Product Management Group
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The PMG value chain

Between your manufacturer and your customer, someone has to handle the middle.

Third-party logistics (3PL) covers receiving, storage, inventory control, pick-and-pack, marketplace prep, order processing, returns handling, and carrier management for direct-to-consumer, marketplace, and retail orders. PMG's fulfillment network is built for health, wellness, beauty, supplement, and OTC brands operating across DTC storefronts, Amazon, Walmart Marketplace, Target Plus, specialty retail dropship, and LATAM outbound — categories where lot traceability, expiration dating, and storage conditions are part of the job rather than an afterthought.

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Stacks of plain shipping cartons wrapped in clear plastic on wooden warehouse pallets.
Photo by Freek Wolsink on Pexels

Fulfillment determines whether customers come back.

Speed of fulfillment, accuracy of orders, quality of packaging, and handling of returns are the operational experiences your customer judges your brand on — not the formula, not the marketing. A customer who receives the wrong SKU, a leaking bottle, or a box that took nine days does not blame the carrier. They blame you.

A great product fulfilled poorly will lose to a good product fulfilled well. We treat fulfillment as a brand-defining operation, not a back-office cost.

Fulfillment is also where regulated consumer products get expensive to get wrong. Supplements and OTC drug products carry lot numbers and expiration dates that have to survive from the filling line to the customer's doorstep, because that chain is what makes a recall a targeted retrieval instead of a company-ending event. Marketplaces enforce their own layer on top: Amazon has prep and labeling requirements that reject non-compliant inbound shipments, Walmart and Target Plus enforce their own packaging and shipping standards, and retail distribution centers issue routing guides with chargebacks attached. A fulfillment operation that understands consumer packaged goods but not regulated CPG will pass those costs back to you as chargebacks, quarantined inventory, and short-dated stock nobody can sell.

We run fulfillment as the continuation of manufacturing rather than a separate business. The same product we formulated, tested, and packaged is the product we store, pick, and ship — with the batch documentation intact.

We don't fulfill in a vacuum. We fulfill for the customer experience.

01

Multi-channel fulfillment from one inventory pool

Your inventory ships to DTC orders, Amazon FBM, Walmart Marketplace, Target Plus, specialty retailer dropship, and subscription boxes — from one pooled inventory rather than separate stockpiles for every channel. Pooling matters because channel demand is uneven: an Amazon spike drains a dedicated Amazon stockpile while your DTC allocation sits idle, and rebalancing between siloed pools costs freight, time, and often a marketplace stockout. With a single stock position, allocation becomes a software decision instead of a truck. It also means one receiving event, one cycle-count discipline, and one source of truth for how many units you actually own — which is the number your forecasting and reorder points depend on.

02

Climate-controlled storage where it matters

Many wellness, beauty, and supplement products require temperature-controlled storage to maintain stability and shelf life. Our facility network supports temperature-controlled and cold-chain inventory where the product demands it. This is not a blanket setting — it follows the stability data. If a product's stability testing established shelf life at controlled room temperature, storing it in an uncontrolled warehouse through a Florida or Texas summer puts the expiration date on the label at odds with what is actually in the bottle. Probiotics, certain actives, emulsions prone to separation, and gummies prone to melt and deform are the usual candidates. We match storage conditions to the specification the product was tested against, and we hold that condition through staging and outbound handoff rather than only in the racks.

03

Returns handling that protects margin

Returns processing, restocking decisions, and damaged-inventory disposition are real cost centers in DTC and Amazon businesses. We handle returns to protect resaleable inventory and document everything for your books. Every return gets inspected against a disposition rule you set: unopened and within date goes back to sellable stock, opened or tamper-evident-seal-broken product on a consumable is destroyed rather than resold, damaged-in-transit units are documented for carrier claims, and short-dated stock is flagged before it becomes dead inventory. For regulated product the rule is stricter — a returned OTC or supplement unit that has left your custody generally cannot be returned to sellable inventory. Getting that discipline right is the difference between a returns process that recovers margin and one that quietly creates liability.

What fulfillment with PMG actually covers.

  • DTC pick-and-pack fulfillment with branded packing materials
  • Amazon FBA prep: FNSKU labeling, polybagging, suffocation warnings, bundling, case packing
  • Amazon FBM (seller-fulfilled) order processing against Amazon's shipping standards
  • Walmart Marketplace fulfillment and packaging compliance
  • Target Plus order fulfillment
  • Retail distribution center routing-guide compliance, ASN and labeling requirements
  • Returns processing, inspection, and disposition against your rules
  • Kitting, bundling, and subscription box assembly
  • Climate-controlled and temperature-sensitive storage
  • Lot and batch tracking for supplements and OTC drug product
  • Expiration-date management and FEFO (first-expired, first-out) rotation
  • Multi-channel inventory pooling from a single stock position
  • Order management system and storefront integration (Shopify, WooCommerce, and major platforms)
  • Inventory reporting, cycle counts, and reorder-point visibility
  • International and LATAM outbound coordination with export documentation
  • Receiving, put-away, and QC check-in of inbound production runs

Fulfillment & 3PL questions buyers ask us first.

