What Happens When a Brand Outgrows Its Fulfillment (Spoiler: Nothing Good)

Every ambitious brand eventually reaches a strange moment where success becomes suspiciously stressful. Orders stack up like overcaffeinated squirrels. Customer emails pile in faster than shipping labels print. Research shows that as brands scale, fulfillment pain points multiply: delays rise, accuracy dips, and retail compliance starts acting like an uncompromising high school hall monitor.

This is the part of the growth curve nobody brags about on LinkedIn. Growth can feel less like a rocket launch and more like an unexpected kitchen fire.

Where Fulfillment Starts to Buckle

The first warning sign is speed. Connor Perkins, Director of Fulfillment, hears the same story often: "A previous 3PL took three days from when the order was placed to when they would ship it." He follows that with a gentle understatement: "That's not great if you're trying to compete in this industry right now. You want to be able to fill an order within a day or less."

Accuracy collapses next. Connor notes, "One of the pain points our clients have experienced with previous 3PLs is inventory accuracy; maybe their previous 3PL wasn't great at picking the orders accurately. So they were losing money by shipping wrong items or wrong quantities of items."

Then comes the part that makes founders wince: retail compliance. Rules get stricter and chargebacks get larger. Joel Malmquist, VP of Customer Experience, lays it 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 chargebacks."

If the brand is also shipping into Amazon, the ASIN, carton, pallet, and timing requirements pile on top of each other like a precarious Jenga tower. One mistake can send your margins on a brief but meaningful vacation.

Research confirms what founders experience firsthand: early fulfillment methods usually fail right when demand spikes.

The Fulfillment Strategy That Actually Supports Growth

A fulfillment strategy that helps brands grow is not simply bigger. It is smarter and more adaptable. It blends D2C speed, B2B precision, and continuous visibility into a system that grows at the same pace the brand does.

A big part of that is omnichannel fulfillment. Holly Woods, Director of Operations, explains it clearly: "Our omni-channel capabilities allow a lot more flexibility for our customers to pivot between D2C or B2B. It all just comes together, it's more stable, more efficient."

Another essential piece is real-time visibility. Maureen Milligan, Director of Operations and Projects, describes why it matters: "What these real-time portals provide our customers is 100 percent visibility. A client might say, 'I had 100 orders come into the system before noon, we're going to fulfill and ship those out today.' And they now have direct visibility to watch that progression."

That visibility calms a growing brand's nerves and removes a key barrier to scaling: uncertainty.

Then comes retailer readiness. Getting into large chains like Target or Walmart requires serious accuracy. Holly describes a moment that perfectly captures growth pressure: "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."

That level of effort is often the difference between expanding into retail and getting quietly delisted.

Growth-oriented fulfillment also includes packaging improvements, like shifting Veria Travel from poly bags to boxes so their customers received better-looking deliveries and the brand saved real money on shipping. It includes negotiation leverage, such as G10 working with Amazon to straighten out Suncast's channel challenges. It even includes international expansion, such as preparing Canadian fulfillment to support brands like Lutron.

This is the kind of operational backbone a fast-growing brand actually needs.

Where G10 Enters the Story

Once the industry landscape is clear, G10 becomes the part of the narrative where the specialist shows up with the right tools and says something reassuring like, "We've seen this before."

Connor frames the question every brand should ask: "Entrepreneurs need to look at their 3PL partner and say, 'Can I scale with these guys and grow my business?'"

G10 proves its value in the messy, rising-action phase of growth.

Joel describes G10's approach during sudden demand spikes: "This is where actions speak louder than words. We had an influencer blow up and we have more orders than we were anticipating. 'Can you help us out?' 'Yeah, we gotcha.'"

Kay Hillmann, Director of Vendor Operations, highlights G10's deep certification in an area most 3PLs avoid entirely: "We've been certified by the expert in the country on hazardous materials in all classifications." She adds that Amazon relies on the same expert.

That matters because many growth brands eventually move into electronic, chemical, or regulated goods, and those products require precise handling to stay legal, safe, and shippable.

Across the company, the theme stays consistent: move fast, handle complexity, and make decisions that keep customers' growth from stalling.

What Growth Feels Like When Fulfillment Stops Breaking

Founders often expect growth to feel like a victory parade. More often it feels like a balancing act on a greased tightrope.

But when fulfillment begins supporting growth instead of sabotaging it, everything steadies. Orders ship on time. Retailers stop issuing fines. Customers stop writing worried messages. Leadership stops scheduling emergency meetings about inventory. The brand finds the breathing room it needs.

Joel describes the joy of watching that shift: "Ensuring our customers grow is where I get the most fulfillment, no pun intended. This is my happy place."

You know a fulfillment strategy is working when the whole company stops feeling like a fire drill.

Your Next Step

If your brand is hitting the stage where growth creates more chaos than confidence, you are not alone. You have not broken anything. You have simply outgrown your current system. When you are ready to stabilize the operation and build a foundation strong enough for the next chapter, reach out to G10. Growth should feel exciting again, not exhausting.