Posts filed under 'Shipping & Fulfillment'
It’s only because the “forgive me” call I had to make yesterday was an incredibly pleasant one that I feel like writing about this, but it is important. Kathleen Fasanella has in her book the advice to always call your retailers when you are going to be late for shipping.
This is so so so so important, but so so so flipping hard to do. You think sales calls are hard? Wait until you have to make the first “we aren’t going to deliver on time” call. Ick.
It’s not a pleasant feeling to know you are letting your customers down, so it’s not a pleasant feeling to have to pick up the phone to tell them yourself. But believe me, in general the call will be at least bearable, if not a lot smoother than you are anticipating. Here’s the thing – things go wrong, all the time. And people understand this, and people you’ve been working with for awhile really understand this, because they have built up some trust in how much you’ve delivered in the past.
The most important thing to remember is that it’s not the end of the world, even if they ditch the order and don’t want to work with you anymore. I think that if you let too much of a “I can NOT lose this customer” dark cloud hang over your head, it’s harder to make the call, and easier to put it off. When I said in my last post that most of our existing customers have forgiven us for falling behind, I really meant it.
The call I had to make yesterday was to our longest-standing customer, and that alone made me a bit sick to my stomach about picking up the phone. Deep breath, smile, dial, it’s just-a-conversation. This retailer has two incredibly great locations and an incredibly great reputation. I really didn’t want to lose them, even though I told myself “it is what it is – it won’t in any way be the end of the world”; I still had a fear of losing them. I really like them, they are an ideal customer.
And, thank goodness, turns out they really like us too. The co-owner, who I’ve worked with personally for years now, didn’t even let me get through my explanation. It was very much an “oh, no problem! when can we expect it”? conversation. It was very pleasant. Phew. There have been a few customers I couldn’t reach, sent emails, left messages, didn’t hear back – so it’s very likely we’ve lost a couple of customers. That happens when you don’t deliver. But you’ll keep a lot more customers by making the tough calls and keeping your customers in the loop. Sounds like a super fun part of the job, doesn’t it?
May 27th, 2010
Oh crazy first month of 2009, I love you! This month was incredibly stressful scurrying to figure out CPSIA compliance, taking in some of our biggest orders to-date, and going on the roller coaster of having a best-selling product sell out (this is a fabric availability issue).
Ah, the CPSC has issued a one year stay on testing regulations for certain products. This was the news as of yesterday. Here is a link to the press release. Anyhow, what this does is let us go ahead with the testing we are doing and go ahead and keep selling the blankets. I think it’s important to note that you still have to comply – you can’t sell products with lead over the limits, but it seems you can decide how you’re going to do your due diligence and test your products, or accept certifications from suppliers (such as Michael Miller recently declaring all of their fabrics are CPSIA compliant).
We have new organic onesie designs and they are selling like mad. There was finally a noticable pick-up in January. We’ve seen so many boutiques go out of business in the last year, that it seems (cautiously optimistic) that those that have managed to stay in business are finally picking up some of the customer’s from the boutiques that are no longer around. For example, one boutique in the center of town just placed their biggest b*Fab order yet – they have watched no less than six competing boutiques go out of business in the last eight months (most of those were our customers too). At some point, even if all those businesses had less customers, one out of seven boutiques should now have more customers. This pendulum has to start swinging this way at some point, right? It seems to be for us.
We had a cute little poncho featured in the January issue of Pregnancy & Newborn magazine and that sucker
sold out almost immediately. Between the boutiques that managed to place wholesale orders and the online sales, it wasn’t even in stock for two weeks. The reason I’m bringing this up is because I ran into the good old fabric is now out-of-stock issue again. This time, we wanted to do another production run – it’s selling like mad, it will sell well through the Spring – but the fabric is no longer available. So, instead of being able to keep it available on the site, we are scurrying to replace the print fabric. The bright side is that now I know more about our potential and that informs me for ordering increased yardage and supplies for the next go round.
I can honestly say we’ve never worked as hard as we did in January. This could well be the year of the 16 hour days, but we’re up for it, because the business is growing up to it. I don’t let myself watch much news anymore either, it is seriously too depressing. I get it. I’m proceeding with more caution than I ever have before, I’ve learned a lot of lessons from the economy hitting the skids. But I have to focus on the positive and how I’m going to keep us going through this. It’s nice to be bringing in a great flow of business again – that definitely helps to see the bright side of things.
Here’s to the launch of a great February. And for me, a happy weekend when we’re actually doing some painting around the house.
