For Brands

Fulfillment & Delivery Advisory,
for DTC brands on Shopify.

Senior fulfillment and delivery leadership, without hiring a team. Carrier RFP is the engine, the rest of the function rides on top.

Book a Call

What's included

One service. The full fulfillment and delivery function.

Carrier RFP management sits at the center. Everything else fulfillment and delivery touches surrounds it.

Carrier RFP Management

Structured RFPs across the carriers that fit your profile. Domestic and international parcel.

Build the dataset → Send bids → Model true cost → One-page rec → Onboard & re-RFP

Strategy & Sourcing

3PL sourcing and selection. Network design across nodes and carriers.

Contracts & Negotiation

Carrier contract review and negotiation. 3PL contract review and negotiation. Renewal strategy and benchmarking.

Operations & Performance

Invoice recovery across carriers and 3PLs. Claims for lost, late, and damaged shipments. SLA scorecards, accessorial and surcharge review.

Technology

WMS evaluation and selection. TMS evaluation and selection. Implementation oversight.

Shipping & Returns CX

Checkout shipping options strategy. Returns program design. Tracking and post-purchase communications.

All Your Data, In One Place

Every carrier, 3PL, and channel feed brought together, with our benchmarking layered on top, including lifetime value by carrier so you can see which carriers earn their cost and which quietly erode it.

Client Story

Freak Athlete cut multiple six figures from shipping.

"Iron Margin really meticulously got costs down. He saved us multiple six figures, and of course, that's something that's going to scale for us."
Benji Stark Elster Founder and CEO, Freak Athlete
6-figurescut from annual shipping spend
Double digitlanded cost reduction
Read the full case study

FAQ

Common questions for brands.

We are your outsourced fulfillment and delivery advisor. Carrier RFPs sit at the center of the work. The rest wraps around them: strategy and sourcing, contract negotiation and renegotiation, invoice recovery, claims, SLA monitoring, accessorial review, order management and WMS evaluation, 3PL sourcing and oversight, and shipping and delivery CX. One service, built for DTC brands on Shopify.
Rate brokers and freight aggregators make money by marking up carrier rates and taking a cut of every shipment. We work for you. Your carrier contracts are yours, the rates are yours, the savings stay yours. We sit on your side of the table, not in the middle of your invoices.
No. We negotiate better rates with your existing carriers first. If a new carrier offers meaningfully better pricing, we'll flag it, but you always decide.
About 2 weeks from kickoff to a clear recommendation. Week 1 we send RFPs. Week 2 we present the recommendation. From there we onboard the new carrier and review the first invoices, with the rest of the work running alongside.
You do. We negotiate on your behalf, but the contracts are between you and the carrier. No Iron Margin in the middle, no third-party billing layer.
Once a new carrier program is live, the work shifts to the rest of the scope. Invoice recovery, SLA enforcement, claims, accessorial and surcharge review, contract renegotiation, order management and technology evaluations, 3PL oversight, and returns and delivery CX. The goal is no invoice error or SLA left unclaimed, month over month.
Yes. We can help whether you ship in-house or work with a 3PL. The negotiation work is the same; the integration step changes depending on who's running the labels. If your 3PL isn't pulling its weight, we also source and vet new ones.
The program works best for shippers at 50K or more per month on parcel (roughly 600K per year). If you're smaller, book the intro call anyway and we'll point you at the right setup, usually a multi-carrier consolidator or a self-serve rate-shopping tool, rather than the full program.
An export of your last 90 days of shipping. Each row needs at minimum: origin zip, destination zip, weight, dimensions, carrier, service type, and cost. Format varies by WMS (ShipStation, EasyPost, Shopify, Shiphero, Extensiv exports all work). We'll guide you through the export on the intro call.
Yes. Your shipping data, carrier contracts, and operational details stay confidential. Standard NDA on request before you share anything.
Carrier & Fulfillment Evaluation

A benchmarked read on your carrier spend.

The Iron Margin Carrier and Fulfillment Evaluation Report is custom built. We benchmark your last 90 days lane by lane against our carrier rate database, then show where your rates sit against market and what is recoverable.

Get your evaluation report
Iron Margin Carrier and Fulfillment Evaluation Report, format illustration

Ready to see what's possible?

Start with a 30-minute intro call. We learn your setup, your carriers, and your volumes, and walk you through exactly what we'd recommend.

30-minute intro call. No commitment. Book a Call