Gain Deep Insight About Your People by Doing Your Own Fulfillment
Packing, shipping and delivering work to your client. It's what is called fulfillment in the business world.
Your first decision is this: shall I do this work, or get someone else to do it for me?
If you do your own fulfillment, you have total responsibility and control (or almost—if you’re making duplicates of one of your pieces, like a print, or an image printed on another object—you’ll have to find a company to do that part) of the process.
You find the packing materials, you pack the work, you make the label, you affix the postage, you take the payment, you do any follow-up customer service.
The downside of this choice is probably obvious. Packing and shipping take time away from work you actually need and want to do. It’s a pain. CafePress or FineArtAmerica or Zazzle are three places that will do this work for you. All you have to do is upload a high-resolution digital image.
There are probably others I don’t know about, and if you have experience with a good one, I’d like to hear. Leave a comment below.
The upside of doing your own fulfillment, not so obvious, but significant, is that you have control over everything. You make the packaging look the way YOU want. This can be fun. You can make custom labels, use different colors of packing materials, enclose a personal note, get weird stamps.
The most valuable reason to do your own fulfillment
But the best part about doing it yourself is that you KNOW WHO THE CUSTOMER IS. You can ask for feedback, ask if they’d send you a photo of the work in their home, ask how they found you. YOU CAN BEGIN MAKING A REAL RELATIONSHIP with them. You gain deep insight about your people by getting to know them in this way.
Maybe you’ll eventually get too big and successful to keep this up. But for now, doing it yourself is an opportunity to make real connections with the people who identify with your work.
Sometimes I think the only reason I’m on the earth is to make real connections with people anyway. That outcome would be worth some trips to the post office.
What are your thoughts on this? Is doing your own fulfillment worth the time? Leave a comment to let me know.