2025 Holiday Season in Review: How G10 Delivered for Clients in this Critical Time

For retailers, no quarter carries more weight than Q4. Holiday demand can define the entire year as it drives revenue, shapes customer loyalty, and sets the runway for future growth. As G10’s Director of Sales, Matthew Bradbury, puts it, Q4 is “the Super Bowl for brands,” and a brand’s fulfillment performance in the months leading up to it are an indication of whether it can handle the surge in orders. Ultimately, the groundwork laid in the months leading up to peak season can determine whether a brand thrives or struggles when order volume surges. When peak season arrives, brands quickly see whether their 3PL partner or internal team can scale effectively, or if they’ll spend the season putting out fires instead of executing strategy.

If your team was stuck dealing with customer service issues during the holiday season, there’s a good chance you had no time to think about your 2026 growth strategy. Worse, failing to meet customer expectations may have led to lost potential repeat customers. Looking ahead, if your 3PL couldn’t keep up during peak season or if there are ongoing red flags with your logistics partner such as consistent order errors, it’s a good idea to start vetting new 3PLs now -long before the next peak season hits. The right 3PL vendors make the difference between soaring or playing catch up and doing damage control.

How A Strong 3PL Supports E-Commerce Sellers in Peak Season

When volume spikes, gaps in order fulfillment start to show. A strong 3PL is able to keep pace with same-day processing and consistent order accuracy, and offer systems that provide real-time visibility, seamless integrations, and the flexibility to scale as demand grows. A weak 3PL partner leaves you drowning in backlogged orders and customer service tickets and scrambling to find a new partner by January.

Veria Travel Case Study

Veria Travel is a client that came to G10 looking for cost effective e-commerce fulfillment with proximity to its customer base, but more importantly, they wanted a true logistics partner that offered transparent pricing, faster shipping, and local order tracking.

Veria Travel is a direct-to-consumer e-commerce brand selling travel and commuter backpacks, luggage, and accessories designed for functionality and sustainability through its online Shopify store. Veria Travel began in a dorm room, with early inventory stacked wherever it would fit and the overflow stored under the bed. In the early days, Carolina Lozano, CEO of Veria Travel, packed and shipped every order herself because there was no other practical way to handle fulfillment at that stage.

As order increased, logistics took up more of her time: evenings disappeared into packing sessions and weekends were filled with fulfillment instead of planning. While the business continued to run, forward momentum slowed.

At that point, Carolina took a trip to China and signed on with a Chinese 3PL for practical reasons: Chinese fulfillment was the lowest-cost option and eliminated the need for in-house shipping. But while the business grew, Carolina started noticing the poor customer experience. “If you get a 3PL in China, they’re going to handle the fulfillment for you,” Carolina said, “but in terms of customer service and experience, they make an order and then they get a tracking number that says, ‘It’s coming from China’.”

With the long-distance, returns became harder to manage, communication took longer, and brand visibility began to fade. She decided to move to a large U.S. based 3PL company for proximity to her customer base. But challenges emerged in the form of a lack of connection and rising costs. “You don’t feel any connection to your provider,” Carolina said, adding that the 3PL was “eating our profits.” Invoices included unexpected charges and “literally hidden fees,” leaving her confused and frustrated. What stood out most was the lack of transparency.

As Veria grew, those problems compounded. Volume requirements locked the company into rigid pricing structures. “Many 3PLs have different volume requirements at the beginning, which is a problem if you are a dynamic, growing company,” she shared. These poor experiences led her to look for a 3PL that was the right fit, not necessarily the largest or most well-known.

She kept her eye on order numbers and eventually realized that growth depended less on ambition and more on removing friction.

The Transition to G10

“When you have a good 3PL, a real team, you can focus on growth, on marketing, on optimizing the products,” she said. “That’s one of the reasons we decided to go with G10. We were looking for a combination of technology, human resources, and pricing. Pricing is number one, because if the cost doesn’t allow you to scale, something is broken.”

Carolina discovered G10 through an ad, but she made the decision to move her business after helpful discovery meetings centered on data, transparency, flexibility, and fair prices. The transition moved fast. Although the go-live was scheduled for a month out, Carolina pushed for a quicker move. Despite transferring inventory from Texas to Wisconsin and managing “a thousand back orders,” G10 stepped in quickly. “It was a rough start because of the backlog,” she said, “but that was really outstanding.”

When Logistics Stops Being the Bottleneck

After the move, the difference appeared quickly. Customers received local tracking numbers and orders arrived in days instead of weeks. Reviews, repeat purchases, and customer feedback reflected the change. “It’s different when your customers are getting local tracking information that is coming from Wisconsin and it’s arriving in the next two days,” Carolina said. “Compare that to when my customers got a tracking number and no update for a week. That was horrible customer service.”

The shift mirrored a problem G10 sees often with brands that move from a large 3PL. Joel Malmquist, VP of Customer Experience at G10, described it plainly: “If a customer deals with a really large, big-box 3PL operation, they can get kind of lost in the weeds; they become a cog in the machine. Unless you’re an enterprise merchant, you don’t get that attention. What’s unique at G10 is that every merchant has a direct point of contact. The result is attention to detail and a real commitment to helping them grow.”

Flexibility proved just as important as responsiveness. G10’sChannelPoint™ Warehouse Management System (WMS) stood out for its ability to adapt quickly to each business it supports. As CTO and COO Bryan Wright explained, “Because we own the software, we can configure the system quickly… and make changes immediately.”

For Carolina, that flexibility brought calm to daily operations. “We don’t wake up worrying something will go wrong,” she said. “We can trust G10 to optimize everything related to logistics.” With that trust, her definition of success changed. “Success is teamwork,” she said. “It’s a big team.”

How G10 Supports Clients During Peak Season

At G10, we support our clients both with how to prepare for Q4 and during Q4 by ramping up our fulfillment capabilities with seasonal staff and preventing stockouts with our modern inventory management system. In the last year, G10 has also invested in robot technology and expanded our network of warehouses to seven across North America. The robots have dramatically increased warehouse efficiency and our network of warehouses means that products start out closer to final shipping destinations, making it that much easier to deliver products overnight or within two days.

We also provide tips based on our lived peak season experience, such as bundling complimentary products to create a unique and useful item that customers perceive as added value. For example, combining a leaf blower with a leaf mulcher or creating a paint kit with paint rollers, paint roller frames, paint trays, and paint brushes.

Our team understands how important Q4 is to your success. That’s why we are a 3PL dedicated to providing fast, accurate, and transparent order fulfillment during this time of year so our partners can deliver on their promise to customers.

If your 3PL let you down or your internal team wasn’t able to keep up with peak order volume during the holiday season, we want to hear all about your challenges and devise a plan for how G10 can help you scale with fast, reliable fulfillment tailored to your business. Request a quote today.