Today we’d like to introduce you to Mohammed Yousuf.
Hi Mohammed, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
I came into this from the other side of the box. Before ShipLakes I was an Amazon FBA seller. I sourced products, built listings, and pretty much lived and died by my fulfillment numbers. That taught me something a lot of warehouses never really get. When your shipment is late or your count is off, it isn’t just a line on a report. It’s your livelihood.
The bigger I got, the more I saw how poorly most 3PLs treated their brands. Surprise fees. Pricing nobody could explain. Long contracts you had to sign before they’d shipped a single order for you. Nobody acted like your inventory was their own money sitting on the shelf.
So I built the partner I wish I’d had back then. ShipLakes (officially Great Lakes Fulfillments LLC) is a 3PL in Warren, Michigan. We handle receiving, storage, pick and pack, assembly, shipping, and returns for growing ecommerce brands. Orders in by 2 PM EST ship the same day, we aim for 99.5% pick accuracy, and we keep our pricing out in the open.
We opened in 2025. Today we ship for apparel brands, electronics sellers, supplement companies, and a bunch of other founder led brands like the ones I came up around. We’ve shipped more than 50,000 orders so far. I know exactly what’s riding on it when a brand hands us their inventory, because I’ve stood right where they’re standing.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Smooth? Not even close. And honestly I wouldn’t believe anyone who told you theirs was.
The hardest part came before we shipped a single order for anybody. We signed the lease and paid rent on the warehouse for almost six months before we landed our first client. Six months of money leaving the account for something we weren’t even sure would work. We had no proof yet. All we had was the belief that it had to work, and enough stubbornness to keep going every time a deal fell apart. Quitting would have been the easy call. We just didn’t take it. We kept reaching out, kept fixing the pitch, and eventually a brand said yes.
That whole stretch showed me what this business actually runs on, and that’s trust. You’re asking someone to hand over their entire inventory, the thing their business depends on, to a company they barely know. So early on I earned it one order at a time. Count it right, pack it right, get it out on time.
The other hard part is that fulfillment gives you no room to be sloppy. 99% accuracy sounds great until you do the math and realize that’s one wrong order in every hundred, and that one customer becomes a bad review. Getting tight enough to hold 99.5% took real discipline and a habit of fixing the actual cause instead of the symptom, every single time. 50,000 orders later, that’s still pretty much the whole job.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about ShipLakes ?
We’re a third party logistics partner, a 3PL, which really just means we’re the warehouse and shipping team for ecommerce brands that don’t want to run their own. You send us your inventory. We receive it, store it, and the second an order comes in we pick it, pack it, and ship it. We also handle assembly, kitting, and returns.
What makes us different starts with who built it. A former Amazon FBA seller, not some logistics giant. I price the way I always wished someone had priced me.
We publish our pricing, so you see every fee before you ever sign anything. Pick and pack starts at $1.98 an order, all in, depending on your volume. There’s a 90 day trial so you can try us without locking into a long contract, and if we’re not making your life easier, you walk. Orders in by 2 PM EST ship the same day. We aim for 99.5% accuracy because we treat your inventory like it’s our own money, and to the brands we serve it basically is.
What I’m proudest of is being the partner that founder led brands can actually grow on. The one that picks up the phone, gives you a straight answer, and ships your orders like our name is on them. Because it is.
Is there any advice you’d like to share with our readers who might just be starting out?
Get genuinely great at one thing before you add a second.
When you’re starting out you feel this pull to offer everything to everybody. Resist it. Find the one promise you can keep better than anyone near you, which for us was accuracy and shipping on time, and obsess over it until it’s basically bulletproof. In operations your reputation gets built one order at a time and wrecked by one bad one.
Here’s what I wish I’d understood sooner. Your pricing and your honesty are your marketing. I didn’t win deals by being the cheapest. I won them by being the one who’d show a brand exactly what they were paying for and put a trial behind it instead of a contract. That kind of clarity earns trust faster than any pitch.
And don’t sit around waiting to feel ready. I came from the seller side, not the warehouse side. We paid rent for six months before anyone signed. You figure out the parts you don’t know by actually doing them. Just hold every new piece of the business to the same bar as the part you’re already good at, and don’t walk away right before the proof shows up.
Pricing:
- Pick and pack starts at $1.98 per order, all in, with your monthly volume setting your rate
- Starter (0 to 99 orders a month): $2.75 per order month to month, or $2.48 on a 12 month plan
- Growth (100 to 499 orders a month): $2.48 per order month to month, or $2.23 on a 12 month plan
- Scale (500 plus orders a month): $2.20 per order month to month, or $1.98 on a 12 month plan
- New to 3PL? Try a 90 day startup trial at $3.00 per order with no long term commitment. Full fee schedule at shiplakes.com/pricing
Contact Info:
- Website: https://shiplakes.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/shiplakes_/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/shiplakes
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@ShipLakes
- Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@shiplakes
