Assembly for Retail Expansion: Making Shelf Space Actually Work

When winning the retailer is only half the battle

Landing your first big retail account feels like a finish line. You spent months pitching, sampling, negotiating, and waiting. Then the purchase orders show up and you realize something uncomfortable. Getting the yes was only half the battle. Now you have to assemble, label, and ship products in exactly the formats that retailers expect. Assembly for retail expansion is the work of turning that new shelf space into repeatable, profitable reality.

By the time brands look for help here, they usually have at least one scar. As Maureen Milligan explains, "Most of the customers who come to us from another 3PL, their challenges have always been access to their data, order accuracy and efficiency, and basically just meeting the committed requirements." She adds, "Even when they were getting their new inventory delivered to the warehouses, they weren't getting received and on the shelves in a timely fashion to satisfy customer orders." When you are stepping into retail, that lag is not just annoying. It is the difference between keeping a slot and losing it.

How retail expansion multiplies assembly complexity

Direct to consumer orders are relatively simple. A customer buys one or two items, you pack them in a parcel, slap on a label, and ship. Retail orders look nothing like that. They come with routing guides, case pack rules, pallet patterns, and strict timelines. They ask for display builds, channel exclusive bundles, and seasonal packs that did not exist in your catalog before.

Joel Malmquist does not sugarcoat how demanding this gets: "Walmart's pretty intense with their labeling rules. Dick's Sporting Goods is the same; if you don't do it right, you get those massive chargeback." Those chargebacks often come from assembly details. Wrong inner packs, mislabeled master cartons, or displays that do not match planograms create real costs and damaged trust.

Even if your products are great, messy assembly can make you look unreliable. Retail buyers care about what shows up on the dock and what shows up on the shelf, not just what is in the pitch deck.

What assembly for retail expansion actually covers

Assembly for retail expansion is everything that has to happen between bulk inventory and store ready product. That can include custom kitting, building display units, pre packing sets by store, configuring inner and outer case packs, applying retailer specific labels, and building compliant pallets for outbound loads.

On the services side, this is usually part of a broader value added toolkit. As John Pistone explains, "We have created these other value-added services." He makes it specific: "I can kit for them. I can bundle for them. I can build an Amazon seller central account, and I can do all the content build-up." For retail expansion, that means the same team that helps you succeed online can help you configure product for big box, specialty, and regional chains.

Jen Myers ties this to the system layer: "Helping people grow, part of that is the channel expansion and having a warehouse management system, WMS, that supports that seamlessly." She continues, "Everything has to be connected. Now I'm selling into stores as well, and they order a whole pallet at a time as opposed to one unit at a time, as customers would do." Assembly for retail expansion is where that connection becomes real work, not just a slide.

Why the WMS matters more than the size of the warehouse

When retail hits, many brands think the answer is more square footage and more people. Those help, but they are not enough. If your warehouse management system cannot describe and direct retail assembly work, more space just gives you more room to be confused in.

Bryan Wright puts it plainly: "A bad WMS system will not track inventory 100%, as it should." In a retail expansion scenario, that means you might know how many units you shipped overall, but not how many of each configuration exist, which displays are ready, or how many case packs are left for the next wave of POs.

He describes the alternative like this: "A good WMS tracks inventory through the warehouse at every point that you touch it." For assembly, that means every movement into and out of kitting, display build, or relabeling is recorded. Work in process is visible. Finished goods are trackable by retailer, by program, and sometimes even by store.

Adaptability is just as important. Bryan points out, "With G10 we can make that change extremely quickly because we have our own development staff." Retailers change pack rules, update routing guides, and launch programs on their own schedules. Your assembly logic and screens need to adjust just as quickly.

The founder's fear: one shot to prove you belong

Retail expansion often feels like a one shot deal. Buyers have more brands than they need. If your first set of POs goes badly, they will not always give you a second chance. Founders know this. They worry that operations will not match the promise sales just made.

Joel hears that anxiety regularly. One customer asked him, "Say Target drops 10 POs and gives us 48 hours to turn it around? Is G10 the right partner for us to navigate through that and execute at a high level?" That is a retail expansion question in one sentence. Can your assembly and shipping engine rise to a moment that might never come again.

He explains how his team responds when the clock is real: "We are able to help them get through that big surge and develop and grow their business as it comes in." Assembly for retail expansion is tested in those windows. Either the work gets done, correctly, inside the routing and timing constraints, or it does not.

