Why Midwest Fulfillment Outperforms Coastal 3PLs

Coastal fulfillment centers have a fundamental problem: they're on the edge of the country. A warehouse in Los Angeles can serve West Coast customers cheaply, but East Coast customers face 5–6 day transit times and Zone 7–8 pricing. A New Jersey warehouse has the opposite problem.

Kansas City solves this. Located at the geographic center of the U.S., a Midwest fulfillment center reaches every customer with roughly similar transit times and costs. No one gets penalized by distance. Your East Coast customers get 3-day shipping. So do your West Coast customers.

For brands with nationally distributed customer bases — which describes most e-commerce brands — this geographic optimization translates directly to better customer experience and lower shipping costs per order.