Most founders who bring in a 3PL are chasing growth. Meah was chasing her clinic back.
FM21 makes Fem21 and Man21, naturopathically formulated daily blends built around one idea: supporting men’s and women’s health holistically through a simple formulation you can take every day. Before Fulfilpackers took over dispatch, Meah was spending 20 to 25 hours a week packing and shipping orders from a home-based office, on top of running the business and, somewhere in the gaps, trying to still be a practising naturopath.
From manageable to unmanageable, slowly
For years, home fulfilment worked. Meah, her daughter, or a staff member handled dispatch between them, and it held up fine.
“Over the years it moved from being sort of manageable, as we scaled, to getting a little bit more difficult to manage,” she says.
It wasn’t a single bad week that broke the system. It was staff getting sick, Meah travelling, or a bigger sale hitting all at once. “It got a little bit more tricky to manage when staff was sick or I was away, or we were doing a bigger sale, and just trying to keep up with orders.”
The real trigger wasn’t Meah’s time. It was her staff member’s.
Ask Meah what the breaking point was, and it isn’t about her own hours. It’s about where she wanted her staff member spending theirs.
“The staff member that I have that was doing the orders for me, I really saw her value in other areas of the business,” she says. “I really wanted to take that responsibility off her so that she could support me and support the business in other ways. That it wasn’t that sort of day-to-day getting orders out.”
The money question, answered honestly
Handing over fulfilment isn’t free, and Meah didn’t pretend otherwise. “Probably the biggest thing was whether I could afford it,” she says. “Whether it was going to be financially a good decision, because obviously when you’re doing it yourself, you’re not having that extra expense.”
Her answer, in hindsight: “It’s definitely been manageable, for sure, from a financial point of view.” She raised prices slightly to cover the added cost, a move she says she’d have made anyway given rising costs across the business. “Most people are fine with paying that little bit extra.”
If you’re weighing the same question, 3PL pricing is worth working through at your actual volume rather than guessing.
Why Fulfilpackers, specifically
Meah did her research before choosing. Proximity ended up mattering more than she expected. Fulfilpackers is a Gold Coast 3PL, and so is her manufacturer.
“From a logistical point of view, they’re very close to home and where I operate from. Very close to my manufacturer. So we’re all within less than a 10-minute driving radius from one another, which is great. Having somebody locally that I can drop stock down to if there’s any issues, I can be there. It just makes it, from a convenience point of view, definitely makes sense for them to be close.”
Team size mattered too. “I like Fulfilpackers because they’re not a huge team with a lot of systems in place that aren’t flexible to work with you. I like that they’re a smaller team, that they’re supportive, and they’re happy to work in with you. It’s not like they’re bossing you around, saying, ‘No, you can’t do this,’ or ‘Why haven’t you done this?’ With too many rules and regulations.”
Onboarding: easy overall, honest about the learning curve
“The onboarding was relatively easy,” Meah says. “Terry and Gavin were great in terms of talking us through what’s involved and ironing out any little glitches.”
The first fortnight took work. “The first two weeks it’s a bit more of a learning curve, when things are actually up and running, using the different systems and getting a flow and a feel for everything. It was almost like a call daily, just to iron things out. But now we’re in a better flow with everything. It’s like maybe once a week we’ll check in.”
That daily-call fortnight is normal. If you want to know what to expect before you start, we’ve written up how onboarding with a 3PL works step by step.
What happens when something goes wrong
“When humans are working, there’s always mistakes,” Meah says. “Whether it’s coming from the customer or coming from our end. A wrong address, or somebody’s order configuration was a little bit incorrect, or whatever.” What matters to her is the response, not the absence of errors: “The communication’s very open, and Terry’s always been very willing to help with anything. So things get fixed very quickly if there was ever an issue.”
Asked to rate the team’s care for her product out of 10: “I’d give the care of the team around the product an 8 or 9 out of 10. I can’t think of anything that comes to mind that I think they could be doing better.”
Before and after
| Before | After |
|---|---|
| 20 to 25 hours a week on fulfilment | 3 to 4 hours a week on at-home production top-ups |
| Dispatch reliant on Meah, her daughter, or a staff member | Staff member freed to support other parts of the business |
| Naturopathic clinical practice squeezed to the margins | Back in clinic, seeing patients “in a greater capacity” |
| No regular customer communications | A weekly marketing email, now running consistently |
What she’s doing with the time now
“Back in clinic, consulting more as a naturopath, and having the energy and the time and the space to do that,” Meah says. The rest has gone into the business itself: “Focusing more on working on the health of the business from a variety of angles. Looking after our distributors, our wholesalers, our brick-and-mortar stores, getting better at our marketing. I’m doing a regular weekly email, which I wasn’t doing before.”
Her advice to a founder where she was 12 months ago
Meah’s take isn’t “outsource on day one.” It’s more considered than that.
“Every business is different, and it really depends on your volume and the margin that you have in your product, as to whether it’s worthwhile doing it yourself or having a fulfilment company do it for you,” she says. “It’s definitely something that helps support your business to grow and scale. But I still think it’s good to do it yourself in the earlier stages, until you’re feeling like it’s taking too much out of your week.”
The one thing she wishes she’d known earlier wasn’t about logistics at all. “It’s important to work with people that you vibe with. Sometimes, if they’re not aligned with you, it doesn’t work out. But if you have a good team that you’re outsourcing to, and they understand your needs, the communication’s really good, then it’s a much easier, smoother process, and good for a longer-term arrangement.”
If fulfilment is starting to cost you the parts of the business only you can run
If you’re weighing up whether it’s time to hand over pick, pack, and dispatch, the honest answer depends on your volume and your margin, not a fixed rule about when you’re “ready.” Book a 15-minute call and we’ll help you work out where that line actually sits for your brand.