How it works Shopify Amazon United States Canada

How Vertex actually fulfills your orders.

Your inventory ready to ship in 24 hours. Orders out the door the same shift they come in. One operations team that knows your brand, your packout, and your peak.

5
Days from sign to first order shipped
11
Steps from sign-on to porch
99.97%
Pick accuracy on every order
24h
From inbound to ready-to-ship

The 11-step lifecycle

From sign-on to your customer's porch

Five days from contract to first parcel, then six steps that repeat every order, every day. Tap any step to see how we make it bulletproof.

  1. Day 0

    Sign on, your ops lead named

    Contract signs in the morning, your ops walkthrough runs the same afternoon. You leave Day 0 with a Slack channel, a named ops lead, and a written onboarding checklist.

    How we make this bulletproof

    The ops lead is the same person who runs your account in production. Not a sales handoff to a stranger on Day 6.

  2. Day 1

    Your SKU catalog onboarded

    You upload your SKU list. We map every SKU to a Vertex ID, barcode, hazmat flag, and packout profile, and send back any gaps the same day.

    How we make this bulletproof

    We do not start receiving inventory with an ambiguous catalog. Clean SKU data is the single biggest predictor of a clean launch.

  3. Day 2

    Packout spec locked

    Every variant of your packout is photographed in our test bay. You sign off before a single live order ships.

    How we make this bulletproof

    Packout is the customer experience. We lock it so order one matches your spec instead of inventing a default.

  4. Day 3

    Test orders run end-to-end

    We place 2 to 4 real orders through your live storefront and you unbox them on Zoom with our ops lead.

    How we make this bulletproof

    Everything wrong gets fixed before Day 4. Test orders cover single-SKU, multi-SKU, oversize, and hazmat. The cost is on us.

  5. Day 4–5

    Shipping accounts connected, first inventory received

    UPS, FedEx, USPS, Purolator, Canada Post, and DHL connected. Your first inbound clears our dock within 24 hours of arrival.

    How we make this bulletproof

    On Day 5 you flip the order feed on. First 30 days run metered: every order gets a second-pass QC and weekly accuracy reports.

  6. Live

    Order placed at your storefront

    Your customer hits buy. The order lands in our system from Shopify, Amazon, or your ERP within seconds.

    How we make this bulletproof

    If your store's order notification hiccups, our 60-second backup check catches it so nothing sits stranded.

  7. Live

    Address and fraud scrub

    Every address is validated against USPS or Canada Post and run through a fraud-pattern check.

    How we make this bulletproof

    Flagged addresses hold for a 2-hour scrub before release instead of shipping to a bad address.

  8. Live

    Every pick scanned, every box checked

    Every unit barcode-scanned at the bin. Pack stations weigh the order, check it against the manifest, and photograph high-value parcels before they ship.

    How we make this bulletproof

    Visual picks hit 97% accuracy. Scan-confirmed picks hit 99.97%+. We do not run visual picks, ever.

  9. Live

    Multi-carrier rate-shop and cutoff

    Our WMS compares major carrier rates in real time and picks the best service for the destination, the weight, and your service-level rules. Orders packed by cutoff make the same-shift truck.

    How we make this bulletproof

    Single-carrier lock costs you 8 to 18% on the long tail. Cutoff is a hard line at our dock, not a suggestion.

  10. Live

    Trailer sealed, first carrier scan tracked

    Every trailer is sealed, the seal is photographed, the number logged. We chase carrier ops when first-scan lags past 4 hours.

    How we make this bulletproof

    Chain of custody matters when a parcel goes missing. Your customer panics when tracking shows nothing for 48 hours.

  11. Live

    Delivery and exception handling

    Our exception desk reviews flagged parcels twice daily — refused, undeliverable, lost — before your customer notices.

    How we make this bulletproof

    Refused, undeliverable, lost-in-transit, customer-initiated reroutes. The queue never sits unwatched, including weekends.

Everything included

Built into the operation.
Not bolted on.

Every capability below runs across our network on the same operations playbook. Nothing here is a paid add-on or a "check with your account manager."

01 5 capabilities

Locations & cross-border

  • US locations
  • Canada locations
  • Cross-border shipping
  • CUSMA / Section 321 tagging
  • Amazon FBA prep
02 10 capabilities

Operations & accuracy

  • Scan-confirmed picking
  • RF-enabled stations
  • 24-hour receipt-to-pickable
  • Same-shift cutoff
  • Photo packout verification
  • Hazmat handling
  • Address + fraud scrub
  • Exception desk
  • Carrier-handoff monitoring
  • Cycle counts + annual physical
03 5 capabilities

Software & integrations

  • Datex WMS
  • Real-time inventory
  • Shopify, Amazon, BigCommerce integrations
  • EDI to retailers
  • Multi-carrier rate-shop
04 10 capabilities

Service model & value-adds

  • Named operator per account
  • B2B + DTC
  • Returns handling
  • Kitting
  • Bundling
  • Polybagging
  • Palletization
  • Custom packaging
  • Count & inspect
  • Quality control

Built for D2C brands

The work that makes your brand feel like your brand.

Pack the way your brand wants.

Your tissue paper. Your insert cards. Your gift-with-purchase rules. We pack to your spec, not to a generic 3PL default. Day 2 of onboarding locks the full packout before a single live order ships, and if your brand voice changes, we update the spec the same day.

Three Vertex team members preparing custom packouts at a pack station
Vertex associates staging pallets in the warehouse ahead of peak season

Your peak, built six weeks before it hits.

Your BFCM is 6 to 11x your steady-state volume. We forecast it from your prior-year curve, pre-stage labor pre-trained on your packout in week 4, pre-build cardboard for your top 20 SKUs, and extend dock hours starting Black Friday minus 3 days. Accuracy stays at 99.97% through peak. We do not let it relax because the volume went up.

Cross-border without the math problem.

If you ship US-to-Canada or Canada-to-US, the customs math changed in 2025 when Section 321 got suspended. We tag every SKU at receipt with CUSMA origin status, then bulk-transfer to a sister facility at COGS once instead of paying duty per-parcel at retail. Cross-border DTC still works for the brands who do this math right.

Customs paperwork with US and Canadian flag pins at a Vertex compliance desk

Ready to ship?

Reduce your fulfillment costs.
Ship faster.

  • Lower carrier rates
  • Faster ship times
  • A named account lead

Tell us what you ship and where. If we are not the right fit, we will say so on the call rather than after you sign.

Talk to our 3PL team

Custom quote in 24 hours.

Tell us what you ship and where your customers are. We respond from a human address inside one business day. No mailing list.

We reply from a human address. No drip sequence, no mailing list.