Size sorting, scan-verified picking, hang tag application, branded poly-bagging, retail-ready folding, and same-day returns processing — fulfilled from our Los Angeles fulfillment center for DTC fashion brands, wholesale apparel companies, Amazon FBM sellers, and subscription clothing services across activewear, streetwear, intimates, kids, footwear, and accessories.
Pick accuracy
Ship cutoff
Removal/application
Same-day processing
Apparel inbound on hangers, folded, or bulk packed via container, LTL, or small parcel. Container drayage from the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach handled directly — we are 8 miles from the ports, where most fashion brands' overseas manufacturing lands. Sorted by SKU, size, color, and style at receiving. Condition verified for transit damage, fabric defects, or quality issues before stock enters inventory.
Structured garments — blazers, dresses, suiting, outerwear, gowns — stored on hanging racks to preserve garment shape and prevent wrinkles. Folded items — t-shirts, sweaters, denim, knitwear, activewear — shelved in size-separated bins with dedicated location codes per size, color, and style variant. Naturally cool Los Angeles warehouse environment protects delicate fabrics and prevents heat damage.
Size-specific pick from organized bins. Every garment scanned against the order line before it leaves the bin. Wrong-size scans flagged immediately, preventing the wrong-size-shipped errors that drive apparel returns and damage brand trust. Color and style variants verified at the SKU level — no swapping a black tank for a navy one because they looked similar to the picker.
Folded or hung per your brand standard — sleeve fold method, size sticker placement, tissue wrap for premium pieces, ribbon ties for luxury garments. Branded poly-bag applied per spec with documented placement of barcodes and hang-sell hole punches. Hang tags, care labels, security tags, RFID tags, or marketing inserts added if required for retail or DTC presentation.
Carrier-optimized routing — poly-mailer for soft goods, structured box for delicate or premium pieces, garment box for hanging items. Multi-carrier rate shopping at the order level across UPS, USPS, FedEx, DHL, and regional carriers to balance cost and delivery promise per shipment. Apparel often qualifies for cheaper poly-mailer rates that other carriers won't match.
Apparel returns received, inspected for condition, odor, fabric damage, and completeness. Sellable returns re-folded to your standard, re-poly bagged, and restocked same day. Return reason codes tracked by size, color, and style to surface fit, sizing chart, photo accuracy, or quality issues at the source so you can reduce returns over time.
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Every size, color, style, and fit variant gets its own dedicated bin location with a unique location code. No size mix-ups, no color confusion, no wrong-fit errors. Scan-verified picking ensures the size on the order matches the size in the box on every single shipment — and our 99.8% accuracy rate across millions of garments proves the system works.
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Hang tag application and removal, price sticker swaps, security tag application, RFID tag handling, and care label compliance — all executed per brand or retail account requirements. Wholesale-bound and DTC-bound prep handled simultaneously from the same pick — wholesale gets retail hang tags, DTC gets clean presentation, both fulfilled from one inventory.
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Your branded poly-bags applied to every garment with custom labels, hang-sell hole punch, barcode placement, and brand voice messaging. Sustainable poly-bag options including recycled and compostable mailers supported for brands prioritizing environmental impact and Gen Z customer expectations.
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We document and follow your exact folding standard — sleeve fold method, neckline orientation, size sticker placement, tissue paper layering for premium pieces, ribbon ties for luxury garments. Photographed reference standards ensure consistency across every packer and every shift. Every garment looks the same in every box, every time.
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Apparel returns hit 30-40% in fashion categories. We process returns same-day with garment-specific inspection — checking for wear, odor, makeup transfer, deodorant marks, perfume residue, and fabric damage. Sellable returns re-folded, re-poly bagged, and restocked within 24 hours of receipt. 85% average resellable recovery rate back to Grade A inventory.
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Wholesale retail prep and DTC fulfillment from the same inventory pool. Different packaging specs, different labeling requirements, different routing guides, different chargeback risks — but same precision. One warehouse, one inventory, one source of truth for every channel — Shopify, Amazon, TikTok Shop, Faire, and direct retail.
Apparel fulfillment is significantly more complex than standard ecommerce fulfillment for three structural reasons. First, every garment carries multiple attributes that must all be correct on every order — size, color, style, fit, length, sometimes inseam or cup size. Shipping a customer the wrong size is operationally identical to shipping the wrong product entirely, but the error rate is far higher because warehouse staff must distinguish between visually similar items dozens of times per pick.
Second, apparel has the highest return rate of any major ecommerce category — typically 30% in standard fashion and climbing to 40% or higher in fit-sensitive categories like denim, footwear, and intimates. A 3PL without a dedicated apparel returns operation will accumulate weeks of unprocessed returns, lock up working capital in the returns queue, and lose track of which units are actually sellable.
Third, presentation matters enormously. A wrinkled, sloppily-folded shirt arriving in a crumpled poly-bag damages your brand the moment a customer opens the package. The unboxing photo posted to Instagram or TikTok becomes the customer's first and only physical brand impression, and apparel customers expect retail-store-quality presentation when buying online. 3PLCity is purpose-built for all three challenges — our bin system prevents size mix-ups before they happen, our scan-verified picking catches the rare ones that slip through, our folding protocols match your brand standard exactly, and our returns operation processes garments same-day so you never have inventory tied up in the returns queue.
