There’s no easing into peak season. One week you’re shipping your usual volume, and the next you’re buried in orders, watching your box stock disappear faster than you can reorder it. Ecommerce vendors see average order and revenue increases of 30% to 64% above the annual monthly average during peak.
If you’ve paused a fulfillment run to hunt for poly mailers or logged into three supplier sites to compare label delivery speeds, you know the feeling: orders and revenue are there, but a separate shipping supply chain slows you down.
That’s the moment worth solving for. Not by finding a better vendor, but by not needing one.
The Problem With a Scattered Supply Chain
Most sellers source shipping supplies the way they always have. One vendor for boxes, another for mailers and tape, maybe a third for thermal printers and labels. Each has its own reorder cadence and delivery timeline. That patchwork is tolerable in a normal month. During peak season, it’s a liability.
When order volume climbs fast, every extra step between “I need more supplies” and “the supplies are in my hands” gets more expensive. You’re not just placing an order. You have to remember which vendor sells what, check whether they have your box size in stock, and hope the delivery window fits the week you actually need it.
Running out of a box size on a Tuesday afternoon could mean you’re not shipping Tuesday afternoon’s orders. Then you’re explaining to customers why their package hasn’t moved and fielding “where’s my order” (WISMO) tickets that a fully stocked shelf would have prevented. Studies show WISMO inquiries typically account for 30% to 50% of all inbound ecommerce customer service tickets. Imagine cutting those out of your day.
None of that is really a supplies problem. It’s a customer experience problem caused by supplies living somewhere your shipping workflow doesn’t.
The ShipStation Supplies Store: Supplies, Where You Already Ship
The ShipStation Supplies Store puts boxes, mailers, tape, thermal labels, printers, and scales in the same place you already print labels and manage orders. No new vendor relationship. No extra tab open all day. You order what you need right inside the platform your shipping already runs on.
And if you don’t want to think about reordering at all, Subscribe & Save turns any product into a recurring delivery on a schedule you set. Whether your cadence is monthly or every two months, you get peace of mind and an average of 7–10% off the one-time price. Once it’s set up, your supplies show up before you have to ask. You can adjust or cancel anytime through a self-serve customer portal.
That’s the whole idea: one less system to manage and one less thing that can catch you off guard heading into your busiest weeks.
What This Means for Your Business
Heading into peak season, consolidating your supply chain into ShipStation isn’t just tidier. It changes how much attention shipping supplies need from you at all.
From supplies scramble to set-and-forget
Picture the seller who’s been through peak season before: it’s mid-November, order volume is climbing fast, and a frantic check of the stockroom turns up a nearly empty box of mailers. What follows is an afternoon spent hunting across supplier sites, comparing prices, and hoping someone can ship before the next order batch goes out.
Now picture the same seller this year. Their most-used mailers and labels are on Subscribe & Save, quietly arriving every two months since summer, ordered from the same screen where they print labels every day. When volume spikes, there’s a full shelf and one less thing to think about. No new vendor to vet, no separate order to place, no delivery date to track down. The order volume is the same. The scramble isn’t.
That’s the actual value here: not a new task added to your plate, but an old one removed from it.
Get Peak-Season Ready
Peak season rewards sellers who simplify before it starts. Keeping your shipping supplies in the same place as your shipping workflow means fewer vendors to manage and fewer ways for a busy week to catch you unprepared.
Stock up on supplies now and set up Subscribe & Save so your most-used supplies arrive on schedule. When peak season hits, you can focus on fulfilling orders—not finding the supplies to ship them.
