Apple, Nike, Coca-Cola, Amazon, Google, Meta, and Procter & Gamble are documented examples of US companies that outsource. Their external partners handle work ranging from manufacturing and delivery to IT and content moderation.
Smaller brands also outsource recurring work. Rylee + Cru, Ode à la Rose, quip, FOCL, and Legacy Box use outside specialists for ecommerce operations, email, support, and other functions.
Below, compare the companies, the work they delegate, and the models behind each arrangement. The examples include both current and historical relationships; check source dates before treating any arrangement as current.
US Companies That Outsource: A Quick Comparison
Compare the outsourced function, delivery partner, and dated source for each example.
The second table covers growth-stage US brands that outsource marketing and operations work to dedicated GrowthAssistant specialists. The results come from each brand's published case study.
What Counts as Outsourcing (and What Doesn't)
Outsourcing means paying an outside company or professional to do work your own employees would otherwise do. The difference between outsourcing and offshoring comes down to who employs the people. Offshoring describes where the work happens; outsourcing describes who does it.
That distinction changes how you read many “US companies that outsource” lists. Several widely cited examples are company-owned service centers abroad, often called captive centers. Those are offshoring: the company hires and manages the team itself.
The examples here involve an outside manufacturer, vendor, agency, or specialist provider doing the work.
Outsourcing also comes in different shapes. A contract manufacturer delivers finished goods to a specification. A business process outsourcing (BPO) firm runs a function, such as customer support, under a service agreement. A dedicated specialist works inside your tools and on your schedule, with your team setting priorities. Most of the examples below fit one of those three models.
The Biggest US Companies That Outsource
These eight examples show how outsourcing works across manufacturing, logistics, technology, and business services.
1. Apple: manufacturing and final assembly
What it outsources: Apple's fiscal 2024 Form 10-K states that substantially all of its manufacturing is performed in whole or in part by outsourcing partners located primarily in China mainland, India, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Vietnam. Final assembly of substantially all of its hardware happens at partners primarily in Asia.
How it works: Apple keeps design, software, and the supplier relationships in-house and buys manufacturing capacity from partners. The same filing flags the trade-off: Apple relies on single-source partners for many components, which concentrates supply risk.
What marketing leaders can borrow: keep ownership of the parts that define your product, such as positioning and creative direction, and outsource the volume work around them. Know which of your outsourced tasks have a single point of failure.
2. Nike: footwear and apparel production
What it outsources: Nike's fiscal 2026 Form 10-K states that nearly all of its footwear and apparel is made outside the US by independent manufacturers. In fiscal 2026, 15 contract manufacturers made Nike Brand footwear across 95 factories in 11 countries, and 64 contract manufacturers made its apparel across 321 factories in 34 countries.
How it works: production is concentrated with a relatively small group of partners. Factories in Vietnam alone made about 52% of Nike Brand footwear in fiscal 2026. Nike sets the product, quality, and sourcing standards; the partners run the factories.
What marketing leaders can borrow: concentration lets you build deep working relationships with a few partners, but it also concentrates risk. Write down the standards every deliverable must meet before you hand off the work.
3. The Coca-Cola Company: bottling and distribution
What it outsources: Coca-Cola's fiscal 2025 Form 10-K states that most of its branded beverages are prepared, packaged, distributed, and sold by independent bottling partners, and that its bottlers “are independent contractors and are not our agents.” Its five largest bottling partners represented 44% of worldwide unit case volume in 2025.
How it works: Coca-Cola sells concentrates and syrups and owns the brands and marketing. Bottlers combine the concentrate with water and sweeteners, package the drinks, and sell them to retailers in their territories.
What marketing leaders can borrow: the brand owner controls the brand, and partners control local execution. The same split works for marketing: keep the brand standards and calendar, and hand off production within clear guidelines.
4. Amazon: last-mile delivery
What it outsources: much of Amazon's last-mile package delivery runs through its Delivery Service Partner program. In a September 2025 update, Amazon described a network of about 4,500 small business owners and said it was investing $1.9 billion in the program that year, for a total of $16.7 billion over seven years.
How it works: each DSP is an independent business that hires and manages its own drivers. Amazon supplies the technology, routing, and delivery standards, and pays the partners to operate routes.
What marketing leaders can borrow: when volume swings, a network of partners can scale faster than headcount. It only works with shared tools and clear performance standards that every partner follows.
5. Alphabet (Google): temps, vendors, and contractors
What it outsources: leaked internal figures reported by The New York Times and covered by Fast Company in May 2019 showed that, as of March 2019, Google had about 121,000 temporary, vendor, and contract workers worldwide, compared with about 102,000 full-time employees.
