completes a purchase on your website, our advanced software instantly analyzes their shipping address. The system calculates the distance from both the Los Angeles and Boston facilities, automatically routing the order to the location that offers the cheapest and fastest delivery. This efficient technology works entirely in the background, ensuring your business always secures the most cost-effective shipping method without any manual intervention on your part.

Operational Savings: Eliminating Zone 8 Shipping Rates

To understand how much money bi-coastal fulfillment can save you, you have to look at how major carriers calculate postage. Shipping costs are heavily influenced by shipping zones, which measure the distance a package travels from its origin to its destination.

Zones range from Zone 1 (local delivery) to Zone 8 (cross-country delivery). Zone 8 is the most expensive and the slowest tier. When you ship a product from a single warehouse in Boston to a customer in Los Angeles, you pay Zone 8 rates.

By utilizing bi-coastal fulfillment, you effectively eliminate Zone 8 shipments from your business model. Here are the core benefits of reducing your shipping zones:

  • Lower carrier fees: Shorter travel distances mean cheaper postage rates.
  • Reduced fuel surcharges: Ground transportation over a few hundred miles costs significantly less than cross-country hauling.
  • Less transit damage: Packages handled fewer times over shorter distances are less likely to arrive damaged.

Critical Logistics: When Every Minute Counts

While fast shipping is great for eCommerce apparel brands, it is absolutely essential for specialized industries. Some businesses cannot afford a single minute of downtime.

Consider the case of Jack’s airplane parts. When a commercial aircraft is grounded due to a mechanical failure, the airline loses thousands of dollars every hour. Jack’s business supplies critical replacement parts for these airplanes, and his clients require immediate, 24/7/365 on-call service.

By utilizing our bi-coastal fulfillment network, Jack ensures that vital machinery components are always stationed near major national airports. Whether a plane needs a part in New York or California, the dual-hub system allows Jack’s inventory to be dispatched instantly, day or night. This level of expert, responsive logistics keeps his clients flying and solidifies his reputation as a trusted industry leader.

Stop Overpaying for Cross-Country Shipping

Selling is what you know and love. Let the experts handle the complex logistics of getting your products to your buyers quickly and affordably.

Stop overpaying for cross-country shipping and start delighting your customers with faster delivery. Whether you’re shipping apparel or critical machinery parts, we have the footprint to help you achieve measurable growth. Get your free, no-obligation price quote today at Medallion Fulfillment and Logistics and see how much you can save by upgrading your supply chain.

Posted on

More Than a Warehouse: Your 3PL Business Lifeline

Running a business comes with a unique set of challenges. You spend countless hours perfecting your product, marketing your brand, and building a loyal customer base. But what happens when the final step of the process—getting that product into your customers’ hands—falls apart?

Many business owners view third-party logistics (3PL) providers as simple storage units. They look for the lowest price, ship their inventory, and hope for the best. This approach can be incredibly risky. A poorly managed fulfillment center can lead to delayed shipments, lost inventory, and angry customers. Even worse, if your fulfillment partner lacks financial stability, your entire business could be put in jeopardy.

You need a partner that actively protects your assets and supports your growth. A reliable 3PL acts as a lifeline for your business, ensuring that your operations run smoothly even when unexpected challenges arise.

Here is why choosing an experienced, financially stable fulfillment warehouse is one of the most important decisions you will make as a business owner.

The Crisis Factor: Surviving the Unexpected

Emergencies happen. How your fulfillment partner responds to those emergencies can mean the difference between a minor hiccup and a total business collapse.

Consider the case of a client we will call Alvin. Alvin had recently moved his extensive inventory of educational materials into a new fulfillment house. Shortly after the move, that fulfillment company went belly up. Alvin was not even a client of ours yet, but he called us in an absolute panic. The sheriff was on his way to lock the doors of the bankrupt facility. If those doors locked with Alvin’s inventory inside, his products would be tied up in legal proceedings for months. He would be completely out of business.

We knew we had to act immediately. We rerouted our trucks and sent a fast-moving crew across town. Our team managed to load Alvin’s entire stock and move it out just steps ahead of the sheriff. Other businesses using that facility were not as lucky, and their inventories languished in a locked warehouse indefinitely.

Once we secured his products, our staff quickly cataloged and stored the inventory. We started shipping his orders in record time, ensuring he experienced zero disruption to his sales. Alvin was back in business, and he has been a satisfied customer ever since.

When you partner with a dedicated fulfillment provider, you gain a rapid-response team that steps up when you need help the most.

Longevity as Security: 32 Years of Financial Stability

The logistics industry has seen a massive influx of new companies over the past decade. While innovation is always welcome, many of these new competitors are untried and financially vulnerable. If a startup 3PL runs out of funding, your inventory goes down with them.

Partnering with a financially sound company provides peace of mind. Medallion Fulfillment & Logistics has been operating successfully for over 32 years. We have established deep, long-term relationships with major freight carriers and parcel networks. Our financial stability means you never have to worry about sudden closures or disrupted supply chains.

We are staffed by long-term employees who understand the nuances of order processing, receiving, and shipping. This level of institutional knowledge ensures that your inventory is handled efficiently and accurately. When you choose an established partner, you secure your supply chain and protect your bottom line.

Flexible Business Methods: Human Expertise Over Automation

Many modern fulfillment centers operate on a strict, automated model. They force you to conform to their software and processes. If your business model does not fit neatly into their digital boxes, they simply cannot help you.

While automated systems have their place, human expertise is far more valuable when dealing with unique business requirements.

