Glossary

Fulfillment Center

Also known as: e-commerce fulfillment center

A distribution facility built for direct-to-consumer e-commerce order processing -- individual item picking, packing, and shipping -- as distinct from a traditional distribution center that ships in bulk cases or pallets to stores or other warehouses.

Fulfillment centers differ operationally from traditional distribution centers in ways that show up directly in a building's design and site requirements: each-picking rather than case- or pallet-picking is far more labor-intensive, driving employee counts and therefore auto parking ratios well above a comparable bulk distribution building, while conveyor systems, sortation equipment, and increasingly robotics require higher and more redundant electrical power and often reinforced or specialized flooring. Because fulfillment centers are typically the largest and most capital-intensive buildings in an e-commerce network, they are frequently developed as build-to-suit facilities for a single large user rather than leased on a speculative basis, and their labor-intensity makes proximity to a large, reliable workforce as important a site-selection factor as highway access.