At KEMEXEL, you’ll have an unique opportunity to use your skills and imaginations to push the boundaries of what’s possible. To create never-seen-before solutions to some of the quick commerce’s toughest problems. You’ll be challenged. But you won’t be alone. You’ll be part of a team of like-minded innovators, all driven to go beyond the status quo to build what comes next. At KEMEXEL, you can be an explorer, a change maker and a force for good.

Learning Centre

WHAT IS A DARK STORE or a FULFILMENT CENTER?

Dark Stores or Order Fulfilment Centres are the local warehouses located as close as to the end customers to fulfil their orders and get them delivered at the earliest.

These Dark Stores could be located in a 2-3 KMs radius from the end user catchment areas or could be a little far depending upon the online merchant’s delivery TATs (turnaround time). In quick commerce environment, some merchants are delivering within 10 minutes from the order confirmed by the end customer and a few are delivering within a few hours to same day or next day. Gone are the days when customers used to wait for days to get their orders delivered. Customer behaviour and quick commerce dynamics are changing very fast. And to make these promises come true, these online companies need to have their inventory closer to the end customer catchment areas.

These Dark Stores could be owned by the online merchant by themselves or they hire third party services to cater to their needs.

Benefits of Dark Stores

These Dark Stores are the backend warehouses where all the required inventory required as per the projections are maintained at all times along with the manpower required to meet the customer TATs. Inventory management is a prevalent operational challenge for most of the online merchants, but is an essential component of cultivating the best possible customer experience. Fulfilment centres make inventory management much easier and allow these online market places more time to focus on other areas of their business such as marketing, customer acquisition etc.

Dark stores are focused on order fulfilment online in areas with massive demand. The location of dark stores is critical for retailers in huge geographical regions and areas. According to a Deloitte report, dark stores will play a pivotal role in supply chains ahead, as well. Dark stores are D2C Model (Direct-to-consumer) enabling services like same-day delivery, online purchases or pick-up in stores. Dark stores are fulfilment centres which cater to online orders alone. All customers need to do is order online and receive doorstep delivery.

Dynamics of Quick Commerce

E-commerce is now about instant services. Therefore, merchants need to set up dark stores to meet customer expectations and respond to customers in real-time across touch points. Customers now want their service providers to be active, omnipresent, and quick across business channels despite the business model deployed. Concept of dark stores is picking pace in e-commerce, as the online delivery business gains momentum. Consumers now expect a hassle-free shopping experience. Delivery within a few minutes or hours is assured now. Delivering orders from a dark store nearby is easy and quick. Most online merchants are infusing this concept to decrease cart abandonment rates and increase profits.

The concept of dark stores has been around for a long time now. A lot of e-commerce firms are working on the concept of a dark stores. But what does it take to set up an online fulfilment centre?

KEMEXEL helps online retailers to come up with the perfect stores to provide a seamless and real-time shopping experience.

Key Benefits of our Managed Services

Outsourcing fulfilment tightens control over inventory management. Stockouts are when an item is displayed as unavailable on the website, which is problematic if it is a product that sells well. In addition, many smaller ecommerce websites face issues with picking and shipping. Mis-picks are when you select the wrong product for an order. Mis-ships are when the wrong item is sent to a customer. Damaged items are typically the correct product, but the product is unusable by the time it reaches the customer. Because ecommerce store owners have a great deal of tasks to handle, shipping issues are a risk. This type of inventory problem harms customer satisfaction. Using a fulfilment centre to coordinate inventory and ship to customers Online stores have a couple options for managing inventory with an outsourced fulfilment centre: receive and review items before sending them to the fulfilment centre or have them shipped to the warehouse directly from the manufacturer. Depending on the type of online store, you will need to select one of these options. A fulfilment centre gives you the ability to scale your business in the future. If you plan to launch new product lines in the future, fulfilment won’t require as much additional attention. Outsourced fulfilment speeds up the time a new line can reach the market. Plus, this service improves shipping and returns processes. Because major carriers are often willing to negotiate with shippers that promise a high volume of parcels, fulfilment centres are often able to get a better price than an individual standalone captive centre.

What can we do for Online Merchants or Platforms?