Excelsior’s e-commerce fulfillment services are designed to help your Indiegogo campaign with immediate scale and structure in logistics, so you can focus on growing your business. Indiegogo campaigns face unique challenges in e-commerce fulfillment strategy. Here’s what we’ve learned and how we can help.
- Rapid Evolution of Business Model: Indiegogo campaigns are constantly testing, adjusting, and re-testing things: New packaging; changes in manufacturing that can lead to back orders and volume spikes; New products; New delivery options, etc. Indiegogo campaigns are often navigating uncharted territory, and you need a fulfillment partner that is flexible to accommodate the unexpected and willing to help facilitate change and improvement.
- Volume spikes, back orders, and Indiegogo backer orders: Indiegogo campaigns are prone to dramatic volume spikes upon new product releases or when there’s a manufacturing delay. Indiegogo campaigns also have a large list of backers who all want their orders asap, and you’ll want to manage shipments so that earlier backers get their orders fulfilled first. You’ll need to work with a 3PL that has the size and workforce to accommodate the peaks, and the experience to plan ahead with you so you’re as prepared as possible. Constant communication in these peak periods is also key.
- Indiegogo campaign management: You’ll need to accurately set delivery timeline expectations with your backers, and continuously update them on progress. This means working closely with your 3PL as well. As soon as product is received, it needs to be staged for fulfillment and shipping. Sometimes it needs to be inspected for quality first. Shipping methods and packaging rules should be setup ahead of time, so when the inventory arrives it can be turned around quickly. Importing order data and confirming shipment information with your management platform is also critical – many people use Bakerkit but there are others.
- Sell on many channels: Indiegogo campaigns often aim to add more channels as capacity and demand grow. So Indiegogo campaign merchants need a fulfillment partner that has experience with the channels you want to add: your website, Amazon, big box retailers, drop ship sites, etc. You can choose to have your 3PL connect directly to each channel or use an order management software and connect your 3PL to that. Either way, you need a partner with pre-existing integrations and that is willing to work with your specific business needs. The 3PL will have a preferred way of integration, but a degree of flexibility and a willingness to build new features to accommodate your needs are important.
- Transition from Indiegogo to daily website sales: With the Indiegogo campaign behind you, often there is a lull in activity while you assess what went well and hat needs to be improved in your budding business. You’ll want a 3PL that wants to work with you to facilitate your improvement ideas. And high monthly fees or order volume minimums can be dangerous in the transition period.
- Fast, affordable fulfillment that just works: No matter the niche, you’re being judged on expectations set by Amazon and the other large retailers: Super-fast delivery, free shipping and low prices. You need late same-day cutoff times, cheap shipping rates, multi-warehouse options, and reliable, accurate and affordable fulfillment that just works.
- Presentation: Creating a “WOW” experience through product presentation and excellent customer service, leads to better product reviews, which are often the deciding factor in why a customer buys from you over others. Your 3PL should work with you to help tweak and improve the un-boxing experience over time.
How Excelsior does electronics fulfillment:
- Customer service driven: Whatever your industry, your relationship with your 3PL is critical. You’ll have unique requirements and issues that arise as you grow, and we get that you need to be able to talk with us regularly, sometimes frequently. We’ve built ourselves on the service we provide, and pride ourselves on it. If you need us to inspect 500 units of a potentially defective item, expedite an order to a special customer, re-package one product with a newer version of packaging, or whatever else, we’ve got your back.
- Integrate with any channel: Check out all our integrations here. Or build your own with the Excelsior API. If you need something you don’t see, we’re eager to help you solve it, just ask.
- Scalability and Startups: Some of our biggest success stories are customers that started with 20 orders/day and can now hit peaks of 5,000+ per day. We take a service driven approach and love working with young companies, implementing the logistics infrastructure now, that your business will need in 3 years.
- Shipping: We have warehouse facilities in Massachusetts and California, which will allow you to reach 70-90% of your customers with cheaper shipping options that still arrive in two days or less. We ship with all the major carriers – UPS, FedEx, USPS, DHL, and many freight forwarders and can offer you steeply discounted rates. We also allow you to ship on your account or any third party account should you prefer.
- Inventory Accuracy: We have several operational systems in place designed to maintain the highest inventory accuracy: ASN based receiving with automated checks for receiving accuracy, a replenishment process that uses older stock first and maintains PICK versus OVERSTOCK bin accuracy, periodic cycle counting procedures, and a quality control scan on outgoing orders (provided products are accurately barcoded).
- High value items: Excelsior staff are willing to go the extra mile to ensure inventory integrity and extra security are available if needed. This could mean storage in locked rooms, extra security cameras, or even just more frequent cycle counting. Additionally, we can institute serialized inventory management on any of your products that have unique serial numbers. This enables unit-level inventory traceability. Here’s how serialized inventory tracking works.
- Returns: Excelsior’s return processing services will help you streamline this crucial yet often overlooked component of the logistics lifecycle. We provide inspection according to your specifications, capturing of return reasons and any comments, automatic notifications and easy access to all your data either through our web portal or API.
- Product Assembly & Kitting: We offer optional product assembly, bundling and kitting services whether it’s for a one-time project or ongoing product line. Some clients choose to delay final product assembly until the last possible step, giving greater inventory flexibility. Others may need to re-work a product by removing one component item and adding another newer version. Our kitting services give you this flexibility.
- Presentation & Branding: Along with fulfillment speed and accuracy, presentation is an important factor in the delivery experience your customer will have. We’ll help you create a delivery and un-boxing experience that suits your brand and leaves a lasting impression on your customers. We can do this by allowing customization options in the packaging step of the fulfillment process, such as using your branded tape, stickers or custom packaging, handwriting thank-you notes, following special item placement rules, or any other ideas you come up with.