If you don’t yet have a combined packaging and fulfillment manufacturer creating your silicone or plastic products, one of the most important things you need to consider is how you want to ship your products to your customers.
You’ve done the leg work. You have the perfect design for your product, and you’ve made items that are the right color to increase sales. Now you need to get the products to your customers in a timely fashion to ensure the best customer experience.
Shipping can be relatively easy, especially if you find a manufacturer able to handle this process with you. It may be tempting to consider this last since it’s the final stage of manufacturing, but the reality is having the right processes in place ahead of time will save you a lot of effort in the long run. Here’s how to stay organized when shipping products:
The best shipping processes rely on the best technology. After finding an online market place (like Amazon or even through your own site creating shopping feeds for Google) to sell your products, you’ll want to consider integrating orders of your plastic or silicone product into shipping software that helps keep your orders organized.
At Extreme Molding we have years of experience in this area. There are a lot of good software packages to choose from in the market, with the easiest services being websites that allow you to keep on top of orders online. Some services to choose from include:
In general, the right manufacturer will co-manage any shipping software program for you making sure your product makes it to retail stores or distribution centers as required. At Extreme Molding in most cases our orders are shipping with 24-hours of receipt, but you’ll need to double check the ability of your molder or packaging and fulfillment partner to ensure timely delivery.
Using software that can integrate with popular ecommerce software like Amazon, Magento or other platforms is essential for ensuring that orders don’t get lost or delayed. Having a great product isn’t the only requirement these days – most of your customers are probably looking for products that ship incredibly fast. Most decent software will integrate and filter orders from marketplaces like Amazon, Magento, Bigcommerce, or your own website but it’s important that you check this before committing to any one software. Your manufacturer should be able to advise on which software is going to best suit your needs.
Shipping Methods & Processing
Timeliness is everything when it comes to shipping, which is why you should check whether your software integrate most major couriers (like USPS, UPS, FedEx or DHL). This will allow you to manage how your orders make it to your customers. Once you’ve established an account with the carrier of your choice, your only a few clicks away from processing, packaging and shipping orders directly to your customers.
Dealing with packaging and fulfillment alone is unfeasible for most people – there isn’t enough time in the day to do this alone and the processes involved can have a steep learning curve – which is why it’s important to find the right partner to help you with this.
After your ecommerce websites have been connected to the shipping software, and you’ve chosen which carriers work best for your product, your shipping begins. Your orders are printed every day and carefully packaged by our fulfillment team. Once packed up, your orders are picked up daily by carriers, and then sent on their way to your customers.
At Extreme Molding we think our expertise in manufacturing, packaging and fulfillment makes us the ideal partner for shipping your products. Being located in the US gives us an added advantage in supplying your products to retail stores and distribution centers – put simply your products have much less distance to travel to get to your consumers.
If you’re ready for a manufacturer who can also provide packaging and shipping fulfillment for your silicone or plastic products contact us for a free consultation today.