Nobody Ever Outsourced For Quality
My partner and I have a nice little product line that we manufacture ourselves. It has turned into a nice little business for us and we are now at the point where we are trying to automate it more because a great deal of our time is spent fulfilling orders, packing boxes, printing labels, and shipping out packages. I am trying to convince him to move to Shipwire (or something similar), but he's hesitant because he feels that they will not provide as good of quality of service that we can provide, and that they are expensive. Our product line is such a small product, non-fragile, and is so easy to ship. You basically just put it in a bubble envelope and stick a label on it. $3.00 +/- a transaction doesn't give me much heartburn if it means that we can spend that time marketing and executing on other ideas we have...and just not have to worry about it entirely. Am I crazy here? Anybody have any thoughts? Much appreciated.
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Answers
Your partner just needs to figure out what his/her time is worth. For me, I figured out the $3 was cheaper than me spending time responding to orders. I didn't have to rush to UPS at the last minute, or leave a movie early to get back and ship an order. I could go on vacation and not worry that orders would backlog. $3 to me was a small price to pay for piece of mind. And if I really added all the time up I was spending shipping my first few orders, it was more than just putting it in a box and shipping it. Remember to count all the time you spend thinking about fulfilling those orders, or waiting for email, or not doing what you'd rather be doing.
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