We recently helped a brand owner look at whether their current fulfillment setup still made sense.
They liked their 3PL. That wasn't the issue. The relationship was good and they weren't looking for a reason to leave.
Their concern was geography. The 3PL was a long way from where part of their inventory entered the country, so they assumed they might be giving up a lot of money on inbound freight. They wanted to know whether keeping a partner they liked was creating a cost problem somewhere else.
It's a fair question. Looking at the map, the setup seemed inefficient.
The distance mattered less than expected
We ran the numbers across inbound freight and fulfillment. There were a few areas worth looking at, but the cost of moving inventory to the current 3PL wasn't nearly as large as the owner expected.
That changed the conversation.
The decision was no longer between keeping a good relationship and fixing an obvious cost problem. It was whether the available savings were large enough to justify moving away from a 3PL they already knew and trusted.
Those are very different decisions.
A new warehouse can look cheaper in a model and still be the wrong move once you account for implementation, disruption, service risk, and the time it takes to build a good working relationship. None of that means a brand should stay in an overpriced or underperforming setup. It just means the savings need to be real enough to justify the change.
In this case, the owner came away more comfortable keeping the current relationship.
The point of a benchmark is to know
We offer the benchmark so brand owners can see where they sit against the market before making a decision.
Sometimes we find a meaningful gap and the right move is to make a change. Sometimes the current partner is solid but there are a few things to renegotiate. And sometimes the numbers confirm that the existing setup is reasonable.
That last outcome is still useful.
I came from the brand side, and this was always the hard part. You can get a quote from another provider, but that doesn't necessarily tell you whether your current setup is good, bad, or just different. Most of the people giving you an opinion also have something to sell on the other side of it.
An honest benchmark should make the decision clearer, even when the answer is to stay where you are.