How it works: these workers are usually employed by outside staffing and services firms and often work side by side with Google employees. The 2019 figures are a historical snapshot, not a current headcount.
What marketing leaders can borrow: even the most sought-after employers mix employees with outside talent. The open question is less whether to use outside talent and more how to integrate it so the work stays consistent.
6. Meta: content moderation
What it outsources: a June 2020 NYU Stern Center for Business and Human Rights report found that 15,000 workers moderated Facebook and Instagram content, the overwhelming majority employed by third-party vendors. It named Accenture, Competence Call Center, CPL Resources, Genpact, and Majorel among the firms running that work.
How it works: Meta sets the content policies and tools, and vendors hire, train, and manage the reviewers. The same report argued that content moderation was too central to the business to sit fully outside it.
What marketing leaders can borrow: outsource the volume, but keep ownership of the decisions that carry brand or reputational risk. Customer-facing work needs written policies and a clear escalation path.
7. Procter & Gamble: IT, payroll, and facilities
What it outsources: in 2003, P&G signed $4.2 billion of outsourcing partnerships, according to a 2008 McKinsey interview with the head of its Global Business Services unit. HP took over IT infrastructure and applications, and about 2,000 P&G employees in 48 countries moved to HP. IBM took over employee services such as payroll and travel, and Jones Lang LaSalle took over facilities management.
How it works: InformationWeek reported at the time that the HP contract was a 10-year, $3 billion deal, the IBM contract covered almost 98,000 employees in nearly 80 countries for $400 million over 10 years, and the Jones Lang LaSalle contract was worth $700 million over five years. These are historical contracts, not a description of P&G's current setup.
What marketing leaders can borrow: P&G centralized its shared services first, then decided which pieces to buy from partners. Map and standardize your workflows before you outsource them, or you will outsource the mess too.
8. Slack: building the first version
What it outsources: Slack is a startup-stage example. According to SaaStr, Slack outsourced part of its first version to the design agency MetaLab, which says it built the entire 1.0, including the mobile apps. Exactly how much MetaLab built is unclear, but Slack's use of outside help is not.
How it works: a small team set the product direction and used an agency for design and build capacity it did not have in-house yet.
What marketing leaders can borrow: outsourcing is not only a cost play for large companies. Early teams use it to get to market before they can hire every skill full-time.
Growth-Stage US Brands That Outsource Marketing and Operations
Large companies outsource whole functions. Growth-stage brands more often outsource specific roles, such as email production, ecommerce operations, customer support, or reporting, to dedicated specialists who work inside their team. The eight GrowthAssistant client examples below show the work assigned, the operating model, and reported outcomes.
Rylee + Cru: ecommerce operations, support, and design
What it outsources: the premium children's and women's clothing brand added three Growth Assistants: a Shopify operations specialist, a customer experience specialist, and a static designer.
How it works: the Shopify specialist uploads 150 to 400 SKUs per product drop, the CX specialist handles tickets in the brand's voice, including off-hours coverage, and the designer handles image retouching. Each role has a separate owner on the internal team, an approach that matches how many brands structure Shopify store management as volume grows.
Reported result: according to the Rylee + Cru case study, the team handled 12 drops in one season and more than 5,500 tickets a month with CSAT consistently above 4.5, at about 70% lower cost than US-based entry-level hires.
Ode à la Rose: email marketing
What it outsources: the premium floral brand replaced its email agency with one full-time Growth Assistant embedded in its email program.
How it works: the specialist works in Klaviyo daily, communicates over Slack, and plans the newsletter calendar with the brand's creative director in Monday.com. The send strategy moved to fewer versions and tighter lists, the kind of setup that lets a brand outsource email marketing without sacrificing quality.
Reported result: the Ode à la Rose case study reports newsletter and campaign revenue up 29% in Q1 2026 versus Q1 2025, with no increase in sends, and 25% to 50% fewer feedback rounds.
Monkedia: creative and analytics capacity
What it outsources: the agency replaced full-time roles with Growth Assistants who handle defined portions of its creative and analytics work.
How it works: after moving fully remote, Monkedia's team was booked six weeks out. Growth Assistants took on production work so developers and senior creatives could focus on higher-value tasks.
Reported result: the Monkedia case study reports costs about 50% lower than prior staffing, landing pages delivered in about two weeks instead of three to four, and a pipeline that cleared from six weeks out to about two.