January 31st, 2009
Isn’t everything a mixed blessing? Business is going so great that we’re really growing. Growing is painful. I remember reading some book way way way back when I first started about “growing your business”. I was REALLY curious about how I was going to make this happen – as if it was a real concern (little did I know it’d be years before I’d have to worry about that one!). But here it is – it is actually happening in real life. It’s a great, great, great thing – but I’m really scurrying to figure out how to make it all happen.
I know that we need more help. We’re even picking up more help – especially with production and sales. But the worse part is that I keep talking myself into getting “just a few more” things ironed out perfect before I seek out the help. I have to get over this glitch or it’s going to kill me. I have to be ok with where we’re at and just ask for help. I am lining up the jobs that will be easy to train on and pass off and I’m lining up the next level of suppliers. So, see, I’m working through it – even though I feel like a deer in the headlights.
I let my stress get the better of me today and had a totally uncalled for outburst. Shame on me. Lame of me. I even thought I had prepped myself for the day – I certainly prepped my daughter when she got out of school: “Mommy has a shipping deadline today and I’m already behind, so I’m going to need your patience for just a little bit.”
I didn’t make the deadline. WHAT?? I always make it. Even if I’m flying out the door at the last minute – I make it. But not today. And it cost me a pretty penny b/c it was a rush order that we promised would be there. It will be there, it just cost us for express shipping. Oh, and side-tracked my daughter’s homework for the evening.
I’ve landed a guest blog column on a business magazine site (ha ha that won’t make me busier) and since I owe them content, my first column will be about the real effect having our own businesses have on our families. Believe me, everyone in the family sacrifices to make it happen – but everyone reaps incredible benefits too.
***Have you checked out the forums? Sometimes I’m not able to get around to answering emails as quickly as I’d like, but I’ve noticed some of you are helping each other and asking questions on the forum. This is fantastic!!!
April 23rd, 2008
Okay, here I am to talk about the dang trade show. I think I’ll start from the beginning so today is going to be about shipping and getting your product to the show. I live close enough to Vegas to drive. So, true to my nature, I work right up to the last minute. The show had a full 24-hour move-in, so I knew that whenever I got there in the evening, I’d have time to move in.
I went by myself. My husband was going to go, but we couldn’t take my daughter out of her kindergarten class the very first week of school. This is where we’re at, so off I went. The drive was fine. The move-in was a different nightmare all together.
Our booth was, in my opinion, a million miles away from the main entrance – the only entrance you’re allowed to hand move-in through. I about died when I walked in and saw how far I was going to have to “carry” everything. We were actually on row 15. Which wasn’t anywhere near as far back as we could have been – the size of the show is my next post.
I was moving stuff to our booth until 2:00 in the morning. The only thing that saved me was this old-school baby pram (buggy) we had purchased as a means of displaying our blankets. That thing became my dolly. But it took a lot of trips. And I still had to hand-carry the carpet – which I saved to last and I had to chant “that-the-that which don’t kill me, can only make me stronger” to myself the whole way to keep from crumbling to the floor in a ball of tears.
I got the booth setup by 3:30 in the morning. Well, I saved some of it for the morning, taking the risk and assuming that the first hour would be slow. Buyers wouldn’t even make it to row 15 in an hour. I also knew that there was no way in hell I was moving out the same way I moved in.
Turned out that most of the vendors around me also had various shipping issues to deal with. Some had shipped via UPS instead of the exhibition’s shipping services. This meant that they also had to deal with the hand-carry issue, because UPS was offsite shipping.
I signed up for the cartload program to get me out of there. They loaded my stuff on one cart and got it out to my car in about 5 minutes. Of course, that was after quite a wait because the line for the cartload program was huge (which goes back to the size of the show also).
So, many of you haven’t done your first trade show to know what a nightmare the logistics are. After the few I’ve done, I fully believe it is worth it to use the exhibition’s shipping services and just bite the bullet. Some savvy people only had to box their stuff and saran-wrap it. They dropped off the shipping labels early on the last day, vendors boxed up their stuff, stuck those labels on and walked away.
Far less painful and time consuming than getting your product out of the hall yourself. I paid $45 for them to load my stuff and tote it out – I can’t tell you how cheap that sounded after moving myself in.
September 20th, 2007
When I first started down this path I read in more than one reference book how big of a deal it is to ship on time. I had no idea that the reason it’s such a big deal is because it’s a really hard thing to do. I’m on it about 95% of the time, but that still leaves 5% of the time that stuff doesn’t come through on time.
