A Furniture 3PL With White Glove Delivery: Receiving, Storage and the Last Leg

Elite Anywhere works as a third-party logistics (3PL) partner for furniture and home goods, receiving, storing and delivering into the home across 34 warehouse locations nationwide. It takes in a company's inbound freight, keeps the stock in climate-controlled warehouse space, picks and packs each order, and sends it out, either by outbound shipping and distribution or as a white glove delivery carried into the customer's room and assembled there.

Most 3PL warehouses are built for boxes. Their racking, their staff and their processes assume small, sturdy, uniform cartons that can be picked quickly and handed to a parcel service. Furniture breaks every one of those assumptions. It is large, heavy, irregular and easily damaged, it often needs assembly, and the customer usually expects it to arrive inside the house rather than on the porch. A furniture 3PL has to be designed around that, from the receiving dock to the last leg.

Furniture warehousing is the core of what Elite Anywhere's warehouses do. This article explains how a furniture 3PL program with white glove delivery works, stage by stage.

Who uses a furniture 3PL

The companies that need one are the ones holding furniture and home goods without wanting to lease and staff a warehouse of their own. E-commerce brands and online sellers use it to store stock and fulfill orders. Retailers and showrooms use it to hold inventory away from the shop floor and supply their stores. Furniture manufacturers use it to put stock near customers in regions where they have no facility. Interior designers use it to hold pieces close to projects, and hospitality projects use it for furniture bound for hotels. Each pays for a service rather than for a building.

Why furniture strains a general 3PL

The difference shows up in small ways long before anything goes wrong. A single sofa may arrive as three cartons that are useless apart, so they have to be received, stored and sent out as one item. A dining table and its chairs may come from two factories weeks apart and have to leave together. A lamp base and its shade travel separately and must meet again at the customer's door. A warehouse used to one carton per order tends to lose track of these relationships; a warehouse built around furniture expects them, which is one reason every piece carries its own barcode.

Then there is the handling. Furniture cartons are awkward to lift, easy to puncture with a forklift tine and prone to crushing when stacked by someone used to boxes of books. The finish inside can be ruined by a damp corner or a hot dock. None of that is exotic, but it is the daily reality of furniture logistics, and it is why the type of goods a 3PL is built for matters as much as its size.

Inbound: receiving furniture freight

A 3PL program begins at the dock. Inbound freight from the client's factories and vendors is received at the warehouse location that holds the client's stock, by appointment on weekdays. Each arrival is checked against the list the client sent, its outside packaging is photographed, and every piece is barcoded so it can be found, counted and traced from then on.

Elite Anywhere asks for the bill of lading on inbound shipments, which shows what the shipper actually sent, a useful check on short or split loads. Damaged packaging is reported to the client before the goods are put away, and the client decides what to do with them. Any damage found is photographed and written up, and Elite Anywhere takes the claim to the vendor rather than leaving it for the client. Cartons are opened and inspected on request, whenever the client asks, without charge; a sensible habit is to ask for it on the first shipment of any new product, before larger quantities follow.

Freight that arrives without a clear owner, which happens with about two in ten arrivals, is traced by calling the carrier or the shipping company. In a busy 3PL operation that is the difference between stock that is found and stock that sits unrecognized in a corner.

Storage built for furniture

Furniture is the core of what Elite Anywhere warehouses, so sofas, casegoods, tables, lighting, rugs and art are everyday stock rather than special handling. Storage is climate-controlled and secured, with pest and humidity control, which matters for wood, upholstery and finishes that react to damp and heat. Stock can be held for a short or long period, with no minimum, and cover applies to goods while they are in storage. Clients can visit to see their inventory or ask for fresh photographs of a particular piece.

Order fulfillment: pick, pack and send

When an order comes in, the item is picked from stock and prepared for its journey. Pick-and-pack, distribution and outbound shipping are all part of the program. A furniture 3PL has more choices at this point than a parcel warehouse, because the right way to send an order depends on what it is and where it is going.

• Outbound shipping. Smaller, boxed home goods and pieces the buyer will unpack themselves can be packed for the trip and shipped to the customer.
• Distribution. Stock can be sent in bulk to the client's stores, showrooms or job sites, keeping their back rooms supplied without each one holding a large inventory.
• White glove delivery. Larger and more valuable pieces can go out with an Elite Anywhere crew who carry them into the customer's home, unpack and assemble them, place them in the room and take the packaging away.

The client chooses per product or per order. Many furniture companies send accessories by outbound shipping and sofas by white glove from the same stock, in the same warehouse.

The last leg: white glove from the warehouse

What separates a furniture 3PL with white glove delivery from a general 3PL is what happens after the order leaves the shelf. A general 3PL hands the carton to a carrier and its responsibility ends. Here the same company that stored the piece carries it into the home.

