Outsourcing the Physical Layer: Fulfilment as Competitive Weapon

While finance grabs headlines with BNPL and inventory financing, the less glamorous but equally decisive battlefield is logistics. Fulfilment services — the outsourcing of storage, picking, packing and shipping — are becoming a core enabler for online retailers trying to match the standards set by Amazon and other global giants.

At the simplest level, a webshop can keep its own warehouse and handle orders in-house. This offers maximum control but quickly runs into constraints: fixed costs for space and staff, difficulty scaling up in peak season, and the need to invest in systems and processes that most small retailers are not equipped to manage.

Third-party logistics providers (3PLs) and specialised fulfilment companies offer a different path. They run shared warehouses for multiple clients, integrate directly with webshop platforms via APIs or plugins, and apply industrial logistics techniques to online orders. Orders flow automatically from the shop’s backend into the warehouse management system; stock levels update in real time; parcels are prepared and dispatched several times a day using pre-negotiated courier contracts.

From Price Competition to Service Excellence: The Rise of Fulfilment as a Differentiator

Marketplaces have built their own versions of this model. Amazon’s FBA programme lets merchants ship products to Amazon’s warehouses, from which Amazon handles everything from storage and delivery to customer service and returns, in exchange for a mix of storage and per-item fees. Zalando offers similar services to fashion brands, and Shopify has invested in its own fulfilment network. Products fulfilled by the marketplace tend to get faster delivery options and more prominent labelling, which in turn boost conversion.

For merchants, the benefits of outsourcing logistics are clear when volume rises. Specialist providers achieve per-parcel costs that are hard to match in-house thanks to economies of scale, robotisation and bulk purchasing of packaging and shipping. Advanced fulfilment centres deploy conveyor belts, automated storage systems and software-driven optimisation to reduce errors and speed up processing. Many can guarantee that orders placed by a certain time will ship the same day.

This matters because customer expectations have shifted dramatically. Pandemic-era surges in online shopping and the arrival of international platforms such as Temu, AliExpress and Amazon’s foreign stores have normalised cheap delivery, next-day shipping and hassle-free returns. In smaller markets like Hungary, local webshops now compete not only on price but on logistics performance. Sector observers argue that in the coming years “you cannot compete on price alone; you have to compete on service”.

Hungary now has a surprisingly crowded fulfilment landscape for its size. Early mover iLogistic, recently rebranded under GLS Fulfillment after being acquired by the courier group, brought years of experience in webshop logistics and now benefits from GLS’s European network. Startup Webshippy, founded in 2016, positioned itself as a tech-forward solution for small and medium webshops, with transparent per-parcel pricing, wide integration coverage and an in-house dropshipping marketplace. Boxy, launched in 2021 with a heavily robotised, 12,000-square-metre warehouse in Törökbálint, markets itself as the country’s most automated fulfilment centre, targeting fast-growing brands.

Competition Heats Up as New Entrants Redraw Hungary’s Fulfilment Map

Traditional logistics heavyweight Trans-Sped has also entered e-commerce, integrating fulfilment into its national warehouse network and focusing on larger clients and import-heavy supply chains. Around them, a cluster of smaller providers — Fulfillment Hub Hungary in Tatabánya, Whitefish Logistics in Biatorbágy, and others — compete on flexibility, niche expertise or cross-border positioning. GLS’s move into fulfilment via the iLogistic acquisition, and experiments by Magyar Posta and others, underline how hot this space has become.

Outsourcing is not without trade-offs. Minimum monthly volumes mean that very small webshops may find fulfilment uneconomical; moving stock into and out of a provider’s warehouse can create switching costs; and merchants must accept less direct control over packaging and handling. Yet for mid-sized and larger players, or those with strong growth ambitions, the ability to scale without building their own logistics infrastructure is increasingly seen as essential rather than optional.