How REALM saved 30+ days a year on business operations by outsourcing fulfilment
800 hours
saved on fulfilment ops
40%
cut in-house workload
About
Premium women’s footwear brand REALM replaced a time-consuming self-fulfilment setup with a specialist 3PL, freeing up around 800 operational hours a year while improving dispatch speeds and creating more capacity for growth. From its UK ecommerce operation to its first concept store in Paris, REALM is building a premium footwear brand with ambitions to expand further across Europe and North America. For a brand at this stage, fulfilment needs to do more than just get orders out the door. It needs to protect the customer experience, keep pace with growth and stay out of the way of the team building the business.
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“We’ve cut our fulfilment workload by 40%, giving us back more than 30 days a year by moving fulfilment out-of-house.”
Leah Gibson
,
Founder
Highlights
~800 hours saved a year from packing orders and daily parcel drop-offs
40% less fulfilment workload, based on time spent packing and dispatching
10+ 3PL options narrowed to 4
Orders typically fulfilled and dispatched within 24 hours, including peak periods
5/5 REALM’S rating for fulfilment.com
Self-storage to a scalable 3PL operation
REALM launched in August 2024, targeting the gap between high-street footwear and high-end designer brands with premium women’s shoes.
The range includes heels, ankle boots, knee-high boots, sandals and loafers, with the brand selling primarily online across the UK and increasingly internationally. It also has a concept store in Paris, giving customers the opportunity to experience selected REALM styles in person.
In the early days, fulfilment was managed in-house. Stock was stored in a London self-storage unit, with some inventory kept at home for easier order processing. When new stock arrived, the team had to unload pallets, unpack deliveries and organise everything manually, sometimes bringing in contractors to help.
That setup worked while REALM was testing the business, but as orders increased, fulfilment became a significant operational commitment.
At around 30-40 orders a week, each order took an estimated 10-15 minutes to pick, pack, check and label. That alone added up to around 10 hours every week. Then there were daily parcel drop-offs, taking up to another hour a day.
REALM was spending around 15 hours a week simply getting orders out the door, equivalent to roughly 800 hours a year. And that didn’t include stock movements, warehouse organisation or inbound deliveries.
“It was very time consuming, very inefficient and actually funny enough, more expensive as well.” — REALM
The hidden cost of doing it yourself
Fulfilment was costing REALM more than just time. A typical inbound shipment could take 8-12 labour hours to unload, unpack, move and organise, with major seasonal deliveries arriving roughly every quarter.
Once labour, transport and the time tied up in the process were considered, outsourcing turned out to be more cost-effective too.
For REALM, the decision to outsource fulfilment was made to remove a growing operational bottleneck before it started holding the business back.
Finding a 3PL that matched the brand
REALM'S search started in the usual places: Google, cold outreach, industry contacts and social media. The issue, however, wasn’t a lack of options. It was quite the opposite.
More than 10 providers were considered, but many didn’t have relevant fashion experience, couldn’t accommodate REALM'S volumes, or didn’t offer the level of operational maturity the brand was looking for.
For a premium footwear brand, the 3PL needed to tick several boxes:
Fashion and footwear experience
Reliable picking, packing and dispatch
Capacity to support future growth
Strong standards around packaging and presentation
A capable returns operation
Pricing that worked for a growing brand
“Competency and experience with fashion or apparel was super critical.” — REALM
“When you actually do the numbers, it's cheaper now that we have a fulfilment centre than when we were packing our own orders.”
Leah Gibson
,
Founder
From 10+ options to four
REALM found the fulfilment.com platform partway through the search. After discussing its requirements, volumes and operational priorities, fulfilment.com introduced the brand to around four relevant 3PLs.
That gave REALM a much tighter shortlist to work from, which was then reduced to two finalists. The team visited both operations before choosing a partner with the fashion experience, capacity and established processes needed to support the brand’s growth.
“The quality of the match between our business size and the likelihood of a fulfilment partner wanting to work with us was way better with you, rather than just cold searching or going through the other channels.”
For REALM though, the real value was in the filtering.
“I like that you listened to our requirements and then tried to find companies that were a decent match.”
24-hour dispatches even at peak
With fulfilment taken out-of-house, REALM no longer has to move stock between locations, pack orders itself or make daily parcel drop-offs.
Its 3PL typically fulfils and dispatches orders within 24 hours, including during Black Friday and other busy trading periods. That speed has also become part of the customer experience.
“They’ve done it within 24 hours, orders will get dispatched. Sometimes in the morning, sometimes even on the weekends.”
The operation also supports REALM'S international growth, handling shipping labels and customs documentation, and integrating with REALM'S chosen courier account. Returns are managed through the fulfilment operation too.
More than just a warehouse
Speed was important, but so was the relationship. REALM wanted a fulfilment partner that would look at its processes, suggest improvements and work collaboratively when challenges came up.
“We wanted a real partner, and they've been there. They've been a true partner in helping us to scale.”
That partnership has also meant greater confidence around day-to-day reliability, even during busy periods. For REALM, that reliability is directly connected to the wider business.
“The fulfilment partner is extremely critical to the success of the brand long-term operationally.”
“My first advice to a brand would be: go to a fulfilment partner as soon as possible. It'll save you so much time, so much money, and so many headaches.”
Leah Gibson
,
Founder
What REALM would do differently
Looking back, Leah's experience has changed her view on when a growing brand should outsource fulfilment.
1. Move earlier than you think
Self-fulfilment can make sense while you’re testing demand. But once order volume starts climbing, the operational cost quickly adds up. Leah’s advice is to consider outsourcing as early as possible.
The lesson is that fulfilment costs more than the warehouse invoice. It also consumes your team’s time and attention.
2. Don’t choose the cheapest 3PL
REALM considered cheaper options, but price wasn’t the deciding factor. For a premium brand, experience, reliability and quality mattered more than saving a small amount per order.
“We ultimately picked a 3PL, which was a good balance of all of those three criteria.”
The right price matters. But so does avoiding the cost of delayed orders, mistakes and poor customer experiences.
3. Choose for where you’re going
REALM didn’t want a provider it would quickly outgrow. Warehouse capacity and operational maturity were important because the fulfilment partner needed to support the brand’s next stage, not just its current order volumes.
“I feel quite comfortable up to 10 times our current volume.”
4. Don’t spend weeks searching the 3PL market
REALM found the 3PL search itself wasn’t especially complicated. It was simply time-consuming.
“It’s very time consuming to assess the companies and also to find them.”
That’s where fulfilment.com made the difference: filtering a fragmented market and narrowing it down to providers that fitted REALM'S requirements.
“If you have a portfolio of fulfilment companies, you can help match your needs to the market supply that exists out there, and just help you with the process, the filtering, the identification.”
REALM’s experience with fulfilment.com
5/5 — Ease of finding the right 3PL
5/5 — Support throughout the process
5/5 — Overall experience
Would use fulfilment.com again: Yes
“If we had to start another brand and we needed another [3PL], absolutely, [fulfilment.com] would be my first port of call.”
From packing orders at home to planning what's next
Switching to a specialist 3PL transformed fulfilment from a hands-on internal task into infrastructure designed to support growth.
Around 800 hours of packing and dispatch time a year has been removed from the internal workload, orders are typically dispatched within 24 hours, and REALM has a fulfilment setup capable of scaling with the brand.
For a premium footwear brand expanding its UK, international and Paris presence, that means less time managing boxes and more time building the next stage of the business.
