Beauty, Skincare & Wellness
Shipping Beauty, Skincare & Wellness Products: A 3PL Guide for Growing Brands
Beauty, skincare and wellness brands live or die on trust.
Your customers are putting your products on their skin, in their body, or into their daily self-care rituals. They expect quality, consistency and a premium experience from the moment they open the parcel.
But as your brand grows, the logistics behind that experience get more complex:
More SKUs and product lines
Batch tracking and expiry dates
Fragile or liquid products
Gift sets and bundles
Seasonal launches and campaigns
At a certain point, picking and packing orders out of a spare room or crowded warehouse stops being charming and starts becoming risky.
In this guide, we’ll walk through how to think about 3PL (third-party logistics) for beauty, skincare and wellness brands…and what to look for in a partner if you want to scale without sacrificing your customer experience.
Why beauty & wellness logistics need extra care
Beauty and wellness products come with added layers of complexity:
Fragility: glass bottles, jars, droppers and powders
Liquids: potential for leaks or damage in transit
Regulation: ingredients, labelling and storage considerations
Batch & expiry: you can’t just ship any unit; you need the right stock rotation
Gifting: a lot of orders are presents; the unboxing moment really matters
This means your logistics setup isn’t just about speed. It’s about accuracy, handling and presentation.
Signs you’ve outgrown DIY fulfilment
For many beauty and wellness brands, the tipping point looks like:
Running out of space (shelves, tubs, “that one cupboard”)
Stock from different batches all mixed together
More breakages or leaks than you’re comfortable with
The founder or a key team member still packing orders at night
Customer support dealing with “where is my order?” or “my item arrived damaged”
If this feels familiar, it’s a sign that your back-end might be starting to undermine your front-end brand.
What a good 3PL should do for beauty, skincare & wellness
Not every 3PL is set up for this industry. Here’s what you should be looking for.
1. Careful handling and smart packaging
Your 3PL should be able to talk in detail about how they:
Protect glass, liquids and fragile components in transit
Reduce leaks and breakages with the right packing materials
Handle bundles and gift sets so they arrive intact and beautifully presented
You want a partner who understands that a beauty order is not just a “unit”, it’s part of a ritual, a gift or a special moment for your customer.
2. Batch control and FIFO (first in, first out)
Beauty, skincare and wellness products often have:
Manufacture dates
Expiry dates / best-before dates
Batch numbers
A good 3PL will:
Store stock in a way that makes batch picking simple and accurate
Use FIFO or other agreed stock rotation methods
Track batches so you have clear visibility over what’s been shipped and what’s left
This protects your customers, your brand reputation and your ability to respond quickly if there’s ever an issue with a particular batch.
3. Gift sets, bundles and promos
Beauty and wellness brands do a lot with:
Starter kits and routines
Limited-edition bundles
Seasonal gift sets (Mother’s Day, Christmas, etc.)
Samples and add-ons
Your 3PL should be comfortable with:
Assembling kits from multiple SKUs
Including samples based on simple rules (e.g. “add this sample to orders over X”)
Packing gift sets consistently so they feel special, not thrown together
If you’re doing custom kitting or subscription-style boxes, this becomes even more important.
4. Returns that don’t get messy
Returns in beauty/wellness can be tricky. Some items can be safely returned to stock; others can’t.
Ask potential 3PLs:
“How do you handle returns for opened vs unopened beauty/wellness products?”
“What does your inspection process look like?”
“How do you log and report on returns so we can spot trends?”
You want clear, sensible processes, and transparency back to you so you can improve product, packaging or expectations where needed.
5. Clean, well-organised storage
The way your products are stored matters.
For beauty, skincare and wellness brands, you’re looking for:
Clean, organised shelving and storage
Appropriate temperature and conditions (within reason for your product type)
Clear labelling and separation of product lines
When you visit (or video tour) the warehouse, ask yourself:
“Would I feel proud knowing my products live here before they go to customers?”
Why location still matters (especially if you’re Melbourne-based)
If your core customer base is in Australia, and your operations are in or around Melbourne, using a Melbourne-based 3PL can help you:
Reduce some delivery times to key regions
Improve reliability by working with carriers that know local routes well
Visit the warehouse easily and build a stronger relationship with your fulfilment team
TSF Logistics operates from Epping in Melbourne’s north, supporting beauty, skincare and wellness brands with warehousing, pick & pack and end-to-end fulfilment, with a strong focus on communication, accuracy and care.
protecting your brand as you scale
Your formulations, branding and marketing might be great, but if orders are:
Late
Damaged
Incorrect
…it chips away at the trust you’ve worked so hard to build.
The right 3PL should:
Help you keep service levels high as you grow
Reduce error rates and damage
Give you clear visibility over stock and orders
Free your team to focus on product, content and community
Not sure if you’re ready for 3PL, or ready to change providers?
To help you work out where you stand, we’ve created a practical checklist:
Are You Ready for a 3PL?
A checklist for eCommerce brands that have outgrown DIY fulfilment (or a 3PL that isn’t working).
It walks you through key areas like orders, inventory, customer experience, systems, costs and your current provider (if you have one).
DOWNLOAD THE FREE CHECKLIST HERE
Or REQUEST A QUOTE below if you’d like to talk specifically about beauty, skincare or wellness fulfilment and what a more reliable setup could look like for your brand.
