What is beauty fulfillment?
Beauty fulfillment is the warehouse side of selling cosmetics, skincare, hair care and personal care products: receiving stock, storing it, picking and packing each order, and shipping it. The work looks like any ecommerce fulfillment until you count the details. One brand can carry dozens of shades in three sizes. Bottles leak, glass breaks and droppers loosen on a hot truck. Lot numbers and expiry dates matter the day a batch has a problem. And for a beauty brand, the unboxing is part of the product.
Alvy Logistics fulfills beauty and cosmetics orders from one 58,000 sq ft warehouse in Valencia, in the Santa Clarita Valley north of Los Angeles. Ecommerce orders, retail orders and PR kits ship from the same stock, and your store connects through the Logiwa client portal (Shopify, for example).
How do you package cosmetics for shipping?
Close the leak paths first: tight caps, pumps locked, liquids in a sealed bag. Then keep glass from touching glass, fill empty space so nothing moves, and use a box sized to the order. At Alvy Logistics every order follows the packing spec you agree with us at onboarding: which box for which order size, how liquids are bagged, what cushioning goes around glass, where the insert card sits and when a sample goes in. A written spec is what makes the five-hundredth order look like the first. For the step-by-step order flow, see pick and pack services.
A few things we ask beauty brands to decide up front:
- Leak protection. Which products ship bagged, and whether pumps and droppers arrive locked from your manufacturer.
- Glass. Whether glass ships in its retail carton, in a sleeve or with extra cushioning.
- Shades and sizes. Each shade and size needs its own SKU and barcode on the unit, since a warm beige and a neutral beige look alike under warehouse light.
- Inserts and samples. What goes in which orders, and what happens when a sample runs out.
Lot numbers, batch codes and expiry dates
Beauty brands track stock by batch: a lot or batch code on every unit, and often an expiry or period-after-opening date. If a batch ever has a problem, you need to know which lot is on the shelf and which went out.
We record lot numbers and expiry dates at receiving and ship oldest date first, so short-dated units leave before fresh ones and a recall can be traced to the lot. It helps to send lot and expiry data with every inbound shipment and to keep different lots of the same shade in separate cartons.
Skincare fulfillment: how should skincare products be stored?
Cool, dry and out of direct sunlight, in sealed cartons, is the usual advice. Our warehouse is ambient and dry. There is no climate-controlled storage, which means the building is not held to a set temperature range, and Santa Clarita Valley summers are hot. Most shelf-stable makeup, skincare, hair care, bath and body products and beauty tools store well in those conditions. Products that melt, separate or spoil above room temperature, such as some balms, waxes and preservative-free formulas, are not a fit. It is better to hear that now than after a July heat wave.
Can you ship fragrance, nail polish and aerosols?
Some of the most common beauty products are regulated for transport. Under the federal hazardous materials regulations (49 CFR), perfumes made with flammable solvents are a Class 3 flammable liquid, many nail polishes are flammable liquids too, and aerosols such as dry shampoo and hairspray are regulated as gases. Retail sizes often ship as limited quantities, a lighter set of packaging and labeling rules that still treats them as hazardous materials, and some small alcohol-based retail products are excepted outright.
We accept fragrance, nail polish, aerosols and similar limited-quantity consumer goods after reviewing the safety data sheet for each SKU. Send the safety data sheet for every fragrance, nail and aerosol SKU with your quote request; the transport information your manufacturer gives there is where the review starts. A SKU regulated as a hazardous material beyond limited quantities is not accepted. Supplements, vitamins and other ingestible products are not accepted at all, because this is not an FDA-registered facility.
Gift sets, PR boxes and launches
Beauty runs on sets: holiday gift sets, travel minis, launch boxes and influencer PR kits. Building them as orders arrive is slow and uneven, so we build them ahead as kits with their own SKU and then ship them like any other item. See kitting and assembly for how builds are quoted, and marketing and merch kits for PR and influencer mailers sent to a list of recipients.
Beauty boxes that ship on a monthly cycle run through subscription box fulfillment.
How do you ship cosmetics in bulk?
Bulk beauty orders, such as a salon restock or a retailer’s opening order, ship by the carton or pallet rather than as parcels. Cartons of liquids are heavy for their size, so carton weights and pallet builds matter, and many retailers set both in their routing guide. These orders come out of the same stock your ecommerce orders use, so there is no second warehouse to keep in sync. B2B and wholesale fulfillment covers routing guides, GS1-128 carton labels, advance ship notices and EDI.
Getting a beauty product fulfillment quote
- A month of order history: orders, units per order, and the share with glass or liquids
- Your SKU list, including shades and sizes
- How stock arrives (parcel, pallet or container) and whether lot and expiry data comes with it
- Your packing spec, inserts and any gift sets or PR kits on the calendar
- Any retail or salon accounts and their routing guides
- Safety data sheets for every fragrance, nail and aerosol SKU
Beauty brands shipping a few hundred to several thousand orders a month are the fit. A brand packing fewer than a few hundred orders a month usually spends less doing it in-house, and we will say so. To compare these numbers with other warehouses, read the 3PL and pallet storage pricing guide. Send the list through the quote form or call (661) 344-8766 for a written quote.
