Multi-Location Assembly Network: Putting Assembly Capacity Closer to Demand

When one building is not enough anymore

Most brands start in one place. One warehouse, one team, one set of assembly tables. It works, until it does not. Orders from new regions take too long. Retail programs launch on both coasts at once. Marketplaces expect fast transit times everywhere. At some point, the problem is not just how much work you can do; it is where you can do it. That is where a multi-location assembly network becomes less of a buzzword and more of a survival strategy.

By the time leaders get to this point, they have usually had at least one rough logistics experience. 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." If a single site is already struggling to hit commitments, doubling down on that same model in new regions will not fix the problem.

Why assembly capacity becomes a geographic problem

When you are small, it is tempting to treat assembly as a generic back room task. You bring in components, put them together, and ship orders. As you grow, you discover that where that work happens is just as important as how it happens. Retailers may want regionally fulfilled loads. Marketplace algorithms may favor shorter ship zones. D2C customers everywhere expect fast shipping at reasonable costs.

Connor Perkins points to the core tension: "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." A single-site assembly model pushes that supply chain to its limits. Every kit, bundle, relabel, and display has to go through one building before it can go anywhere else.

Retail wins amplify the issue. Joel Malmquist notes, "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." When retailers in different regions all want compliant, on-time shipments, you do not want every assembly job, pallet build, and relabeling project to compete for the same dock door.

What a multi-location assembly network actually looks like

A real multi-location assembly network is more than a list of buildings. It is a set of facilities that share a common WMS, common processes, and the ability to run similar assembly, kitting, and light manufacturing work in more than one place. That might mean building subscription kits in two regions, assembling retail displays near key distribution centers, or running packaging relabeling jobs in the market where a regulation changed.

On the services side, the toolkit stays consistent. John Pistone explains, "We have created these other value-added services." He makes it concrete: "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." In a multi-location network, those services are not tied to a single zip code. They can be deployed where they make the most sense for transit time and cost.

Jen Myers ties that to channel growth: "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." A multi-location assembly network is one of the ways to keep that connection intact as order patterns shift by region.

Why technology is the backbone of a multi-site model

It is easy to sketch dots on a map and call it a network. The hard part is keeping inventory, work, and performance aligned across all of them. That work starts with technology. If each site runs its own disconnected system, you do not have a network. You have a cluster of local problems.

Bryan Wright draws the line sharply: "A bad WMS system will not track inventory 100%, as it should." In a multi-location assembly context, that means you cannot say how much stock is available to build kits on the West Coast versus the Midwest, or which site has finished enough retail ready units to support a promotion.

He describes the alternative: "A good WMS tracks inventory through the warehouse at every point that you touch it." Extend that across several warehouses and you get a single view of inventory and work, even when assembly jobs are running in different time zones.

Adaptability is just as important as visibility. Bryan points out, "With G10 we can make that change extremely quickly because we have our own development staff." When you want to roll out a new bundle, reroute a retailer program to a closer site, or split a subscription build across two facilities, the system has to support those changes, not fight them.

The founder's fear: more locations, more ways to fail

Founders and operations leaders know that every new site is both an opportunity and a risk. More capacity and better coverage on one hand. More complexity and more things that can go wrong on the other. That is why many brands hesitate to leave the safety of a single building, even when it is clearly too small.

Joel hears a version of that fear when customers ask about handling big spikes. One 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?" The same question plays out when a retailer wants product staged from a new region or a marketplace offers a deal that depends on faster delivery to specific zones.

Joel explains how his team responds when the window is tight: "We are able to help them get through that big surge and develop and grow their business as it comes in." A multi-location assembly network gives you more levers to pull in those moments. Instead of forcing every surge through one building, you can shape where the work happens.

Holly Woods offers a ground level view of what that 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." Now imagine being able to call on more than one building with that level of commitment when several large programs hit at once.

Using multiple locations to match multiple channels

A multi-location assembly network does not just solve distance problems. It lets you align different sites with different channel mixes. One facility might lean heavier into D2C assembly and returns work. Another might focus on retail compliance assembly, pallet configuration, and routing guide compliant kitting. A third might specialize in HAZMAT or regulated goods assembly where local labor and infrastructure support it best.

Jen describes the underlying requirement: "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." In practice, that means the same SKU can be assembled and shipped from more than one place without becoming a different product in your data.

For marketplaces, this can also mean staging inventory closer to key fulfillment centers while still running consistent label and prep standards. That way, you get the transit and ranking benefits of regional inventory without inventing a new process in each region.

Visibility that makes a network feel usable, not scary

Adding buildings should expand your options, not your anxiety. The difference comes from visibility. Brands need to see not only how much inventory they have, but where assembly work is running, what each site can handle, and how that maps to demand by region and channel.

Bryan describes the visibility layer that underpins that kind of network: "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." That same history tells you which location received which lots, which assembly jobs they ran, and which orders they shipped.

Maureen explains how customers respond when they can actually see that network working: "They can actually watch those progressions going on." For leaders used to living inside a single building, being able to watch work move in more than one place makes it much easier to trust a multi-location assembly model.

Culture that keeps standards consistent across sites

Technology makes a network possible. Culture keeps it from drifting. Assembly work only scales across locations if each site treats accuracy, care, and responsiveness the same way. Without that, you end up with a strong site and a weak one instead of a real network.

Mark Becker captures the mindset that helps avoid that split: "Yeah, I live in the grind every day." That grind does not stay in one building. It shows up in how leaders talk about work in every location, from the original site to the newest addition.

Bryan sets the expectation for cross site projects: "You go 110% and make sure that when they're done, this project is something they're going to remember." Multi-location assembly networks are proven or broken in exactly those projects. A national retail launch. A subscription expansion into new regions. A marketplace program that depends on regional inventory.

When things do not go as planned, Maureen describes how the team responds: "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 attitude matters even more when work is distributed. Problems cross state lines quickly. So should solutions.

Why a multi-location assembly network becomes a growth asset

On a simple cost sheet, adding locations can look like a burden. More rent, more management, more moving parts. The real question is what those locations let you do. A good multi-location assembly network reduces transit times, supports more retailers, improves resilience when disruptions hit one region, and opens the door to programs you could not run from a single site.

It ties directly back to Connor'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." Putting assembly capacity closer to demand is one of the clearest ways to make that supply chain better.

If your team spends more time worrying about how one building will handle the next peak than thinking about where your customers are and what your channels need, it might be time to think in networks instead of addresses. A multi-location assembly network, run on a common system with a shared culture, can turn geography from a constraint into a quiet advantage.