Headlight: reporting, data, and ad operations
What it outsources: the growth marketing agency, which grew from 4 to 30 people, added three Growth Assistants across data and marketing.
How it works: the first hire started with report preparation and, three years later, is a senior data engineer on Headlight's team. The second builds ads and runs search query analysis; the third took over recurring reporting so the others could move to more advanced work.
Reported result: the Headlight case study reports more than 120 hours a week reclaimed from manual tasks and a 40% improvement in overall efficiency.
quip: email operations and creator outreach
What it outsources: the oral care brand, which turned to GrowthAssistant after expensive agencies proved ineffective, embedded two Growth Assistants.
How it works: one specialist streamlined email campaigns and built core processes; the other ran data-driven outreach to content creators who promote quip products, work that overlaps with outsourcing affiliate program management.
Reported result: the quip case study quotes the brand on one specialist's work: “These projects ultimately have hundreds of thousands of dollars of direct impact at quip.”
FOCL: operations and supply planning
What it outsources: FOCL brought in one Growth Assistant to own operational workflows after several 3PL transitions left thousands of backorders.
How it works: within the first month, the specialist took ownership of ClickUp, purchase orders, demand planning, and forecasting, and moved work that had been scattered across spreadsheets, Slack, and texts into one system.
Reported result: the FOCL case study reports a 9.5 out of 10 performance rating after 30 days and a system that held as LTL shipments grew from 8 in 2024 to 72 in 2025.
Legacy Box: customer support
What it outsources: after inbound volume tripled, Legacy Box replaced virtual assistants from another provider with Growth Assistants for customer support.
How it works: the specialists handle service requests and chat support and keep help articles up to date, working as part of the in-house support team. Many teams pair this with a broader plan for customer experience support.
Reported result: according to the Legacy Box case study, customer wait times dropped from months to weeks without adding full-time headcount.
Unbloat: a lean DTC brand run with two specialists
What it outsources: the DTC supplement brand, run by its CEO without a large internal team, added two Growth Assistants.
How it works: one owns operations and CX, built the Klaviyo email flow, manages the influencer and affiliate program, and maintains SOPs. The other produces dozens of ad creative variations a week for Facebook, the brand's biggest channel.
Reported result: the Unbloat case study describes a business run by the CEO with two specialists covering operations and growth, with more Growth Assistants being added for customer success and reporting.
These outcomes describe each client's engagement and are not guaranteed results for another company.
What US Companies Outsource Most Often
The examples fall into six recurring categories:
- Manufacturing and assembly: Apple and Nike buy production capacity from contract manufacturers instead of owning factories.
- Logistics and delivery: Amazon routes last-mile delivery through independent partners, and Coca-Cola's bottlers handle distribution in their territories.
- Customer support: BPO firms and dedicated specialists run tickets, chat, and help content, as Legacy Box and Rylee + Cru do.
- IT and back-office services: P&G moved IT, payroll, and HR services to HP and IBM.
- Trust and safety: Meta's content review relies on outside vendors.
- Marketing execution: email production, ad creative, reporting, ecommerce operations, and creator outreach, as in the Ode à la Rose, Headlight, Unbloat, and quip examples.
Marketing is where growth-stage companies usually start, because the work is recurring, measurable, and done in software your team already uses. A marketing outsourcing arrangement can be as small as one role.
Who US Companies Outsource To
Providers range from small specialist teams to large outsourcing firms. RevenueBase's database of outsourcing services companies counted 2,779 based in the United States as of September 14, 2026. The median company had 11 to 50 employees, while 23 had more than 10,000.
By contacts tracked in that database, prominent firms include TTEC (Austin), HGS (Chicago), IBEX (Washington, DC), and VXI Global Solutions (Los Angeles), mostly customer experience and BPO firms.
In practice, US companies outsource to four kinds of partners:
- Contract manufacturers and logistics partners for physical production and delivery.
- BPO and IT services firms for support centers, back-office processing, and technology operations.
- Agencies and freelancers for projects, campaigns, and specialist skills.
- Dedicated talent providers that place a full-time specialist inside your team, the model behind the growth-stage examples above. The leading offshore staffing agencies differ widely in vetting, support, and pricing.
Why US Companies Outsource
Five business needs commonly drive these decisions:
- Lower cost and capital. Nike and Apple avoid owning factories. Rylee + Cru reports costs about 70% lower than US entry-level hires.
- Capacity that flexes with volume. Amazon's partner network absorbs delivery peaks; Legacy Box handled tripled inbound volume without new full-time headcount.
