How Brands Should Interview 3PLs, part 2 of 6: the "Won't Lose Your Stuff" test

by Nish George, CEO

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The most fundamental obligation of a 3PL warehouse is simple: don’t lose your stuff.

Many brand owners assume this is so basic and obvious that they don’t even bring it up during 3PL interviews. Nothing could be further from the truth. The #1 reason I hear from brand owners wanting to switch 3PLs is that they can’t trust the 3PL’s inventory counts. I hear this 10x more than pricing complaints.

And for good reason: not having reliable inventory numbers can be just as ruinous for your brand as not knowing how much cash you have. If you’re like most DTC brands, you have more cash sitting in inventory than in your bank account. That makes inventory accuracy a financial concern — not just a warehouse concern.

The Single Metric That Tells You Everything: Order Fill-Rate

So how can you tell ahead of time whether a 3PL will lose your stuff?

There’s one metric that captures this perfectly: order fill-rate.

Fill-rate is the % of order-lines that a 3PL actually ships from stock, out of all the order-lines it claims to have in-stock and in sellable condition.

The warehousing industry’s goal is 99.5%, meaning inventory should be wrong less than 1 out of 200 times. At Fetch Fulfillment, our fill-rate is 99.95%, meaning our inventory count is wrong 1 out of 2,000 times — 10 times better than the industry benchmark.

Of course, you should ask to see daily values of this KPI over the last 3–6 months, so you can test whether someone’s claim of “100%” is actually accurate.

Two Additional Tests to Validate Inventory Accuracy

What if a 3PL can’t tell you their fill-rate, but they still insist their inventory counts are dead-on? Or maybe you just want another point of validation? Here are two more tests you can run:

1. Visit the 3PL In-Person and Evaluate Inventory Controls

During your visit, talk to the inbound manager and ask:

• How do they know what SKUs and quantities came in?
• Are they receiving against your purchase orders (POs)?
• Are they blindly trusting what’s on the PO — or opening at least one case on every inbound to check count and condition?
• Are they communicating discrepancies or damages back to the brand?
• Are there video recordings of the entire process?
• Is there a timestamped system log of every inventory movement inside the 3PL, including from-location, to-location, SKU, and quantity moved?

🚩 Red flags 🚩:

• No PO matching
• No physical verification
• No discrepancy reporting
• No video
• No system log

2. Talk to the 3PL’s Other Customers

Ask them how often they need to cancel or refund customer orders because of wrong inventory counts. That’s just another way of asking about order fill-rate. If it's a regular occurrence, thank them for helping you dodge a bullet — and go find a better 3PL.

Final Word

Inventory accuracy isn’t optional — it’s critical. It impacts your customers, your operations, and your cash flow. If a 3PL says they “never lose anything” but can’t back it up with fill-rate data, verified processes, or client proof, that’s a problem.

You’re trusting them with your inventory — and in most cases, that means you’re trusting them with more money than you have in the bank.

Keep reading for Part 3: the "Trust With Your Money" Test

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About Fetch Fulfillment

Fetch Fulfillment is a New Jersey-based 3PL for brand owners who want direct-to-consumer fulfillment to be the least stressful part of their business. Most 3PLs are good at one thing, like shipping on-time, or having modern tech, or picking up the phone. What makes Fetch unique is that it's stellar at all 3: it provides high-end boutique-grade customer service -- as seen in its glowing reviews and +92 net promoter score -- combined with its real-time cutting-edge tech and well-managed operation, with 99.2% same-day shipping and 99.95% order fill-rate. The Fetch team lives by its motto: they are Your Brand's Best Friend.