Pre-Assembly Services 3PL: Getting Products Ready Before Orders Drop

When the real work starts before the first order arrives

Most people think about fulfillment as something that happens after a customer clicks buy. In reality, a lot of the hardest work happens long before that. Products need labels, packaging, inserts, kits, and channel specific prep. If you wait until orders start flooding in to do all that work, you are already behind. Pre-assembly services from a 3PL exist to push that effort earlier in the timeline so that your team is not scrambling when demand hits.

Many brands only learn this after a rough 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 provider cannot even get product ready for sale, they certainly are not handling pre-assembly well.

What pre-assembly looks like in practice

Pre-assembly services cover all of the work that takes loose inventory and turns it into ready to ship units before specific orders appear. That work might include relabeling, adding regulatory stickers, building standard kits, configuring retail ready cartons, or getting products into Amazon compliant packaging so they can move quickly once purchased.

Retail requirements often drive this kind of prep. Joel Malmquist points out, "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." Pre-assembly is how you avoid doing that labeling work at the last minute. You do it once, in bulk, so that B2B orders can be picked and shipped with much less friction.

Marketplaces like Amazon add their own rules. As Jen Myers notes, "We also help them label products correctly." She explains what happens when merchants skip this step: "If you send stuff to Amazon that has the wrong labels on, or it's not to their specs, or the wrong dimensions, you get chargebacks basically they fine you!" Pre-assembly protects you from that kind of surprise cost.

Why timing matters so much

The core idea behind pre-assembly is simple: do more work when you have time so that you have less work when you do not. That sounds obvious, but many operations get stuck reacting to orders in real time. The result is a warehouse that feels calm one week and overwhelmed the next.

Holly Woods describes how quickly the workload can change: "Sometimes these smaller customers come and work with G10, and um they might be shipping you know 100, 200 orders a day. Then something goes viral on social media, and all of a sudden the doors are being blown off on orders." If every label, insert, and bundle is still being assembled after orders drop, that kind of spike becomes unmanageable.

Pre-assembly services from a 3PL aim to move tasks like labeling, light kitting, and packaging into quieter windows so that spikes do not turn into chaos on the floor.

Technology underneath pre-assembly work

Pre-assembly is not just about putting more hands on the problem. It is about tracking every change to each unit as it moves from loose inventory into ready to ship form. That takes a warehouse management system that can handle more than basic storage.

Bryan Wright explains the danger of weak systems: "A bad WMS system will not track inventory 100%, as it should." If you are relabeling, repacking, or kitting product ahead of time, that lack of detail will destroy inventory accuracy.

He describes what a stronger platform looks like: "A good WMS tracks inventory through the warehouse at every point that you touch it." That means the system knows when units move into pre-assembly, how many are being worked, and when finished goods are available for sale.

Bryan also calls out why control over that platform matters: "With G10 we can make that change extremely quickly because we have our own development staff." Pre-assembly workflows change as brands add channels, SKUs, and promotions. The supporting technology has to keep up.

The founder's fear: investing in prep that might not pay off

Pre-assembly feels risky at first. You are doing work before you know exactly where every unit will go. Founders sometimes worry about spending money on prep before seeing the revenue.

What usually shifts that mindset is the memory of a broken launch or a missed opportunity. Joel shares one kind of scenario he hears about: "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?" If you try to do everything after that PO arrives, you are gambling with your reputation.

Pre-assembly services reduce that gamble by moving routine prep ahead of the order. Joel explains the general approach: "We are able to help them get through that big surge and develop and grow their business as it comes in." A lot of that help comes from having done the prep before the surge.

Holly offers a look at what happens when prep and execution collide: "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." Pre-assembly aims to reduce how often that kind of emergency is necessary.

Pre-assembly as part of omni channel support

Pre-assembly services make omni channel growth more realistic. When you know that inventory has already been prepared to meet the requirements of Amazon, Walmart, or a key retail partner, you can route orders where they are needed without reinventing the process every time.

Jen talks about the role of WMS in this, saying, "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."

Pre-assembly lets the same inventory pool flex between D2C, marketplace, and retail orders because much of the channel specific work has already been done.

Value added services tied to pre-assembly

Strong pre-assembly services are usually part of a broader value added offering. Kitting, bundling, relabeling, and content support all connect to the idea of getting products ready to sell in more than one way.

John Pistone describes this wider support: "We have created these other value-added services." He spells it out: "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." Together, those services make it easier to plan pre-assembly work that supports both physical and digital channel needs.

On the negotiation side, Jen explains, "So a lot of it has been helping our customers navigate how to negotiate." That help affects decisions about what to pre-assemble, how much, and for which channels.

Visibility that makes early work feel safe

Pre-assembly only feels comfortable when you can see the impact. Brands need to know what portion of inventory has been prepped, how many units are in progress, and how those changes affect what is available to sell.

Bryan describes the visibility layer that supports this: "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 history extends through pre-assembly tasks as well.

Maureen explains how customers use that information: "They can actually watch those progressions going on." Watching pre-assembly jobs complete makes it easier to trust that upcoming launches, promotions, and POs will have the product they need.

Culture as the engine for reliable pre-assembly

Pre-assembly work can feel less urgent because it is not tied to an active order. It still matters just as much. The culture of the team doing the work determines whether those early tasks are handled carefully or rushed through.

Mark Becker captures the leadership mindset: "Yeah, I live in the grind every day." That grind includes the quiet days when teams are preparing inventory for future demand, not just the noisy days when orders are pouring in.

Bryan sets a high bar for how projects should feel to customers: "You go 110% and make sure that when they're done, this project is something they're going to remember." That applies just as much to a pre-assembly project as it does to a big launch.

When errors do occur, 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 mix of effort and accountability is what makes long term pre-assembly relationships possible.

Why pre-assembly services 3PL becomes a growth tool

Pre-assembly services turn time into a strategic asset. Instead of chasing every order in real time, you use quieter windows to get ahead. Products arrive ready for the channels that matter. Labels match the rules. Kits are already built. When demand appears, your team can focus on moving orders, not building product from scratch.

It all aligns with the basics Connor Perkins laid out: "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."

Pre-assembly services strengthen that supply chain at the stage where preparation and potential meet. If your team is constantly working late before big launches or promotions, shifting more of that work into structured pre-assembly with a capable 3PL might be the next, very practical step in your growth story.