eCommerce Shipping Solutions for Fashion Retail

Introduction

While the fashion retail industry is one of the lucrative markets (expected to reach $157.88 billion by 2032) to tap into, it also comes with significant challenges, especially when it comes to shipping, a key component of fashion logistics. 

Fast fashion trends, demands for quick delivery, handling delicate items, returns management, and the constant pressure to stay ahead in the market have made delivery a major hurdle for fashion retailers. Ecommerce retailers in the fashion sector can only gain a competitive advantage by using tailored solutions for fast order processing, managing inventory, and fulfillment.

What’s even more concerning? These challenges are here to stay and will only intensify with time. That’s where efficient shipping and flexible solutions come into play. Any vendor dealing with online apparel has to keep up with the latest trends in shipping, warehousing, and technology. This is vital, whether you're trying to offer same day delivery, cost-effective return services, or even initiate sustainable practices with a global reach. These tools help merchants navigate these challenges and make shipping a breeze. 

So, if you’re in search of efficient shipping solutions for your fashion business, you’re at the right place.

Without further ado, let’s get straight into them.

Top 4 Challenges in Fashion E-commerce Shipping

E-commerce fashion businesses encounter a number of challenges in the delivery journey that need focus and expertise to overcome. These include:

1. Higher Return Rates

According to a recent study by Statista, clothing is one of the most returned online purchases by category, followed by shoes, accessories, and cosmetics & body care. Due to factors like size discrepancies (around 70% of fashion returns are related to size issues), differences in color and material compared to online images, and customer dissatisfaction, fashion business owners face huge monthly return rates. Without a proper return management strategy that offers consumers easy returns, these returns can overwhelm them and disrupt customer satisfaction. 

2. Seasonal Demand Spikes

Order fluctuations are common in the fashion industry. A recent study has shown that D2C brands see a 64% spike in festive orders, and the fashion eCommerce industry is no exception. Seasonal sales, holiday shopping, and new fashion launches create unpredictable demands on retailers that can be critical. As per Amazon, its fashion beauty premium portfolio has seen over a 400% spike in the last year's festive season. Such a dramatic spike can disrupt your supply chain, delay deliveries, and even harm customers’ expectations. 

3. Handling Product Diversity

From small accessories to large items to delicate products like perfume and watches, fashion retailers often deal with a variety of stuff. Different products require different packaging and shipping needs. While the small items need smaller boxes, bulky products may need larger boxes.

Likewise, fragile items like designer bags, accessories, and branded watches require special handling and sturdy packaging for safe shipping. Managing these varying shipping needs can complicate the delivery process and incur extra expenses on shipping budgets. 

4. Fast Shipping Expectations

Due to the rise of same-day and next-day delivery (thanks to Amazon Prime), today’s online fashion buyers want ultra-fast delivery and are reluctant to wait longer. Their purchasing decision mostly depends on which retailers can provide the fastest shipping options. In fact, many are likely to abandon their carts in case the shipping time is too long. 

However, maintaining this growing demand isn’t easy for fashion retailers. They need to establish an efficient logistics management procedure and a robust supply chain to keep up with these customer demands. At the same time, they need to balance quick delivery with cost-effectiveness to keep the profit margin intact. 

Why a Top-Tier Shipping Solution Is Essential for Fashion Retailers?

With a global market size valued at 2.17 billion, it’s a clear tactic that shipping management solutions are the cornerstones of many retailers’ logistics strategies—and for good reasons. Let’s take a look at some of the benefits these solutions bring to the fashion retail sector.

1. Simplifies returns management:

A shipping solution offers functionalities to streamline reverse logistics. From generating return shipping labels and reviewing return requests to refund initiation, it automates the entire workflow for fashion retailers. This further helps them easily manage a higher volume of returns. 

2. Speeds up delivery:

Many shipping management solutions integrate advanced technologies like AI & ML into their systems. By investing in such delivery management platforms, you can put most delivery-associated tasks on autopilot. As a result, you can expedite the entire journey and meet customers’ fast delivery demands.

3. Enables secure shipping:

Shipping management solutions leverage their AI & ML capabilities to fetch the most suitable carrier for a shipment. For example, if you’re shipping delicate jewelry, it’ll identify the carrier with a proven track record of secure jewelry delivery. Plus, it provides time-to-time tracking updates on an integrated dashboard, so you can keep an eye on every movement of the parcel and reduce missing shipment issues.  

4. Improves customer experience:

Delivery management software provides EDDs on the checkout pages to help shoppers in their buying decisions. In addition, it offers them checkpoint-specific delivery alerts and keeps them notified of potential delays beforehand. 

5. Supports scalability:

Many solutions have been designed with the business growth in concern. These solutions can handle orders in bulk, track them, and deliver them on time to the end consumers without compromising performance. This can be a game-changer if you often deal with order fluctuations.

Top 5 Shipping Solution Platform for Fashion Retail

If you do a simple Google search, you’ll find countless shipping solutions available on the market. This makes it a tough job to choose the best one among them. To help you out, we have listed here the top 5 shipping solutions for fashion business owners. 

1. ClickPost

ClickPost is an AI and data-first logistics intelligence platform. Connected with over 500+ logistics providers, various eCommerce platforms, WMS, OMS, and CRM systems, ClickPost aims to improve logistics for businesses. It streamlines most shipping-related tasks through its APIs. These include order creation API, tracking API, NDR management API, returns management API, and more. Over 450 brands, including CaratLane, BeYours, and Arvind Fashions, use ClickPost to simplify their shipping operations. 

2. Narvar

Narvar is a post-purchase experience software platform. It takes care of end-to-end shipping operations for businesses—from EDD prediction and shipment tracking to returns & exchanges management. It supports over 300+ logistics providers worldwide. Plus, it comes with 50+ pre-built integrations and custom APIs. Not only that, it helps businesses reduce fraud-related expenses through its delivery claim abuse and fraud protection solution. 

3. Shippo

Shippo is a multi-carrier shipping platform designed to streamline logistics operations for small businesses. With this platform, you can put most shipping-related tasks, like label generation, tracking, address validation, and ETA prediction, on autopilot. As a result, you can speed up the delivery process. At the same time, it offers shipping insurance to safeguard high-value shipments. 

4. AfterShip

AfterShip is a comprehensive shipping management platform that helps you customize your shipping process from start to finish. Its shipping management platform allows you to manage all manifested orders and track them on a centralized platform. Additionally, it simplifies international shipping and allows merchants to compare shipping rates across various logistics services. 

5. ShipStation

ShipStation is widely known for providing the lowest shipping rates across carriers. With this platform, you can save up to 88% on USPS retail prices. When it comes to use cases, it offers solutions like omnichannel management, inventory management, returns management, branding options, and more. 

Conclusion

Shipping is undeniably one of the toughest parts of the entire eCommerce ecosystem, regardless of the industry. So, if you’re already in the fashion vertical or trying to build your store, you must add an efficient shipping solution to your tech stack to mitigate all logistics challenges and ensure smooth shipping. 

Hope this guide will help you in that process. Good luck!