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You’re reading Behind the Curtain - insights on financial mastery, eCom entrepreneurship & building a rich life from Andrew at eComFuel.
Can Owning a Warehouse Slow Growth 90%?
Shockingly, yes.
This is one of the most surprising trends to come out of this year's report studying 300+ store owners.
Warehouse owners averages revenue growth of 4%. Business owners who leased or used a 3PL, growth was 30-35%.
A 8-9x gap.
And this was even after we controlled for business size.
The Nuance
I'm sure a part of this is correlation, not causation.
For businesses who see revenue growth slow, there's more free cash to put into a warehouse. Perfectly logical allocation decision.
But I've heard from multiple owners who said "yep, that tracks." Once the warehouse pulls in your capital and attention, the growth side of the business can quietly starve.
There's also the element of business durability. For some businesses, in-house fulfillment is a meaningful moat.
Maybe you stock 10,000 SKUs for a niche, and that's your USP. Or you do personalization which is core to your product.
Lots of instances where it makes total sense.
How to Interpret for Your Business?
So what do you do with this info?
Don't write off warehouse ownership or in-house fulfillment. But proceed cautiously.
I'd be wary to own or fulfill in-house unless I felt strongly it was a core competency or USP for my business model.
Worth asking yourself: is the warehouse serving the business, or the other way around?
💬 Inside eComFuel This Week
Top discussions from inside our private community for store owners:
- What we did to go from $1M to attaining real scale
- Advice for a messy business/family problem?
- Case Study: From declining business -> 3x revenue in 3 years.
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🔥 Forge What Matters: Lessons from the Gap Year
Last year we took a family gap year. Three kids in tow — ages 7, 10, and 12 — through Asia, Europe, Montana, and Tucson.
Homeschooling on the road and figuring it out as we went. It was magic. It also taught me a few things I wasn't expecting.
The hardest part wasn't the logistics or the homeschool meltdowns.
It was the discipline not to work.
Pulling away from a business that's always waiting to be improved turned out to be much harder than I expected.
I cut my meetings by 90% and the wheels stayed on, which is pretty telling — much of what I was doing as an owner, the business didn't actually need. At least in the short term.
A trip like this is an incredible forcing function for delegation. I set up more systems and hires in the six months leading up to the gap year than I had in the previous three years combined.
The best part wasn't the international travel, as good as that was. It was the long unhurried family dinners. The space for real conversations. The pace.
Now that we're back in the thick of school and sports, that's what we miss most.
The kids changed in impressive ways, and was one of the most fun parts of the year.
One faced their anxiety around lots of people, getting quasi-comfortable in the streets of Tokyo. Another found out travel is something that deeply lights her up and she wants to prioritize in life.
One harder lesson: I'd been telling myself I'd get to music and storytelling practice "when I had time."
I had the time. I mostly failed at both. Turns out if you're not doing the thing now, more free time won't fix it. You may just not want it enough.
The good news is that the thing you want to do — you can just start doing it now. Waiting won't help.
If you're thinking about doing something like this with your family, there's never going to be a good time. Just make it happen. Do it before the kids hit middle school.
Mix travel with a home base. And if delegation is your weak spot, book an 8-week trip somewhere with bad WiFi.
Best forcing function I know. 🙂
I did a post-gap year debrief on the podcast about what the highs, lows and what we'd do differently.
Considered doing something similar? Have questions?
Just reply to this email, would love to hear from you and I always reply.
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