Unified Order Fulfillment

Growth exposes fulfillment cracks

At some point, every growing brand discovers that success can be just as dangerous as failure. Orders climb, new channels open, and what used to be a simple pick-pack-ship routine suddenly feels like trying to direct traffic at a busy intersection with no stoplights. Shopify orders land in one format. Amazon throws in FBA replenishments and merchant-fulfilled orders. Retailers send giant purchase orders with strict compliance rules. Every one of those orders matters, but they do not move through the same pipeline, at least not yet.

That is where the cracks show. One team manages D2C orders out of the shopping cart system. Another team watches retailer portals and email attachments. A third group worries about FBA schedules, carton labels, and inbound SLA deadlines. Without unified order fulfillment, everything depends on heroic effort. People stay late, spreadsheets multiply, and every surge in demand feels like a potential breaking point.

Unified order fulfillment changes the physics of that problem. Instead of treating each channel as a separate universe, it treats every order as a citizen of one shared system. The brand still serves many channels, but the engine behind them becomes one.

Why unified order flow beats a bigger warehouse

When operations feel chaotic, it is tempting to blame the warehouse. Maybe the facility looks too small. Maybe it looks understaffed. In reality, the bigger bottleneck is usually the flow of information, not the square footage. If orders arrive in fragmented ways, it does not matter how tall the racking goes. The team is still trying to decode what needs to ship first and how.

That is exactly what G10 hears from merchants who arrive after working with other providers. Maureen Milligan described their complaints. She said, "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." Those are order flow problems at heart. The system could not keep everything synchronized, so performance slipped where it mattered most.

Unified order fulfillment starts by consolidating order intake. Every order, whether it comes from Shopify, Amazon, Walmart, Target, or another channel, enters a single operational brain. Priorities, cutoffs, and service levels sit in one place. Instead of constantly asking what should ship next, the system already knows.

Connecting D2C carts and retailer POs

The hardest part of unifying order fulfillment is usually the bridge between D2C and B2B. Direct orders are simple on paper. A customer clicks buy, the system creates an order, a label prints, and a package goes out the door. B2B orders are a different species. Retailers submit large POs, expect strict label placement, demand specific pallet patterns, and require electronic documents to arrive on time and in the right format.

G10 was built to handle that mix. Joel Malmquist explained how the pipelines pull together. He said, "There is a direct integration with Shopify where orders come in and flow directly into G10. We fulfill those, push back tracking to Shopify to show that the order has been completed, which then fires an email out to the customer." At the same time, the same system handles B2B shipments for retailers like Target and Walmart. The merchant does not have to run two separate operational worlds. D2C and B2B share the same infrastructure, the same inventory, and the same core workflows.

That unified structure matters even more when brands expand their retailer footprint. As Joel put it, the team can "help split or distribute your inventory across the country to make sure you are closer to the distribution centers for those specific retailers." Unified order fulfillment turns what used to be a messy expansion into a deliberate, repeatable playbook.

Technology backbone of unified fulfillment

None of this works without the right warehouse management system. A weak system treats orders like vague suggestions. A strong system treats them like instructions with clear ownership, timestamps, and tracking at every step.

Bryan Wright, who designed the WMS used by G10, did not sugarcoat the difference. He said, "A bad WMS system will not track inventory 100 percent as it should." A good one tracks every move, from the moment product hits the dock to the moment the carrier scans the final package. When that tracking sits under every channel, unified order fulfillment becomes possible.

Bryan also pointed out that the system was built around B2B complexity from day one, then extended to D2C, not the other way around. That is why it can turn on retailer-specific rules quickly. "If they have a Walmart account that they are trying to bring on, we can turn on the integration. We can create the Walmart-specific shipping label, send them Walmart-specific EDI transaction, pick it in a specific way for Walmart, and all of that stuff is inherent in the software." That same system handles D2C orders coming in from Shopify or marketplaces with equal ease. The result is one backbone, many channels.

Handling surges without breaking SLAs

Unified order fulfillment really earns its keep when demand jumps. Promotions, influencer posts, and seasonal peaks often hit several channels at once. Without a unified engine, each channel fights for capacity separately. With a unified engine, the system sees the whole picture and can route work intelligently.

Holly Woods described how G10 prepares for those peaks. She talked about running "forecast models, staffing models, and we audit inventory, equipment." Planning starts months ahead of key events, but the last mile still depends on how orders flow through the network.

Joel shared a story that shows unified fulfillment in action. A fast-growing merchant asked if G10 could handle a scenario where "Target drops 10 POs and gives us 48 hours to turn it around." Joel’s answer was direct: "Yes we can." The reason was simple. Orders, inventory, and labor can all be coordinated across multiple sites through one system instead of scrambling location by location.

For D2C orders, the same structure supports tight cutoffs. As Joel explained, if an order hits before noon, the goal is to ship that order the same day. After noon, it ships the next day. Unified order fulfillment enforces those rules consistently, even when volume spikes.

Visibility that stops guesswork

Unified order fulfillment is not just about getting boxes out the door faster. It is also about knowing what is happening, in real time, without digging through six different portals.

Connor Perkins highlighted how important that visibility has become. He said, "Our clients get best-in-class visibility and transparency. They can see their daily orders, they can see KPIs, and they can see historical transactions." That level of insight matters because leadership teams are making decisions on inventory buys, marketing campaigns, and new channel launches. Guessing is expensive. Clean data keeps those decisions grounded.

Maureen Milligan described one of the tools behind that experience. She talked about a new portal that will give clients real-time visibility into "on-time order fulfillment, inventory accuracy, and even inventory levels" so they can see for themselves whether orders are moving as promised. That kind of unified information layer is what keeps brands confident during busy seasons.

Building for founders who want to scale

Unified order fulfillment is especially important for founder-led brands on a growth path. These are not giant conglomerates chasing half a cent per pallet. They are builders trying to turn a strong product and a loyal audience into a national presence. Their risk tolerance is high, but their patience for operational failure is very low.

Matt Bradbury spends most of his time with that group. He noted that many have already had "really bad experiences with 3PLs," which leaves "a big mistrust in the space." For them, unified order fulfillment is not just a technical upgrade. It is a way to regain confidence that their logistics can keep up with their ambition.

Mark Becker captured that builder mindset in simple language. He said, "At the end of the day, all we are is builders. The two of us love to build." Unified order fulfillment reflects that attitude. It is a system built so brands can add channels, enter new retailers, and run bigger campaigns without pulling their operations apart every time.

Next steps toward unified order fulfillment

If current operations feel scattered, slow, or fragile under pressure, the problem usually is not effort. It is fragmentation. Orders enter through different doors, follow different rules, and never quite align. Unified order fulfillment gives them one doorway, one playbook, and one source of truth.

The result is not just faster shipping. It is fewer surprises, fewer errors, and fewer ugly conversations with retailers or end customers. It is the ability to look at a promotion plan, a retailer expansion, or an international opportunity and say, with a straight face, that the operation can handle it.

When it is time to replace patchwork processes with a single, unified fulfillment engine, G10 can help design and run that system. The goal is simple. Orders from every channel flow cleanly, customers get what they expect, and the brand finally has room to grow without wondering when the next operational crack will appear.