Fulfillment house

Fulfillment house and fulfillment center (in British English: fulfilment house and fulfilment centre) are modern terms for a packing warehouse. The terms were coined in the middle of the 1990s, and "fulfilment centre" is usually used about an in-house packing warehouse, while "fulfilment house" tends to be used about companies that specialise in warehousing and packing for others.

Origin of term

The usage of the word "'fulfillment" in relation to goods shipments comes from the terms "order fulfillment" and "product fulfillment", which where introduced by business management researchers who analysed supply chains in the late 1980s. This was soon picked up by PR people working for picking warehouse companies, who felt that "fulfilment centre" or "fulfilment house" sounded more positive and active than the old term "warehouse". The terms are still so new and unknown by people outside that industry that "warehouse" often is added in parenthesis or used as an alternative word in the same text, in order to explain to laymen what "fulfilment centre" or "fulfilment house" actually means.

External or internal

Some companies, such as Amazon, have their own fulfillment centers, while many smaller e-commerce companies outsource their warehousing, picking, packaging and shipping to external fulfillment companies. Many larger companies with their own fulfillment centers also handle warehousing and shipping for other sellers. Amazon itself is one such example, offering to handle warehousing and order fullfilment to third-party sellers. Another, very early example, was Fingerhut, which in the 1990s expanded its own fulfillment center in order to take on fulfillment services for other companies, including the company that eventually acquired Fingerhut: Federated Department Stores.