Introduction

It is becoming more common for merchant’s to utilize on-demand fulfillment providers for their products. While on-demand providers reduce the need to stock your own inventory, they can incur higher overall costs to fulfill the order. For the high volume basic items on an order, it can be more cost effective for the merchant to acquire their own inventory and fulfill orders without upsells from a different distribution center and send only those orders with upsells (more complex orders) to the on-demand fulfillment operation.

Distribution Center Location Preferences

The routing of the orders is accomplished utilizing distribution center location preferences. In this example scenario:

Fulfillment	Desired Orders	Distribution Center Location Preference
On-demand Fulfillment Provider	Only orders with upsells	Preferred service if upsells
Traditional Fulfillment Provider	Orders that do not contain upsells.	Preferred service if no upsells

FAQ

Q) Does this override inventory or handles by settings?

A) No, this is only preference override when multiple distribution centers can handle the same item. It’s strictly a cost optimization technique to route simpler orders to a distribution center that has a lower cost of fulfillment.