Let’s look back at Alvin. He sells his educational videos and brochures through a mail-order catalog. Quite unusually for a business of his size, he never embraced computers. He conducts all of his transactions via mail, telephone, and fax. A rigid, highly automated 3PL would have turned him away.

We took a different approach. We utilized our state-of-the-art computer technology on our end to help Alvin track his inventory, expedite shipping, and maintain detailed accounting records. We accommodated his traditional methods while giving him the benefits of modern logistics software. We even helped him duplicate small media orders on demand, transferring his original VHS formats to DVD to boost his sales.

Customized strategies allow your business to operate the way you want it to. A great fulfillment partner adapts to your needs, rather than forcing you to change your entire workflow.

The Family Difference

Your business is your livelihood. You pour your energy into making it a success, and you deserve a fulfillment partner that respects that effort.

Corporate giants often treat clients as just another account number on a spreadsheet. When issues arise, you get bounced around call centers, struggling to find someone who actually understands your account.

Working with a family-owned company changes the entire dynamic. We understand the pressures our clients face because we have built our own business from the ground up. When you call us, you speak directly to a team member who knows your products and cares about your success. We provide personalized support that directly impacts your customer satisfaction and sales growth.

Secure Your Business’s Future Today

Keep your eCommerce shop running on all cylinders by choosing a logistics partner you can trust. A strong supply chain boosts your search visibility indirectly through better customer reviews, higher satisfaction, and consistent inventory availability.

At Medallion, we aren’t just a service provider; we’re family. We understand the pressure of entrepreneurship because we’ve been there. Don’t wait for an emergency to find a reliable partner. Contact us today for a free price quote and let us secure your business’s future.

Posted on

USPS Continuity of Operations Update

USPS Announces Delays

The Postal Service has developed localized continuity of operations plans that are employed in the case of emergencies to help ensure that the nation’s postal system continues to function for the American people.

With a longstanding history of quickly adapting its operational plans to changing conditions, the Postal Service maintains steady communications with mailers during natural disasters or other events that require emergency responses and advises residential customers, business mailers, and international mailers with regard to postal facility disruptions that may impact delivery in an affected area via its USPS Service Alerts webpage at: https://about.usps.com/newsroom/service-alerts/.

In the event they are required, the activation of localized continuity of operations plans depends on the specific effects of an emergency in an impacted area. Due to the variance in possibilities and factors, it would be impossible to predict what the effect of such emergencies would be on a specific customers’ mailing prior to the event, but the planning enables us to continue or quickly reestablish mail operations in regions facing the impact of strong hurricanes, flooding, wildfires, etc., and they have been prepared to respond to pandemic-related circumstances as well.

As a result, we recommend that customers refer to USPS Service Alerts for service-disruption updates. Another key component of our communications portion of USPS contingency plans remains the Industry Alert.

For those business mailers who utilize the Business Service Network (BSN), we encourage them to continue to maintain the line of communication with their representative on changes to the postal system. If a customer or mailing partner needs to shut down its operations due to the current situation, they should contact their BSN contact, Sales contact, or their local Business Mail Entry contact to discuss their plans. These local contacts will notify the Districts, Area, and Headquarters of any needed assistance or broader impacts.

The Postal Service continues to use its existing processes for many of the more common impacts customers are concerned about. Some questions that have been raised are:

How is USPS handling mail for closed businesses?

Mail on the delivery route is returned to the Delivery unit and will be held for 10 days under current policies. Customers can request a temporary hold for their mail up to 30 days. Caller Box customers should contact their local office to discuss how they will be handling the pickup of this volume. Any high volume customer will be contacted to discuss pickup options as well.

How is USPS delivering mail under shelter in place declarations?

The Postal Service is classified as an essential government service operation, which allows us to continue operations.

How safe is the mail and mail transport equipment?

Current Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and World Health Organization (WHO) guidance continues to indicate there is no evidence the virus is spreading through the mail. According to WHO, the likelihood of an infected person contaminating commercial goods is low, and the risk of catching the virus from a package that has been moved, traveled, and exposed to different conditions and temperatures is also low. This guidance remains true for mail transport equipment.

Is the USPS experiencing capacity issues due to reduced airline routes?

There are no domestic air capacity issues at this time. The Postal Service continues to work with International air carriers and contract air carriers to keep mail moving.

Industry and commercial customers can email questions or concerns about COVID-19 and the mail to industryfeedback@usps.gov with COVID-19 in the subject line. Mailers can also sign up for Industry Alerts at industryalert@usps.gov.

For more information, see the USPS Coronavirus Statement at about.usps.com/newsroom.

In Closing

From all of us at Medallion Fulfillment & Logistics, we say stay safe and know we are working hard to keep your business moving.

Posted on

Los Angeles, California Lockdown Does Not Affect Medallion

Medallion is open for business and working hard to stay safe.

Our Los Angeles warehouse and Boston warehouse are open and are able to receive incoming goods and ship out orders daily.

The Governor of California has ordered all citizens to stay at home except persons in critical infrastructure sectors which includes our business (Transportation). The City of LA and County of LA have implemented similar restrictions.

Medallion is exercising recommended procedures such as social distance, proper hygiene, no face to face contacts with clients or prospects, and operators of trucks bringing in product or picking up orders being shipped are not allowed into the warehouse etc.

We continue to business as usual and are working to minimize the impacts that the virus may have on your business by receiving and shipping your goods as usual.

At Medallion Fulfillment & Logistics, we are focused on serving you, our customers, and to keeping our staff and warehouses safe.