You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles
YUMPU automatically turns print PDFs into web optimized ePapers that Google loves.
Third Party Fulfillment<br />
When you get a lot of orders, you might want to hire<br />
a friend or someone else to help you. But after that,<br />
you might consider hiring a third party company to<br />
handle everything for you. This costs more but it can<br />
save you a ton of time.<br />
A quick example you might be familiar with are companies<br />
like MerchLine or Indie Merchandising. Illustrator<br />
Dan Mumford uses them for his clothing line.<br />
You ship them your entire inventory and they handle<br />
the entire order fulfillment. They charge a fee, but<br />
you get to concentrate on making better designs and<br />
marketing.<br />
Beyond those options are Shipwire or Fulfillment by<br />
Amazon just to name a few. I have never used these<br />
services myself, but I did research these options a<br />
few years ago when considering using it for our Fail<br />
Sticker business (which we have since sold to Merch-<br />
Line).<br />
I recommend giving third party fulfillment services a<br />
look once you start getting orders you can’t keep up<br />
with.<br />
International Orders<br />
It’s <strong>not</strong> uncommon to have a large demand from an<br />
international audience. From our experience, Go Media’s<br />
blog and store attract a lot of international customers<br />
and we find ourselves spending lots of money<br />
shipping things across the world. Of course, we make<br />
sure to raise the shipping price to cover those costs.<br />
One extra step in shipping international orders is filling<br />
out customs forms (in the US at least). If you have<br />
the demand for international orders check out Endicia<br />
or Stamps.com. Both have features to automatically<br />
fill out customs forms for you.<br />
THREAD’S NOT DEAD • Jeff Finley<br />
Shirt by Glamour Kills<br />
Now don’t get overwhelmed. Selling your tees is fun!<br />
Don’t worry about problems you don’t have yet. This<br />
guide is just to make you aware of what lies ahead.<br />
When brands succeed and grow, it can sometimes<br />
be difficult. It’s called growing pains. But growing<br />
up must mean that you’re doing well! So don’t sweat<br />
it, people just like you are doing it.<br />
Dave Pearson from Paint the Stars said he didn’t<br />
really take things seriously until he started seeing<br />
international demand. “Our breakthrough moment<br />
was probably when we started hearing from international<br />
stores who wanted to sell our stuff. We never<br />
even imagined our brand would get recognized outside<br />
of our hometown, let alone outside of the country.<br />
This really inspired us to step up our game and<br />
made us realize that we were on to something. It all<br />
got very serious after that, whereas before that, we<br />
were having a bit of a jolly and just taking it for what<br />
it was.”<br />
Shipping with UPS or FedEx<br />
These are the two major shipping carriers in the US.<br />
You can sign up for business accounts with both of<br />
them and offer your customers more shipping options.<br />
One of the cool things is they can stop by every<br />
day and pick up packages from you.<br />
At Go Media, we signed up with UPS for daily pickups<br />
but unfortunately didn’t have the volume to make<br />
it worth the costs. We found that there were many<br />
days we didn’t have any items to ship and it was a<br />
wasted trip for our UPS driver. We have since canceled<br />
the daily pickup and now schedule one-time<br />
pickups whenever we need to. There is a fee charged<br />
for pickups, so to avoid this fee you can always just<br />
go right to the UPS store or dropbox to drop off your<br />
packages.<br />
Sales & Fulfillment 70
Change language