How Made In built a hybrid omnichannel fulfillment strategy that scales

When your product carries a reputation built on quality, every touchpoint matters, including the moment it arrives at a customer's door. 

Made In was founded in 2017 with the goal of bringing chef-quality cookware to home cooks. Today, their cookware is used in over 4,000 restaurant kitchens and designed with input from some of the country's most celebrated chefs—and trusted by the home cooks who want to cook like them. That reputation creates real expectations for a stellar post-purchase experience.

As Made In scaled rapidly toward an omnichannel fulfillment model—adding EDI, wholesale, and hospitality accounts on top of a growing DTC business—the cracks in their former fulfillment setup became impossible to ignore.

Their 3PL relationship, built for a simpler version of the business, couldn't keep up. Costs were going sideways. Their past partnership felt one-sided. And the data they needed to make fast decisions simply wasn't there.

"Adaptability plus care on the other side—that's really what drove us to make a change."

— Kara Strasser, VP of Supply Chain, Made In

Flowspace became Made In's partner in building a smarter, more flexible fulfillment operation designed to grow with them, not hold them back.

The problem: An ecommerce fulfillment partner that couldn't scale

Made In didn't outgrow their previous 3PL overnight. But as the business evolved—adding new order types, new channels, and new customer expectations—the limits of a contract designed for ecommerce-only fulfillment became a real liability.

• Limited omnichannel fulfillment support: Their 3PL contract was structured for a single channel. As Made In expanded into EDI orders, B2B accounts, and special handling for hotels and restaurants, every non-standard order came at a punishing cost premium. The structure was simply too rigid.
• No cost transparency: Fulfillment costs on custom and special handling orders were unpredictable and rising, with little visibility into why or how to fix it.
• Treated like a low-priority account: Despite Made In's premium product and high growth rate, they felt like a small fish to their provider. Urgency and care, from warehouse floor to executive level, were increasingly absent.

"It was almost a square peg in a round hole. It just was not working. And it seemed at the time that we were still a little fish in this big ocean for this provider."

— Kara Strasser, VP of Supply Chain, Made In

The solution: One platform for owned and outsourced omnichannel fulfillment

When it was time to switch 3PLs, Made In didn't want to hand their entire operation over to a third party and lose visibility. Instead, they built a hybrid model: an owned-and-operated warehouse in Selma, Texas for close-to-the-product control, paired with Flowspace for national fulfillment reach.

Made In joined Flowspace in Q2 2024, starting in a New Jersey warehouse. Within six months, they relocated to a larger facility in Pennsylvania, which improved fulfillment speed and inventory accuracy.

By the end of 2024, Flowspace expanded Made In’s network into California, reducing shipping costs and optimizing coverage across the country. In 2025, Made In implemented the Flowspace WMS in their Selma facility, bringing both operations onto a single platform.

The key: both operations run on Flowspace software. That means one system, one data pipeline, and one source of truth, whether an order is shipping from Selma or a Flowspace node across the country.

With Flowspace, Made In gained: 

• Simplified batching: With a cleaner tagging system, team leads (not warehouse directors) now own the batching process day-to-day.
• Full channel flexibility: Made In's Selma facility manages EDI (Bloomingdale's, Williams Sonoma, Macy's & Crate & Barrel), B2B, and special handling orders directly, with Flowspace supporting exception volume.
• A live testing ground: New vendors, last-minute product launches, kitting requirements—Made In trials and iterates at Selma before scaling processes across the broader Flowspace nodes.

Beyond the software, the Flowspace team showed up as a real partner. Made In's product feedback has directly shaped platform improvements—most notably Inventory Allocation Pools, a feature that lets brands reserve inventory by channel and has since rolled out across other Flowspace customers to support flexible omnichannel fulfillment.

"Rather than having someone think, 'here we go again, Made In's asking for something new'—we have partners on the other side that are open to our ideas and feel supportive. Even if the ask is big, the team always rises to the occasion."

— Kara Strasser, VP of Supply Chain, Made In

The results: Measurable gains across speed, cost, and efficiency

Since implementing Flowspace, Made In has seen compounding improvements across fulfillment, operational cost, and efficiency:

• From 2024 to 2026, Made In grew 70%—while keeping the same footprint and management levels at their 1P facility in Texas.
• 10–15% reduction in cost per pick/pack/ship unit since January 2026, alongside rising order and unit volume.
• All US fulfillment data in one system. No more merging data sets or reconciling platforms to get answers.
• Made In now has full visibility into their order queue at all times—no more hidden demand on peak days. 

What fast-growing brands outpacing their 3PL contract can learn from Made In

Most 3PL agreements are written for the business you are today, not the one you're building. As Made In's channel mix shifted, their contract couldn't flex with them. The cost and operational pain that followed wasn't bad luck, but a structural mismatch that compounded over time. 

If your fulfillment setup can't accommodate new order types without penalty, that's a problem worth solving before it becomes urgent.

Made In's hybrid model (an owned facility plus Flowspace fulfillment centers and services) is worth paying attention to. It gives them hands-on control where they need it, national reach where they want it, and a low-risk environment to test new vendors, launch products, and refine processes before rolling them out more broadly. 

Running your own operation and working with a 3PL network aren't in tension. For the right brand, they reinforce each other.

The last lesson is less about logistics and more about partnership. Technology is table stakes. What actually separates a workable 3PL relationship from a great one is whether your partner listens, responds, and builds alongside you. 

For Made In, that meant a fulfillment partner willing to adapt as the business grew, not one that treated every new request as an exception.

"It's always a different theme or opportunity or new process that we are looking at—and rather than having someone think, 'here we go again,' we have partners on the other side that are open to our ideas and feel supportive along the way."

— Kara Strasser, VP of Supply Chain, Made In

Ready to scale your omnichannel fulfillment strategy?

Join brands like Made In who trust Flowspace to power fast, flexible, and transparent fulfillment. Whether you're managing your own facility, leveraging a 3PL network, or doing both, Flowspace gives you the visibility and optionality to grow on your terms.

If Made In's story before Flowspace sounds familiar—a 3PL contract that made sense once and doesn't anymore, plus the cost of leaving standing in the way the Fulfillment Freedom Fund was built for exactly that. Eligible brands can get up to $50,000 toward the cost of switching.*

Applications close September 30, 2026.

*Terms and conditions apply.