Holly Woods shares a story that illustrates what that effort looks like in practice: "Our supervisor, warehouse manager, and several employees worked that entire day into the night, came back in in the morning at 5 a.m. to make sure that we had the routing completed for that pickup for Target." That kind of commitment is what turns a first buy into an ongoing relationship.

Turning routing guides into executable assembly steps

Routing guides can look intimidating the first time you read them. They mix labeling rules with carton specs, pallet builds, appointment details, and EDI expectations. Assembly for retail expansion starts by translating those long documents into clear, numbered steps people can follow on the floor.

That translation lives in the WMS. WMS driven assembly tasks break work into scanning prompts and station steps. Scan based assembly accuracy and cycle count accuracy in assembly keep inventory honest as you convert components into retail ready product. The system becomes the shared playbook.

Bryan describes the visibility layer this creates: "We have portals that show you the data. We have history that shows you all of that tracking. It shows the product landed on the dock at 8 o'clock." The same history can show when product moved into assembly for a retail program, when displays were finished, and when pallets were staged for pickup.

Maureen notes how customers respond to that level of clarity: "They can actually watch those progressions going on." For a brand watching its first big retail launch, seeing that progress in real time makes the whole experience far less nerve wracking.

Retail expansion inside omni channel operations

Retail rarely arrives as your only channel. Most brands move into stores after they have already built a direct to consumer or marketplace business. That means the same inventory pool now has to support ecommerce orders, Amazon or other marketplace replenishment, and retail builds all at once.

Jen emphasizes the importance of system support: "Helping people grow, part of that is the channel expansion and having a warehouse management system, WMS, that supports that seamlessly." She adds, "Everything has to be connected." Assembly for retail expansion has to coexist with assembly for Amazon sellers and assembly for Shopify brands, not fight them for resources in a disorganized way.

On the services side, John says, "We have created these other value-added services." He makes it specific: "I can kit for them. I can bundle for them. I can build an Amazon seller central account, and I can do all the content build-up." When that toolset is used across channels, retail expansion becomes part of a broader growth story instead of a silo that keeps stealing attention from the rest of the business.

Visibility that keeps buyers comfortable and teams honest

Retail buyers do not need full access to your WMS, but they do need confidence. They want to know that when they run a promotion or add stores, product will show up on time and in the right format. Assembly for retail expansion supports that confidence when brands can share real data instead of vague assurances.

Bryan points to the history that makes those conversations easier: "We have portals that show you the data. We have history that shows you all of that tracking." That history can prove that on past projects, POs were turned into compliant shipments inside the promised windows.

Maureen explains how brands use this internally as well: "They can actually watch those progressions going on." Sales and operations stay aligned because they are looking at the same reality. If a build is behind, everyone knows in time to adjust either the plan or the message to retail partners.

Culture that treats retail work as worth the grind

Assembly for retail expansion is not glamorous. It is a lot of careful kitting, label checking, display building, and pallet wrapping. Doing it well means caring about details that customers may never see, but buyers and receivers will notice immediately.

Mark Becker captures the leadership mindset that supports that effort: "Yeah, I live in the grind every day." That grind includes the peak seasons, late nights, and early mornings when retail programs do not care that the calendar already looks full.

Bryan sets the bar for high stakes projects: "You go 110% and make sure that when they're done, this project is something they're going to remember." For retail expansion, those projects might be your first national chain rollout, a holiday end cap program, or a major reset in a key category.

When something does not go according to plan, Maureen describes the response: "We say, We made a mistake, this is what happened, this is how we're correcting, it and this is how we're going to make it right by you." That honesty and follow through matter when your brand is still earning trust with a new retailer.

Why assembly for retail expansion becomes a growth engine

From a distance, assembly for retail expansion looks like an operational detail. Up close, it is one of the clearest ways to turn new shelf space into long term growth. When you can reliably build, label, and ship exactly what retailers want, you stop worrying about whether you belong in their assortment and start asking where else you could add value.

It ties directly into Connor Perkins's simple framing: "To be successful and grow rapidly you have to sell a lot of your products. That boils down to having a good product, but also having a good supply chain." Assembly for retail expansion strengthens that supply chain at the point where your product meets its most demanding customers.

If your internal conversations about retail are dominated by fear of missing windows, failing routing guides, or overwhelming the warehouse, it might be time to treat assembly as a strategic capability, not an afterthought. With the right WMS, workflows, and culture in place, retail expansion stops feeling like a gamble and starts feeling like the next logical step in how your brand grows.