Accelerating Smart Savings For DTC Brands

At Operating Crew, we help brands with mid 8- to 9-figure revenue tap into pre-built packaging, shipping, and 3PL solutions to secure market-leading supply chain rates.

With over a decade of experience in DTC operations, we can quickly tailor solutions to boost your profitability and optimize your supply chain.

Packaging

Packaging touches more of your business than most people realize — it affects landed costs, lead times, the customer unboxing experience, and your brand perception all at once. Getting it wrong is expensive. Getting it right compounds.

We bring a network of 1,000+ domestic and overseas manufacturers along with the technical depth to navigate material, print, and structural decisions with you — so you're not just finding cheaper boxes, you're building the right packaging program for where your brand is headed.

What we do:

  • Primary and secondary packaging across all formats — food pouches to mailer boxes to shipping cartons

  • Guidance on color, print, and material choices that affect both cost and quality

  • Box right-sizing and DIM weight optimization to reduce what you're actually spending per shipment

You might be ready for us if you're saying:

"We're doing a brand refresh" — "It took us 9 weeks to get boxes from China" — "Customers aren't happy with the unboxing experience."

Parcel Shipping

Shipping costs are one of the fastest levers on your P&L — in both directions. We help brands access exclusive rates with FedEx, UPS, Amazon, and regional carriers, and build a carrier strategy that's right for your product mix and order volume, whether you're shipping lipstick or a sectional sofa.

We don't just hand you a rate card. We stay involved — helping you optimize carrier selection over time as your business evolves, saving brands 10-25% on shipping costs.

What we do:

  • Procure exclusive negotiated rates across FedEx, UPS, Amazon, and regional carriers

  • Coverage from lightweight parcels through heavy and oversized freight

  • Carrier strategy, selection, and ongoing optimization

You might be ready for us if you're saying:

"Shipping is killing my margins" — "We lose money on every order under $X" — "I can't believe I'm paying $85 to ship this."

Shipping dashboard for Kolkata Chai Co. displaying graphs for daily orders by carrier, on-time performance, transit days, and shipping savings from April 23 to May 3.
FedEx logo with purple "Fed" and orange "Ex," featuring an arrow between E and x.
UPS logo, brown shield with yellow letters "ups"
DHL logo with red text on a yellow background.
Warehouse interior with shelves labeled A to E, containing green storage bins and boxes.

3PL Partner Search

Finding the right 3PL is hard. Managing the transition is harder. We handle both — from identifying partners that actually fit your operation to running the full search and transition process until shipments are going out the door from a new warehouse.

We're not a directory, and we don't disappear after the intro. We place brands with partners we know well and stay accountable for how it goes.

What we do:

  • Curated 3PL recommendations based on fit, not just who's available

  • Full search and transition management, end to end

  • Support for brands adding B2B and retail fulfillment alongside DTC

You might be ready for us if you're saying:

"Our 3PL isn't keeping up with our growth" — "Getting them to do simple things is like pulling teeth" — "We just got into Target all-doors."

Read more about how we work with brands here.