Frequently Asked Questions

Launch Fulfilment UK is the UK arm of Launch Fulfillment, a premium 3PL (Third-Party Logistics) company. We operate from our FHDDS-accredited, HMRC-approved bonded warehouse in Seaham, County Durham, specialising in supplement, beauty, and DTC ecommerce fulfilment.

Unit 5, Fox Cover Enterprise, Admiralty Way, Seaham, County Durham, SR7 7DN. For planning purposes: we sit on the A19 corridor in North East England, inside the overnight collection windows of the major UK carriers, and close to the Tyne and Teesport container terminals for inbound sea freight.

We specialise in supplements, health & wellness, beauty & cosmetics, and subscription box fulfilment. These are compliance-intensive categories that require specialist handling, lot tracking, temperature control, and regulatory expertise.

Our order accuracy rate is 99.8%, achieved through a modern WMS, rigorous quality control, and dedicated account management.

An HMRC registration that any facility storing goods for overseas sellers has to hold. We hold it. In practice it means we run identity, VAT-status and record-keeping checks on every overseas client, and keep those records available to HMRC on request.

An HMRC-approved facility where customs duty and import VAT on your stock are suspended rather than paid on arrival. The charge only falls due if and when goods are released into the UK market, so anything you re-export never attracts a UK charge at all. Ours is in Seaham.

Not personally — the obligation sits with the facility, not with you. If you are an overseas seller holding stock in the UK, the warehouse holding it must be FHDDS-registered. So the thing to ask a prospective provider is for their registration number, rather than whether they are "compliant".

With bonded warehousing, you only pay customs duty and VAT when goods are released for sale in the UK. This means you do not pay tax on unsold inventory, returned goods, or stock destined for re-export, rather than paying upfront on stock that may sit for months.

The major carts and marketplaces, plus most of the mid-tier ones. If you are on something unusual, ask and we will tell you straight whether it is a native connector or a middleware step. What matters more than the list is the sync direction: our WMS pushes stock levels back to every connected channel, which is what stops you selling the same unit twice.

Yes, for orders in before the daily cut-off. The more useful question — worth asking any provider — is whether that cut-off still holds in November and December. Ours is given to each client during onboarding rather than buried in a contract, so you can plan promotions around it.

Yes. We provide full subscription box fulfilment including kitting, assembly, custom packaging, and recurring despatch cycles. We work with beauty, supplement, and lifestyle subscription brands.

Yes. We provide returns processing including receipt, quality inspection, restocking, and reporting. Our WMS tracks returns at the SKU level and provides full visibility into return reasons and volumes.

Yes. In practice the UK side comes down to four things that have to happen in roughly this order: a UK VAT registration, an EORI number, an FHDDS-registered facility to hold the stock, and a decision about whether to import duty-paid or hold it in bond. We run the warehouse side of that and point you at specialists for the tax side.

If you hold stock in the UK to sell to UK customers, then almost certainly yes — holding goods here generally creates the obligation whatever your turnover, so the usual domestic threshold is not the test. We are a fulfilment provider and not a tax adviser, so we will tell you when to get one and what they are going to ask you for.

Two to four weeks is typical, but the timeline is almost never set by us — it is set by how fast your stock physically arrives and, for overseas sellers, whether the VAT registration is already through. Integration and test orders take days. Waiting on a container or an HMRC number takes as long as it takes.

We provide bespoke pricing based on your product type, order volume, storage needs, and service requirements. We do not believe in one-size-fits-all pricing — every brand receives a transparent quote tailored to their specific operation.

No hard floor, but there is a point below which a 3PL costs you more than packing orders yourself. Most brands cross it somewhere in the low hundreds of orders a month, depending on how much of your own time is going into despatch. Send us your monthly volume and average items per order and we will say plainly whether we are the right move yet.

The easiest way to get started is to request a free quote. We will review your products, volumes, and compliance requirements, then provide a bespoke fulfilment proposal within 48 hours.