the term was in use for technical equipment provisioning, configuration and delivery as far back as 2003 in my direct experience, but i'm sure they had been using it since probably the 1980s. i worked with a guy whose job at a commercial client-focused telecom company was "fulfillment" in that he made sure some highly specific telecom equipment arrived at a customer's premises inside a certain window and was either configured ahead of time and ready to connect, hand delivered and configured/installed by a tech, or arrived not-yet configured but with a tech arriving to do the configuration and install on site. and this was often coordinated with the customer's in house network integrator / tech guy to deal with their end.

it was a catch all term (logistical fulfillment of service equipment at customer's premises) for a monitored and tightly managed shipping system involving a technical process at some point in the chain. when the circuit was up and everything was working, the order was "fulfilled" and then part of the general customer base. and until that happened the first time, the buck stopped with him as he "owned" any issues during that initial process since he could track all the equipment with shippers from manufacturers and intervene to make sure it has someone from our end to link up with it and set it up to spec at some point.

doesn't surprise me at all that this bled over into a rebranding of warehouses shipping lead contaminated dog toys and travel umbrellas by bazingoids.