This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
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When is it time to outsource fulfillment? If you have been managing, packaging, shipping orders on your own, perhaps for some e-commerce business you have developed, or if you're thinking about selling a product and such, at what point do you go from packaging all this stuff up in your house or apartment or wherever it is you do such a thing, to working with a partner that does it for you? This is a big step in scalability. And of course, not every business wants to scale. Let's just say that right up front.
And it can be fun to package and ship your orders, especially in the beginning. But if your business is taken off, then you want to think what's the best next step? Might it be helpful to kind of free up some time and allow me to grow the business elsewhere and such? So that's what we're going to talk about today. We've got a question from a listener, a Canadian listener, who is thinking about making this transition from self-managed order fulfillment to partnering with a fulfillment service.
Identifying the right time for this transition and selecting the ideal fulfillment partner are key decisions in the situation. So let's talk about it. When's the best time or when is it time actually? When is it time to decide to outsource fulfillment? His detailed question and my answer coming right up.
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Greetings, I'm Raj from Toronto. I run an online store that sells handmade jewelry. And as my business grows, I find it increasingly challenging to manage order fulfillment by myself. When is the right time to consider outsourcing fulfillment? And what should I look for in a fulfillment partner to ensure it benefits my business and customer experience?
All right, two parts to this question. Knowing when to outsource fulfillment and then choosing the right fulfillment partner. Well, when to outsource fulfillment, you know, that's not too difficult. Capacity limits, right? Capacity rising order volumes.
Like if your order fulfillment is overwhelming your daily schedule or if it takes all of your side hustle time to fulfill the orders, then it might be wise to say, maybe somebody else should do this, that I can focus on growth like product design or marketing or even just customer service. Although that's something that could also be outsourced at a certain point as well. Basically, you want to make sure you're spending time building your business, not just working in your business. And so if all your time is spent working in your business, that's a great time to start thinking about outsourcing fulfillment. And then also if you just kind of seeing a steady increase over time, then that's kind of giving you data that's very helpful in saying, I got to think long-term and figure out some other way to fulfill these orders.
As for the second part, it may or may not be more challenging, depending on your niche, depending on your products and how you're shipping them. If you're selling something that's pretty simple and you're shipping within North America only, it doesn't weigh a lot. That's also important when it comes to shipping because if it takes up a lot of space or it weighs a lot, that's going to increase your costs and such. Or if there's some other unique factor associated with your product. But the simpler your product and the simpler the process behind the product, then the more affordable it will be.
And the easier it will be to find a good partner. So you want to find a fulfillment house that has some experience storing and shipping items like what you sell. You want to find a partner that's been around for a while. A lot of fulfillment houses do come and go. So just some stability and long-term presence is really important in this world.
And then you want to just pay really close attention as you start working with this partner. Because a lot of things that go wrong tend to come from not paying attention or you miss something small and you think, oh, they'll fix it next time or they make a small mistake. You want to pay attention to those things because with the right fulfillment partner, it's not going to happen very often. Or if something ever does go wrong, they're going to address it immediately and make sure it doesn't happen again, make a plan for that and so on. That's the sign of a good fulfillment partner.
All that to say, it is a pretty important decision which fulfillment house you end up working with. It's not something you can just kind of choose quickly and move on. So you want to pay attention to that. Raj, congratulations on getting this far. Listeners, I'm cheering you on.
I want to help you grow in the right way, whatever is important to you. This is what we're all about, economic empowerment for everybody out there. If you have a question or a comment, sidehustleschool.com. We'll continue to feature updates from our listeners throughout the year. Got new episodes coming out every day.
So glad you're out there. My name's Chris Guillebeau. This is "Side Hustle School." [Music]
From the Onward Project.