The customer is sent a text roughly half an hour ahead. The crew covers the route in before carrying anything, protecting railings, doors and floors, and uses professional moving equipment for heavy pieces. Each item is taken to its room, unpacked, assembled and set in place, and the condition is photographed. The packaging leaves with the crew. Before driving away, the crew has the customer confirm the piece arrived undamaged, or say what was wrong, and asks how the delivery went; the signed result goes into the client's records.

For the client, this means the condition of a piece is recorded from the moment it entered the warehouse to the moment it was placed in a customer's room, by one company, with one set of photographs. Everything handled with care, with the evidence on file.

Where the stock sits

A national furniture 3PL is only as useful as the places it can hold stock. Elite Anywhere's network has ten staffed hubs and further warehouse locations for 34 in all, so a client can place inventory close to where its customers are.

Two examples in the middle of the country show the idea. A brand with strong sales in Texas can hold stock at our warehouse in Houston, receiving freight there and sending orders out to customers in the region. A manufacturer with a dealer network across the Midwest can use our warehouse in Indianapolis for distribution to its stores and for white glove deliveries to customers' homes. Each warehouse location receives, stores and delivers in the same way, with the same records.

Orders do not have to be near a warehouse location to be fulfilled. Elite Anywhere delivers anywhere in the country, so an order for a customer in Memphis, for instance, is delivered as part of its nationwide service, carried in and placed like any other. In the staffed hub cities of New York, Los Angeles, Miami, Denver, Phoenix, Austin and Nashville, the same 3PL program runs from Elite Anywhere's own hubs.

Returns

Furniture companies have returns like any other retailer, and furniture returns are harder than most because the pieces are large and the customer usually cannot repack them. Returns can be received back into the same warehouse that holds the client's stock, recorded and stored, so the client has one inventory rather than returned pieces scattered across several places. Where a returned piece needs repair, Elite Anywhere sends it for repair rather than repairing it itself.

Seeing the inventory

A 3PL client needs to know what is on the shelf without calling the warehouse. Elite Anywhere's proprietary warehouse platform, Terminal, keeps item records and condition photos, inventory status and reporting, and scheduling and delivery documentation. Clients get a login to it, so they can check what has arrived, what is in stock and what has gone out, see deliveries on the way and their tracking, and message the warehousing team about a particular item. Their customers, in turn, can follow white glove deliveries through photo check-ins and live tracking.

Deliveries into buildings

Many furniture orders end in apartments and condos, and those buildings often require a certificate of insurance and a booked freight elevator and loading window before a crew can enter. Elite Anywhere provides the certificate and makes the bookings with the building when the customer wants it to, and hoisting is offered for pieces too large for the elevator or stairs. That keeps orders from being turned away at the lobby, which in a 3PL program means fewer failed deliveries and fewer pieces returned to the warehouse.

Starting a furniture 3PL program

A new program is quicker to set up when the client can describe its products and its flow at the start. The useful information is the product range with rough sizes and weights, which items ship in more than one carton, how many orders go out in a typical month and how that changes through the year, where the customers are concentrated, which products should go by white glove delivery and which by outbound shipping, and how returns are handled today. With that, the stock can be placed at the right warehouse locations and the order flow set up before the first truck arrives.

Slow-moving and seasonal stock are part of the picture too. Because there is no minimum storage period, a client can hold a line through a quiet season, or keep a small reserve of a discontinued piece for warranty replacements, without paying for a building it only half uses.

What a furniture 3PL program does not include

It is worth being clear about scope. Elite Anywhere does not offer kitting. Its white glove crews hang light fixtures; wiring them in stays with an electrician. Prices are not published; every 3PL program is quoted individually, based on how much stock is stored and for how long, how many orders go out, how each is packed and sent, and how many returns come back. Requests are answered within 24 hours.

Questions to ask a furniture 3PL

1. Is furniture your core business, or an exception?
2. What happens when my freight arrives? Look for photographs, a barcode on every piece, a check against your list and damaged packaging reported to you.
3. Is storage climate-controlled, and is there a minimum period?
4. Can the same company deliver into the customer's home and assemble the piece?
5. Where can my stock be held, and how close is that to my customers?
6. Can I see my inventory and orders myself?
7. How are returns handled?

The short version

A furniture 3PL with white glove delivery joins the warehouse and the last leg into one service. Elite Anywhere receives furniture and home goods at 34 warehouse locations, photographs and barcodes every piece, stores it in climate-controlled space, picks and packs each order, and either ships it, distributes it to stores and job sites, or delivers it into the customer's room with its own crew, assembled, placed and with the packaging gone.

Robert Sabo is Director of Operations at Elite Anywhere, which provides white glove delivery, receiving and installation from ten staffed warehouses, delivering nationwide.