Switching 3PLs Without Breaking Your Ship Dates: What the First 90 Days Look Like
The Question Every Brand Asks Before Switching: What Breaks During the Move?
Brands stay with a bad 3PL longer than they should for one reason: the fear that switching causes more damage than the problems they're already living with. A botched migration means missed ship dates, lost inventory counts, and a support ticket volume that spikes right when a brand can least afford it. That fear is reasonable. It's also solvable with the right sequence.
Weeks One and Two: Inventory Reconciliation Before Anything Ships
A real onboarding starts with counting, not shipping. Every SKU gets reconciled against the brand's existing records before a single unit moves, catching discrepancies while they're still cheap to fix instead of after they show up as a customer complaint. Nothing ships from the new warehouse until the count matches.
Weeks Three and Four: Parallel Running, Not a Hard Cutover
The riskiest way to switch 3PLs is an all-at-once cutover on a single date. A safer sequence runs both warehouses in parallel for a short window: new orders route to the new warehouse while the old one finishes fulfilling what's already in its queue. A brand never has zero warehouses live at once.
Week Five Onward: The Dashboard Replaces the Guesswork
Once inventory is reconciled and the parallel run closes out, the client dashboard becomes the source of truth. A brand that spent months getting inventory updates from a weekly email now sees pick confirmations and stock counts as they happen. This is the point where switching stops feeling risky and starts feeling like the thing that should have happened a year earlier.
What a Brand Should Ask a New 3PL About This Process
Before signing, ask for the onboarding timeline in writing, not a verbal assurance. Ask how inventory reconciliation happens, whether a parallel run is standard practice or an extra request, and who owns the relationship during the transition.
What This Looks Like at Kadia
Kadia runs new client onboarding through inventory reconciliation and a parallel-run window before a single order routes through the Dallas warehouse alone, with a dedicated account manager owning the transition from the first count to the first fully independent ship day. A brand considering the switch can ask for that onboarding plan in writing before signing anything, not after.