Apparel return rates between 30-40% mean that for a fashion brand shipping $5M annually, $1.5-2M of product flows back through returns every single year. The difference between a 60% recovery rate and an 85% recovery rate on that volume is $375,000-500,000 in recovered margin annually — enough to fund a new product line, an entire marketing channel, or your next round of hiring.
Most apparel 3PLs treat returns as a cost center to minimize, not an inventory recovery operation to optimize. They batch returns into weekly processing queues, grade conservatively (writing off Grade B items that could be relisted as open-box), and miss the patterns in return reasons that point at fixable upstream problems — sizing chart accuracy, photo quality, fit guidance, fabric weight expectations. 3PLCity treats apparel returns as a margin recovery function: graded daily, restocked within 24 hours, and reported by SKU/size/color so your product and marketing teams can fix the source of the returns instead of just processing them faster after the fact.
Most apparel brands import from overseas — primarily China, Vietnam, Bangladesh, India, Turkey, and Pakistan. Your containers arrive at the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach before they go anywhere else in the country. Our Gardena facility sits 8 miles from the ports, which means we receive containers directly via local drayage and stage your inventory within hours of port release. A Midwest warehouse adds 5-7 days of cross-country transit and $4,000-$8,000 per 40-foot container in drayage cost before your apparel can even ship to customers.
For high-volume fashion brands importing 20-50 containers per year, this geographic advantage compounds into $80,000-$400,000 annually in saved drayage cost alone — not counting the inventory turn improvement from getting product into fulfillment 5-7 days faster every cycle. From Los Angeles, 96% of the U.S. population is reachable in 2 business days via ground, keeping your delivery times competitive on every order. Add the naturally cool LA warehouse environment that protects delicate fabrics, the major carrier hub access for the best apparel-class poly-mailer rates, and the same-day returns processing — and California fulfillment becomes the obvious choice for fashion brands.
Every size, color, style, and fit variant has a dedicated bin location in our warehouse with a unique location code. Pickers scan the barcode of each garment before placing it in the order, and our WMS validates the scan against the order line in real time. If the scanned SKU doesn't match the order's size or color requirement, the pick is flagged immediately and the garment is rejected. This systematic approach achieves 99.8% size and color pick accuracy across millions of apparel units — and the rare error gets caught before the package leaves the building, not after the customer files a complaint.
Yes. Structured garments — blazers, suiting, dresses, outerwear, gowns, leather pieces — are stored on hanging racks to preserve garment shape and prevent wrinkles that would damage the unboxing experience. Folded items — t-shirts, denim, knitwear, sweaters, activewear, basics — are shelved in size-separated bins. We document your preferred storage method per SKU during onboarding so structured and folded inventory are handled correctly from receiving through ship, and we follow your folding standard exactly so every garment looks identical in every box.
Apparel returns are processed same-day at our facility. Each returned garment is inspected for visible wear, odor, makeup transfer, deodorant marks, perfume residue, fabric damage, and completeness of original packaging and tags. Sellable returns are re-folded to your brand standard, re-poly bagged, and restocked within 24 hours — typically achieving 85% Grade A resellable recovery. We track return reasons by SKU, size, color, and style to surface fit issues, sizing chart problems, photo accuracy gaps, or quality defects before they generate more returns. The data drives meaningful return rate reduction over 6-12 months.
Yes. We apply hang tags, price stickers, security tags, RFID tags, SKU labels, country-of-origin labels, and care label additions per retail account requirements. If you have different prep specifications for different retail accounts — Nordstrom requires one tag format, Target requires another, Costco requires UPC-A barcodes on hang tags, your boutique wholesale accounts have a fourth — we maintain separate prep instructions per account and execute the correct prep based on the destination of each shipment. Wholesale-bound and DTC-bound orders run from the same inventory but get account-specific prep at pack-out.
Yes. Children's apparel sold in the U.S. requires CPSIA tracking labels listing manufacturer, country of origin, batch number, and date of manufacture on every garment. We verify CPSIA label compliance at receiving, can apply tracking labels during fulfillment prep if your manufacturer didn't include them, and maintain documentation for compliance audits or recall events. We also handle the lead-content testing certificate documentation that some retailers require for children's apparel inbound.
DTC fashion brands selling on Shopify, TikTok Shop, and their own websites. Amazon FBM sellers and brands prepping for FBA. Wholesale apparel companies shipping to department stores, boutiques, big-box retailers, and Faire/Abound buyers. Subscription clothing services, monthly styling boxes, and rental platforms. Activewear and performance apparel brands. Kids and baby clothing brands with CPSIA requirements. Footwear, accessories, intimates, swimwear, denim, outerwear, sleepwear, sock and underwear brands. Every apparel category we serve gets the same size precision, branded presentation, and returns workflow.
