You’ve started your eCommerce company and it’s going well. Fulfilment is handled in-house. Maybe in your actual house.

It begins at the kitchen table with a handful of orders each week. Then it picks up. You rope family members in. Soon you take on a small unit and find yourself driving back and forth constantly.

Gradually, the things you are good at as a founder get replaced by pallet wrapping, box taping and courier chasing. You tell yourself it is fine. You are in control. You are saving money.

But scaling costs money. Employment law, insurance, rent, rates, equipment. The overhead creeps up. Weekends disappear. The freedom you were building the business for starts to feel further away, not closer.

At some point you have to ask:

Do we keep this in-house, or is it time to outsource?

A lot of founders base that decision purely on volume. They wait until they physically cannot cope anymore. But volume is not the real trigger. Timing is.

Move too early and you can slow yourself down. Leave it too late and you risk burnout, poor service and stalled growth.

We speak to founders every week at exactly this crossroads.

The Common Triggers

Most businesses do not outsource because of a spreadsheet decision. They outsource because something starts to break.

Space is running out

Stock is everywhere. The spare room, the garage, the office, the unit you are paying more for each month. Deliveries interrupt your day. You cannot find things easily. Inventory accuracy slips.

Space pressure is rarely just about storage. It is usually the first sign that your systems are not keeping up.

You are being pulled away from what you are good at

You did not start a brand to spend your day picking orders and unloading pallets.

At startup stage, your time is the most valuable asset in the business. If you are stuck in the warehouse, you are not building partnerships, improving product, refining marketing or raising capital.

Fulfilment should support growth, not replace it.

Dispatch feels stressful

Cut-off times are tight. Courier collections feel rushed. Promotions mean late nights. Peak periods create anxiety rather than opportunity.

If dispatch regularly feels fragile, it usually is.

Errors are creeping in

Wrong items. Missing inserts. Incorrect labels.

At low volume, mistakes feel manageable. As orders increase, small error rates quickly become review problems, refund requests and brand damage.

That is usually when founders start looking externally.

The Risk of Outsourcing Too Early

Outsourcing is not automatically a sign of maturity. If your foundations are not in place, it can create new challenges.

Your processes are still messy

If your SKUs are unclear, your packaging changes weekly and your returns process lives in your head, a third party will struggle to execute consistently.

A warehouse partner cannot fix unclear structure. They can only work with what you give them.

Your margins are not stable

If your unit economics are still evolving, adding fulfilment fees may squeeze cash flow at the wrong time.

You need to understand your true cost per order in-house before you can compare options properly.

You are still experimenting heavily

If you are constantly tweaking packaging, bundles or subscription formats, in-house fulfilment gives you flexibility.

A fulfilment partner works best when there is some operational consistency.

Outsourcing too early can remove control before you have clarity.

The Risk of Waiting Too Long

On the other side, holding on for too long has its own cost.

Growth is limited by capacity

If you hesitate to launch campaigns because you are worried about coping with the orders, fulfilment has become the bottleneck.

That is a strategic problem.

Customer experience is inconsistent

Late dispatch, slow returns, patchy communication. For D2C brands, fulfilment is not separate from the brand. It is the brand.

When service dips, trust dips.

Hiring becomes a sticking plaster

Bringing in temporary help during peaks might ease the pressure short term. But without proper systems, you are adding complexity, not scalability.

More people does not automatically mean more structure.

There Is No Magic Number

There is no universal order volume that dictates when you should outsource.

Instead, look at readiness.

Do you have:

• Clear SKUs and documented processes?
• Visibility on your true cost per order?
• A stable eCommerce platform ready to integrate with a warehouse system?
• A genuine growth plan that requires operational support?

The real question is not “Are we big enough?”

It is “Is our current setup helping or holding back the next stage?”

It Is Not About Losing Control

Outsourcing fulfilment should not feel like giving up control. It should feel like upgrading your infrastructure.

The right partner provides space, systems, courier leverage and operational resilience. That frees you up to focus on product, marketing and strategy.

At Cloud9 Fulfilment, we often tell early-stage brands to tighten their internal processes before making the move. Sometimes the best advice is to wait.

But when operational stress starts shaping business decisions, it is usually time to have a proper conversation.

A Quick Founder Check-In

Be honest with yourself:

• Are we avoiding growth because fulfilment feels fragile?
• Do we actually know our true cost per order?
• Is my time being spent on work that could be systemised?
• Are mistakes starting to impact customer trust?

If your answers lean more towards stress than control, it might be time to explore your options.

Not because you have hit a certain number of orders.

But because your business is ready for the next level of structure.

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