The reputation a lot of handmade companies have is for incredibly slow shipping and processing times. It’s not uncommon to wait 2 or 3 weeks (sometimes longer) after placing an order until a product is in your hand. And being an indie beauty company owner, honestly I get it.
In my early days I vacillated wildly between desperately wanting a huge flood of orders, and desperately dreading a huge flood of orders. Wanting it because the infusion of cash was so necessary. Dreading it because I knew it would mean hours upon hours of whipping butter. Black Friday was always a best-of-times, worst-of-times scenario — the high of getting record-breaking sales followed by the low of working days on end to fill orders with 2 or 3 hour sleep breaks in between.
Last summer I knew it wasn’t sustainable anymore. And that’s part of the reason why I moved my business into its own physical location, instead of continuing to operate it out of my home. I knew I needed a dedicated space to focus on production and fulfillment.
I also beefed up my team. Instead of using just one assistant to help me with ‘whippin and shippin’ (as we affectionately call it), I hired 3. In the short term, hiring additional labor cut heavily into my profits. In the long term it proved to be a valuable investment that allowed us to grow.
Today we create about 2,500 units of product every month. And, between in-store and online, we fill about 850 orders. About 40% of our orders go out same-day or next day, another 45% (the vast majority) go out in 2 to 3 business days and 5% are held up longer due to fulfillment needs — or post office shenanigans! — as I complained about in this Instagram post.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BfojtWLl5Hp/?taken-by=bglhmarketplace
Sales spikes no longer phase us. We have processes in place to fill things quickly and we have the capacity to fill wholesale orders.
I wanted to communicate this because even though we are an indie company, we are very process oriented and our shipping times are on-par with brands much much larger than us.
So when you place an order don’t worry. You won’t be waiting weeks to get a tracking number. And if, god forbid, something falls through the cracks, call us at (312) 448-3343 or email leila@bglh-marketplace.com. We pride ourselves on being hyper responsive to shipping and processing queries.
One Response
A good sense of customer service, I appreciate that. It’s actually rare even for big and small brands.