You can control both your own fulfillment operations and control costs, says Mark Riskowitz, vice president of operations at Caraway Home, a kitchenware retailer.

Four years old, Caraway Home today vends a growing line of high-end cookware and bakeware predominantly directly to consumers through its website. It also partners with Amazon and retailers, both in their stores and by fulfilling merchants’ online orders. 

Regardless of the channel, the task is to be as “equitable” in fulfillment as possible, Riskowitz says. That means hitting delivery dates promised to customers while paying attention to service-level agreements and partners’ carrier choices. “We try to make that as scalable and as consistent as we possibly can.”

In many ways, the fulfillment-delivery operation is absolutely key to getting the best customer experience. That’s why a vendor like Caraway Home needs to control fulfillment as much as possible if order delivery is to be successful. 

“We love controlling the experience from purchase to delivery,” Riskowitz says. Caraway is in complete command when customers order directly from its website. There, they can choose delivery speed and which carriers are to be used. 

Obviously, a degree of control is given up when retailers forward orders to Caraway for fulfilment, because some channels dictate the cost and carrier to be used. 

“But for us,” Riskowitz says, “the idea of actually physically moving a customer's product from our facilities to them is something we take pride in. We try to execute that as quickly as possible in the most cost-efficient manner. And we want to do that in a way that whether you experience that through Amazon, a retailer or our website. It's consistently the same time and time again. That's the goal that we are trying to achieve.”