The holiday shopping season — which kicks off in October and lasts until the end of the year — is a pivotal period for ecommerce businesses, as more shoppers make their holiday purchases online. In fact, UK shoppers spent £25.8 billion online between November 1 – December 31, 2024, up 5.9% year over year.
To satisfy demand and capitalise on the opportunities for revenue growth during this peak shopping period, ecommerce businesses need to effectively manage end-to-end logistics operations.
But handling logistics for the high volume of online orders during the holiday season is challenging. That’s why so many ecommerce businesses engage third-party logistics (3PL) providers to help them with their inventory management and order fulfilment during the holidays.
In this guide, we discuss some of the common logistics issues that ecommerce companies face during the end-of-the-year peak surge, and explain how a 3PL provider can help you successfully deliver products, delight customers, and drive revenue growth during the busy holiday shopping season.
Each year’s peak season is different, but there are a handful of common logistics challenges that emerge every year for ecommerce merchants:
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Coping with the spike in customer orders
The last two months of the year typically bring a surge in orders, as consumers rush to swoop up deals and snag gifts for friends and family. Handling this massive volume of peak season orders — and ensuring products are delivered on time to customers — is a tall task for ecommerce businesses, placing significant strain on their logistics operations. -
Dealing with capacity constraints
Many ecommerce businesses find that they don’t have the necessary capacity to handle throughput during the peak period. One capacity constraint is workforce. Many companies look to hire additional workers, which, of course, results in additional costs. Another obstacle is warehouse space, as many ecommerce businesses simply don’t have the infrastructure required to store and distribute the huge amount of stock needed for holiday order fulfilment. -
Effectively managing inventory
One of the biggest peak season logistics challenges is getting the right products in the right warehouse or fulfilment centre locations at the right times to satisfy holiday shopper demand as quickly and cost effectively as possible. Achieving this involves optimising the way you manage your inventory — from inbounding to storage and distribution to picking, packing, and shipping. Failing to manage your inventory correctly can result in stockouts (and a corresponding loss of sales and customer trust) or overstocking (which keeps precious working capital tied up). -
Ensuring carrier availability
Most ecommerce businesses depend on carriers to deliver their orders to customers’ doorsteps. During the holiday season, shipment volume surges and demand for carrier services (along with carrier costs) skyrockets. Unless you have already booked sufficient capacity with the carriers you use, you may find that your peak season shipments can’t be sent out on time. -
Handling returns
Order returns are an all-too-common phenomenon during the holiday season. Unless your ecommerce business has a robust and reliable returns process in place and is equipped to handle returned shipments, customer service, and inbound inventory processing, you’ll find it difficult to deal with the high volume of holiday season order returns coming your way.
Dealing with these and other holiday shopping season logistics challenges can be overwhelming, but fortunately, there are 3PL providers that can help you overcome these obstacles.
Amazon Multi-Channel Fulfilment (MCF), for example, can help you handle your holiday order fulfilment challenges by:
- Allowing you to leverage Amazon’s fulfilment network to handle the surge in customer orders during peak season. MCF provides order fulfilment — with shipping speeds as fast as one day, a 98.8% average on-time delivery1, and deliveries made seven days a week — for orders from off-Amazon sales channels, including your brand website, other ecommerce marketplaces, and social media stores.
- Enabling you to utilise MCF’s 3PL services on demand — with simple, pay-as-you-go pricing for fulfilment and storage — so that you can easily scale your logistics operations up and get the warehouse, workforce, and transportation capacity you need to cope with the influx of customer orders during the holidays.
- Helping you to optimise your inventory management by:
- Consolidating your stock into a single pool that can be used across all your sales channels. MCF orders are fulfilled using the same inventory pool that you use for your Amazon.com orders (with Fulfilment by Amazon or FBA), so that you can maximise inventory turnover and minimise stockouts.
- Distributing your inventory across Amazon’s fulfilment network so it’s as close as possible to your customer base — which shortens shipping times and reduces costs.
- Leveraging cutting-edge technologies such as warehouse management systems and scanners to give you an accurate, real-time view of your inventory levels as well as warehouse robotics to automate and expedite your order processing.
- Providing carrier services using Amazon’s fleet to deliver your holiday season orders. Most 3PLs depend on external carriers to ship orders, but a few — including MCF — are carriers themselves. By dealing directly with MCF as your carrier, you can ensure that your peak season shipping needs will be met.
- Managing the end-to-end returns process — from handling the shipping of unwanted products to receiving and processing them at Amazon’s fulfilment centres, to helping you determine whether they should be disposed of or added back into your Amazon inventory.
With a 3PL like MCF, you can conquer the logistics challenges of the peak season and consistently deliver packages on time — while delivering smiles to the faces of holiday shoppers around the globe.
The holiday shopping season is an important time for shoppers, who want orders delivered on time to family and friends. And, MCF provided a 98.8% average on-time delivery for orders placed during the 2024 peak season1.
By engaging the right 3PL provider, establishing alignment across your team, and creating an integrated peak season plan, you can meet customers’ expectations for fast, reliable order fulfilment and manage orders during the holiday shopping season and beyond.
1Based on all orders placed and delivered between October 2024 and September 2025 in the UK, and measuring the percentage of orders that were delivered on or before the estimated delivery date generated upon order confirmation.