Yes. Our fulfillment systems integrate with Shopify, WooCommerce, and the major DTC platforms so orders flow automatically from your store into the fulfillment queue. The integration pushes orders in and pushes tracking numbers and inventory counts back out, so your storefront reflects real stock rather than a number someone updates manually. Marketplace channels connect the same way, which is what makes a single pooled inventory position possible across DTC and marketplaces instead of maintaining separate allocations you have to reconcile by hand.

Yes. Kitting and subscription assembly are standard capabilities — including monthly themed boxes, sample kits, and gift sets. Subscription work is really two operations: the assembly run that builds this month's configuration ahead of the ship window, and the recurring order flow that releases those units on the subscriber's renewal date. We build the kits as their own inventory item so the pick is a single line rather than five, which is faster and materially less error-prone. Component-level lot tracking is preserved on the kit record for any regulated item inside it.

We support climate-controlled storage and cold-chain handling where the product requires it. This is especially important for certain supplements, probiotics, and wellness products. The storage condition should follow the product's stability data rather than a general preference — if shelf life was established at controlled room temperature, that is the condition the inventory needs to hold to make the printed expiration date meaningful. We also account for the handoff points, because staging on a hot dock undoes careful storage. Gummies, emulsions, and live-culture products are the categories that most often require it.

A warehouse stores your pallets. A third-party logistics provider runs the operation around them. That means receiving and QC-checking inbound production, putting stock away against a location system, holding inventory under the right conditions, receiving orders electronically from your storefronts and marketplaces, picking and packing individual units, buying and rating carrier labels, handing off to carriers, processing returns, and reporting inventory back to you in real time. The distinction matters most in DTC and marketplace businesses, where the unit of work is a single order rather than a pallet.

Regulated product carries obligations that follow it past the manufacturing floor. OTC drug products and dietary supplements ship with a lot number and an expiration date, and the fulfillment system has to record which lot went to which order so a recall can be scoped to affected units instead of your entire customer base. Stock rotates first-expired, first-out rather than first-in, first-out, because a later-produced lot can carry an earlier expiration. Storage conditions have to match the conditions the product's shelf life was established under, and returned units generally cannot go back into sellable stock.

Yes, and it is usually the better structure. A single stock position is allocated across channels by the order management layer rather than physically split into per-channel stockpiles. That avoids the common failure where Amazon runs out while DTC sits on six weeks of cover, and it removes the freight and delay of rebalancing between locations. The channels differ in how units leave, not in how they are stored: an Amazon FBA shipment needs prep and a case-packed inbound, a retail DC needs routing-guide compliant labeling and an ASN, a DTC order needs a branded parcel.

Every return is received against the original order, inspected, and dispositioned according to rules you set in advance. Unopened, in-date, undamaged product with intact tamper evidence can return to sellable stock. Opened consumables, product with broken seals, and anything past its date are destroyed or quarantined rather than resold. Transit damage is documented so you can pursue carrier claims. Regulated product is held to the stricter standard — once an OTC or supplement unit has left your custody, storage conditions are unknown and it does not go back into inventory. You get the disposition record for your books.

Inbound production is received by lot, so each unit in the building is associated with the batch it came from and the expiration date that batch carries. Picking runs FEFO — first-expired, first-out — so the oldest-dating stock ships first and short-dated inventory surfaces before it becomes unsellable rather than after. Outbound orders record the lot shipped, which is what makes a targeted recall possible: you can identify exactly which orders received affected units. The same records support marketplace and retailer requirements around dating, and retailers frequently reject product with insufficient remaining shelf life.

The gating items are integration, inbound, and setup rather than warehouse space. That means connecting your storefront and marketplace channels to the order management layer, agreeing SKU-level setup including dimensions, storage conditions, lot and expiration handling, packing configuration, and returns disposition rules, then physically receiving and putting away your inbound inventory. Brands with a single storefront and a handful of SKUs move fastest; multi-marketplace catalogs with kitting, FBA prep, and retail routing-guide requirements take longer because each channel has its own setup. We scope the timeline against your actual channel mix.

Yes, provided the operation maintains the separation the categories require. OTC products such as hand sanitizer are FDA (Food and Drug Administration)-regulated drugs; a body lotion without drug claims is a cosmetic. They can share a facility, order management system, and inventory pool, but OTC SKUs still need lot-level traceability, expiration dating with FEFO rotation, storage aligned to stability data, and segregation or quarantine for suspect and returned units. Manufacturing is where the harder line sits: OTC drug product is made under pharmaceutical GMP (Current Good Manufacturing Practice) at 21 CFR Part 210/211 in an FDA-registered drug establishment, while cosmetics follow their own framework, including MoCRA (Modernization of Cosmetics Regulation Act) requirements. The fulfillment system must treat the categories differently instead of flattening them into one generic SKU record.
Related guides

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Claims & compliance

Can You Private Label Essential Oils and Aromatherapy Kits for Amazon?

How claims set the FDA category, what Amazon hazmat review needs, when caps must be child-resistant, and PMG's minimums.

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Ready to talk about fulfillment & 3pl?

Fulfillment is the customer experience layer of your brand. Done well, it builds loyalty. Done poorly, it costs you the next sale.

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