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E-commerce vocabulary · Shipping and Fulfillment

3PL

Meaning in e-commerce, with examples

abbreviationCommon term

In e-commerce, 3PL means: Short for third-party logistics: an outside company that stores a seller's stock and picks, packs and ships its orders for a fee.

In Turkish: üçüncü taraf lojistik, lojistik hizmet sağlayıcı, 3PL

How it is used

Used when growing brands outsource fulfillment. You work with, switch or onboard a 3PL, and connect your store to its system. The company itself is also called a 3PL or 3PL provider.

Example sentences

  1. Our 3PL charges per order, plus a monthly fee for storage.

  2. Moving to a 3PL freed up our team to focus on marketing.

Common collocations

  • 3PL provider
  • work with a 3PL
  • 3PL warehouse
  • switch 3PLs
  • fulfillmentAll the work needed to get an order to the customer after it is placed: storing stock, picking and packing the items and handing the parcel to a carrier.
  • warehouseA large building where a business stores its products and where orders are picked, packed and prepared for shipping.
  • pick and packThe warehouse process of collecting the ordered items from the shelves and packing them into a box with the right label and documents.
  • carrierA company that picks up parcels from sellers and delivers them to customers, such as a national post service or a private courier company.
  • dropshippingA way of selling online without holding stock: when a customer orders, the store passes the order to a supplier, who ships the product directly to the customer.

This word in other fields

The same English word can have a different meaning in another field:

More terms: Shipping and Fulfillment

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