With the explosion of e-commerce showing no signs of slowing, retailers are increasingly leaning on the technological capabilities and geographic reach of fulfillment providers to place inventories in position for faster last-mile services.

Retailers are placing a greater emphasis on e-commerce versus brick-and-mortar shopping as consumers continue to show hesitancy to shop in stores amid the COVID-19 pandemic. But that emphasis on e-commerce requires positioning inventory closer to the customer in order to shorten the last-mile. As a result, retailers are turning to fulfillment providers with cloud-based technology capabilities to manage their inventories in real-time.

ShipHero CEO Aaron Rubin was asked about the growing trend in ecommerce fulfillment where companies are attempting to place their inventory closer to their customers.

“Retailers will streamline operations, reduce brick-and-mortar presence, and outsource fulfillment to focus on their core service offerings,” Aaron Rubin told JOC.com.

He expects a continued shift from brick-and-mortar dependence to an ecommerce-focused model and noted that many bankrupt retailers with physical stores are relaunching as online retailers and ramping up quickly by utilizing ShipHero’s fulfillment network, which currently consists of seven US warehouses. ShipHero’s warehouse management system software is in 500 warehouses at present.

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