- Specialist skills. P&G bought IT and HR expertise at scale; Ode à la Rose brought in a Klaviyo specialist.
- Speed. Monkedia cut landing-page delivery from three to four weeks to about two.
- Coverage across time zones. Rylee + Cru's CX specialist covers off-hours tickets, so customers wait less.
Cost alone rarely justifies the move. The stronger case is usually capacity: senior people stop doing production work and spend their time on decisions only they can make. The pros and cons of outsourcing depend on how well that handoff is designed.
Where AI Fits When Companies Outsource
AI is changing what gets outsourced, but it has not removed the need for skilled people. In Deloitte's 2024 survey, 83% of executives said they already use AI as part of their outsourced services.
GrowthAssistant also tested an AI-led SEO workflow. As described in our AI agent case study, we replaced a Growth Assistant with a $999-a-month AI SEO agent that published two to three articles a day.
Impressions rose 75%, but clicks rose only 6%, and no page reached the top five in three months. After a Growth Assistant took the work back with AI as a tool, pages ranked at positions 2, 4, 6, and 8.
That experience is why every Growth Assistant is AI-certified before placement: the value comes from a specialist who uses AI well, not from AI working alone.
How to Choose the Right Outsourcing Model
The right model depends on the work, not the vendor. Use this comparison to match the gap on your team to a delivery model:
For marketing work, the choice usually comes down to an agency, a freelancer, or a dedicated specialist. Weighing in-house marketing against outsourcing first helps you decide which work should stay with employees at all.
The difference between embedded talent and an agency matters most when the work is daily and depends on context about your brand.
How US Companies Find and Vet Outsourcing Partners
Most companies build a shortlist from referrals, directories, marketplaces, and specialist providers, then test candidates against their real workload. The steps that separate good partners from bad ones are consistent across the process US companies use to find outsourcing partners:
- Define the weekly volume, required skills, approval process, and working hours before the first call.
- Ask who will actually do the work, and evaluate that person or team on a task that reflects the role.
- Check references from clients with similar workloads and tools.
- Agree on acceptance criteria, data access, replacement terms, and exit terms in writing.
A recognizable client logo does not prove a provider will fit your workflow. Most problems come from unclear scope, slow approvals, turnover, or the wrong delivery model, which are the most common pain points US companies face when they outsource.
Track on-time delivery, rework, and internal review hours alongside business results from the first month.
Hiring Offshore: Time Zones, Holidays, 13th-Month Pay, and Classification
Most of the cost savings in these examples come from working with talent outside the US. Settle four questions before you start:
- Time zones: name the working hours and time zone in the agreement. Latin America shares most of the US workday, and many specialists in the Philippines work US hours. Teams weighing nearshore versus offshore outsourcing should compare actual schedules, not just distance.
- Holidays: local public holidays don't match the US calendar. Agree on coverage for launches and recurring deadlines that fall on those days.
- 13th-month pay: in the Philippines, Presidential Decree No. 851 requires employers to pay rank-and-file employees at least one-twelfth of their annual basic salary by December 24. Mexico and Brazil have similar year-end pay rules. Ask whether a provider's rate includes it.
- Classification: a contract label does not settle whether someone is a contractor or an employee. The IRS guidance on worker classification looks at control and the overall relationship, and local rules apply in the worker's country. An employer of record, or a provider that handles payroll and compliance, takes on that responsibility.
Whether a US company can hire a foreign employee directly depends on the setup you choose, so involve your HR or legal owner before you commit. For the most common offshore destination for marketing roles, the realities of outsourcing to the Philippines include strong English skills and broad experience working US hours.
Outsource Marketing Execution with GrowthAssistant
GrowthAssistant places full-time, AI-certified marketing and operations specialists who work inside your tools, on your schedule, as part of your team. Your leaders keep the strategy and approvals; your Growth Assistant handles the recurring execution, from email marketing and design to reporting and analytics.
Only about 1 in 400 applicants passes our vetting, and average tenure is more than two years. Each placement has a dedicated success manager, payroll, benefits, and compliance are handled for you, and every placement is backed by our 100% Match Guarantee, with free replacements at any time.
More than 200 brands work with GrowthAssistant, including HubSpot, DoorDash, Dr. Squatch, Calm, and Harry's.
Pricing: full-time Growth Assistants cost $3,500, $4,000, or $4,500 a month on our rate card, or $42,000 to $54,000 a year. Rylee + Cru reports paying about 70% less than for US-based entry-level hires, and Monkedia about 50% less than its prior staffing.
Find My Match: tell us what work needs an owner, which skills you need, and when your team works.
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