Self-fulfillment can look like the least expensive option for an e-commerce business.

You already have the products. You can buy the boxes. And if you pack the orders yourself, there’s no fulfillment company to pay.

But that calculation leaves out one of your business’s most valuable resources: your time.

What Is Your Time Actually Worth?

Many e-commerce founders don’t write themselves a paycheck every time they spend an hour packing boxes.

That doesn’t make their labor free.

Every hour spent fulfilling orders is an hour you aren’t spending:

• Marketing your business
• Sourcing products
• Improving the customer experience
• Developing new products
• Increasing revenue

Suppose you value your time at $50 per hour.

Spending just one hour each weekday packing orders represents roughly $1,000 per month in owner labor.

You may never see that $1,000 listed as an expense on a fulfillment report, but your business is still absorbing the cost.

Self-Fulfillment Costs More Than Postage

Owner labor is only part of the equation.

When you fulfill orders yourself, your business may also be responsible for:

• Storage space
• Packing supplies
• Carrier rates
• Shipping and inventory software
• Inventory management
• Returns processing
• Pick-and-pack labor

Those expenses are easy to overlook when they’re spread across several bills, subscriptions, and hours of your day.

With a 3PL, many of those responsibilities shift to the fulfillment provider. Warehouse space, fulfillment technology, inventory synchronization, returns processing, and pick-and-pack services may become part of the outsourced operation.

That’s why comparing the cost of a 3PL with the price of postage alone doesn’t tell you very much.

Consider the Opportunity Cost

The bigger your business becomes, the more important opportunity cost becomes.

Packing boxes yourself might have made perfect sense when you were getting your first orders out the door.

But is that still the best use of your time when you’re shipping every day?

If fulfillment is keeping you from working on the parts of the business only you can handle, the “free” option may no longer be free.

The Sweetwater Logistics assessment specifically considers factors such as spending more than two hours a day packing and shipping, running out of storage space, inventory difficulties, and wanting to spend more time growing the business.

Take the 3PL Readiness Assessment to evaluate whether self-fulfillment still makes sense for your business.