From the perspective of entrepreneur Hugo Galvao de Franca Filho, Mercado Livre’s full service carries a contradiction that many sellers in the pet sector only notice on their invoice: the same service that speeds up deliveries can erode the margin on part of the catalog. Full is the platform’s fulfillment service, in which sellers send their inventory to Mercado Livre’s distribution centers, and the company takes over the storage, picking, packing, and dispatch of every order.
The alternative is in-house shipping, in which the store keeps its own inventory and ships orders using its own structure or contracted carriers. Neither model is better in every situation, and the choice depends on the type of product, how quickly it sells, and the weight of each item. Comparing the two, under the cost rules currently in effect, helps decide what goes to the distribution center and what stays at home. It is worth running these numbers before the next inventory shipment.
What Full offers sellers
Full’s main advantage is delivery time. Since the product is already at the distribution center, the order ships right after the purchase, and in some state capitals and metropolitan areas, delivery can take place the next day. Listings also carry the service’s label, which buyers can use as a search filter. For sellers, this means more visibility and less operational work, since no stage of the delivery goes through the team’s hands.
In the pet market, this advantage carries particular weight. Many purchases are urgent replacements, made when a collar has snapped or the dog’s favorite toy has fallen apart, and pet owners are inclined to choose whoever delivers first. Hugo Galvao notes, however, that fast delivery is only half of the equation: the other half is how much it costs to keep each product sitting in the platform’s warehouse while it waits for that quick sale.
Where the cost of Full shows up
With Full, sellers pay for the storage of each unit according to its dimensions and weight, in addition to the logistics services of the operation. Recent rules have also begun to penalize slow-moving inventory: items stored for more than six months saw a 6.4% increase in storage costs, and products that go 90 days without a single sale receive an additional 30-day window to sell or be removed. Keeping slow-selling merchandise at the distribution center, therefore, has become more expensive.
This is where the pet catalog calls for care. Large bags of pet food, packs of cat litter, dog houses, and pet carriers take up a lot of space and weigh on shipping costs, which are now also calculated based on actual weight and dimensional weight, a measure that relates the package’s volume to its weight. In addition, some perishable and very bulky products are not even eligible for the program. In the perception of Hugo Galvao de Franca Filho, sending these items to Full without calculating the cost per unit is a way to sell well and profit little.
In-house shipping: more control and more work
With in-house shipping, the store keeps its inventory under its own control and chooses how to dispatch each order, which gives it the freedom to negotiate shipping rates for heavy items and to use packaging suited to fragile products. The same inventory serves every channel at once, from marketplaces to the company’s own online store, such as www.enjoypets.com.br, without units being split across different warehouses. On the other hand, picking, packing, and delivery come to depend on the team and on internal routines.
This model comes at a price in terms of delivery time and organization. Without the structure of a large distribution center, a store will hardly match Full’s fastest delivery times in the regions it covers, and any picking error turns into a delay or an exchange. Hugo Galvao advises that in-house shipping be treated as an operation with defined indicators, such as the time between purchase and dispatch and the error rate, and not as a task squeezed in between the store’s other activities.
A split by product profile
In most cases, the comparison does not end with choosing a single model. Small, light, fast-selling products, such as collars, leashes, toys, and grooming accessories, are likely to benefit from Full, because the inventory moves out before it builds up storage costs. Heavy, bulky, or slow-selling items, on the other hand, generally prove more profitable with in-house shipping, where freight can be negotiated and the product does not pay for idle space.
The transition also calls for caution. Rather than sending all inventory to the distribution center at once, it makes more sense to start with the best-selling items, track costs for a few weeks, and expand based on the results. For Hugo Galvao de Franca Filho, this split by product profile is what makes it possible to take advantage of Full’s speed without handing over the items that only turn a profit when they remain under the store’s own control.