As my husband said to me yesterday, about an item we’re a whole week late on shipping, “That’s TERRIBLE.” Because it IS flipping terrible. And as hard as I try, it happens once in a while. Sometimes it’s events down the line, issues with the contractors, but most of the time it’s fair to chalk it up to poor project planning. And there’s no one to blame for that but me.
We have a constant production cycle with our blankets, which are dropped into production upon placement of the order. Now we’re throwing traditional production cycles on top of that and I have to figure out how to plan it all and make sure that we are consistently on top of our shipments.
Not shipping on time to these few customers isn’t the end of the world. But I feel horrible about it. Sick to my stomach almost – and even as I say that I feel like surely I could’ve carved a few more hours out of last week to make it happen. Am I slacking? Am I doing the best I can do?
Yesterday I made the radical decision to straighten up my office – using those hours for cleaning instead of all the stuff I need to do to get above said item shipped on Monday. I’m determined to get it organized like it’s never been organized before. And this event has been sparked by two things: first, because a fellow designer recently posted her freshly Spring Cleaned office on her blog, which made me want to laugh and cry at the same time. I told her I would send her a picture of mine – but when I took the picture and looked at how truly horribly dis-organized and messy my office looked, I was too embarressed to actually send it. Second, I’ve been reading “Simple Abundance” and it’s all about Spring Cleaning towards mental refreshment right now. So, I was inspired. And desperate for the clean out.
For my mental health, I needed to carve the time out yesterday to start getting the office into some kind of working condition. It’s finally organized into stations: embroidery station, shipping station, my main work table and my designing desk. And then there’s the loads and loads of fabric I have that I’m not supposed to have because I wasn’t supposed to buy it until orders were placed. ha ha -
How we’re going to sell through all that fabric almost needs to be a seperate business plan. I laugh, but really, it’s not so funny. At least I can see it now. I see many bibs and mini-blankets in that fabric’s future.
May 20th, 2007
As I’m getting ready to ship stuff out the door today, I thought that a post on shipping would be timely. I have found getting the shipping processes and supplies to be much more difficult than I anticipated. I think the difficult part is getting it organized so that it’s an efficient process, so that each package isn’t too time consuming. It seems like with each package we ship out, I find something else that needs to be done better, or more supplies we could use; something I think will make us look more professional.
Here are two good companies that are fast and reliable for shipping supplies:
The one thing that is driving me crazy is how the heck do you get the “This bag is not a toy. Do not leave unattended with children” warning onto all the little plastic bags that you ship out?? I’m now to the point where I’m assuming I have to ask ULine to print it on the bags I order, or maybe I have to get a stamp that works on plastic bags? Does ANYBODY know? It’s driving me crazy.
Otherwise, we’re getting it down. We’re to the point where we have all the labels and bags and boxes and tissue paper we need when it’s time to ship something.
The internet makes it nice to be able to print shipping labels from home and arrange for carrier pick-up. We have both of these options with UPS and USPS. I have lost faith in the USPS since our lost package, and I’ve been really unhappy with the local Fed-EX (I’ll only use them when a customer has specifically selected FED-EX shipping). I think my unhappinesss stems from the unhappiness of the employees at our local location, but it’s a miserable experience. UPS has been the best, by far.
I highly recommend you set up a shipping area in your office so that your shipping system can be organized and efficient. We’re working on ours, but that’s why I highly recommend it. It’s a pain not having everything in arms reach.
So, I’m off to pack and label packages. Have a good day everyone!
April 12th, 2007
I can’t believe this. A really big shipment is lost. Big because it was for someone special and all indications are that the package was delivered, the next morning even. But now, it’s a week later and there’s been no sign of this package by the recipient. And we did extra special things for the shipment too. This is the first time this has happened to us. All I can do is keep my fingers crossed that it miraculously shows up somehow.
I actually took pictures of these products, which is a minor plus. But STILL. I was working up to the last second, flew out the door to the post office, and did everything I could to get this package to its destination quick. And it never arrived. I’m just heart-broken about this.
Oh well. I have to start over – completely, because what’s the biggest kicker? These were special request CUSTOM-designed blankets, so I’m back to the drawing board, back to the very beginning of selecting new fabrics. We have a satisfaction guarantee, so I’m just out on this one. Does this make me get signature confirmation from now on?
Somebody has those beautiful blankets, somebody does. Come on, show up somewhere, show up somewhere, show up somewhere.
This month has been all about losing all the most important things, from checks to tax papers and now this lost-package nightmare. And honestly, these blankets were about the most exciting shipment for us to date. What the heck kind of luck is that?
March 13th, 2007
