Underdog Ecom Podcast

Alright. Welcome to the Underdog Ecom podcast, where two ecom brand founders are figuring out in real time. Yeah. We're not here to preach. We're here in the thick of it, making mistakes, testing all sorts of ideas, and really sharing the journey of how we've been growing these brands from day zero.

Hopefully, you learn a little bit, perhaps come away with some ideas that save you time and money. And so if you're tired of the same glittery d two c advice from those 9 figure gurus, you're here in the right place. Let's get into it. Okay. Welcome to episode 12.

12 episodes in. Look at that. We're gonna be talking a lot about fulfillment, today, like, in terms of how we're doing it done in house, but by in house versus three p l's, our experience, all that. But first of all, how are you doing, David? I'm alive.

Surviving, I think, is the name of the game this year. Just getting up real early, teaching a baby how to drink out of a bottle, and keeping a toddler from, having me tear my hair out, you know. Oh, and then running an ecom business. Yeah. It's great.

I don't know if I've mentioned this I don't know if I mentioned this before, but, like, I I've been speaking to a number of people, like, who have have, like, toddlers or babies at the moment, and I just, like, have, like, so much respect for everyone doing, like, and running a business at the same time. Like, it's incredible. Like, the Like, the things they tell me they have to deal with and, like, it just makes it seem like a walk in the park, like, what I'm doing. I think It definitely makes things a little bit more challenging. It's super fun and rewarding, of course, and but it's also, like, wait, is this how humanity survived for thousands of years, is having, like, other humans raising other humans?

It's it's pretty remarkable sometimes. But, you know, getting up at five, changing poopy diapers. I've been at it for a couple hours already. Boom. Wow.

Look at that. Yeah. It's on the brand side, it's been a whirlwind the last couple weeks. I've been in, like, trademark hell, which is super fun. I've launched a Memorial Day sale and did some, like, interesting strategies there, more complex than I've typically done.

I almost didn't launch the sale, but it's been going super well. I always tend to forget how much people love sales, and which is ironic because I love sales. But I try and avoid them, and I've had tried to avoid them in the past. And this probably could be a whole another deep dive that we get into. But, I've been doing them more often just because it helps with inventory management, and it also helps with sales generation.

And it's kind of just the go to standard in some ways when it comes to apparel because apparel is pretty tricky and very seasonal. And so that's been that's been going really well, and I've got some exciting stuff planned in the pipeline. So there's a lot of excitement and a lot of not fun things happening, like usual. Yeah. It's interesting about that, like, because we don't have Memorial Day here in The UK, but I have to keep aware of it, obviously, because all of our sales up in The US.

But at the same time, we have a, like, a long weekend this weekend in terms of, like, the Monday is off, so people also thinking about that sort of stuff. And I saw another brand that I was following the other day in a similar space to us just did, like, you know, free shipping today only, get it before the long weekend sort of thing. And it's it's amazing how just even without sales, but just kind of the the sort of that sort of promotional activity in some way or another, can just suddenly kind of just, like, get the wheels turning and things. Yeah. It's almost like another sort of, quote, unquote, excuse or touch point to get in front of customers.

And granted, there's a lot of noise a lot of times during sales season. Like, the amount of sales emails that are marketing emails that I'm getting right now just on my personal email is high, so you have to break through the noise and stuff. But I think it's it's helpful to kind of have good reasons that make sense with the brand to get in front of people again and, of course. Yeah. And I it's I think it's a case of miss mix of, like, keeping that going in terms of, like, newness and and, you know, the promotions and things that, you know, people care about at the same time, like, content that is almost like the opposite side of that and, like, almost educational.

And it's hard to balance it too. I struggle with that in terms of, you know, you see some brands out there who just go really hard on one side versus the other. And you almost gotta really kind of have the two going at once because, because I think they both kind of work. Mhmm. Mhmm.

Yeah. I I agree. That's where, historically, I've struggled is, like, I don't wanna be a brand that discounts every couple quarters and, like, has massive sell offs and don't really wanna get into, like, pump and dump type cycle. And so try and focus more on small things and and not overbuy, which is very hard because that's kind of the reason to clear out stuff if if you have too much on hand. Always a balancing act.

Yeah. I think that's I'm struggling. I've got a bit of that as well. I'm I've been forced this year. I think I probably mentioned this in other episodes.

I've been forced this year to have a lot less inventory. And so in terms of, like, what I've got on right now and I mean, like, I've certainly got a a lot less inventory than I would like, but at the same time, I've got more coming in June and stuff like that. So, yeah, it's it's in some ways, it's it's nice because, you know, talking about fulfillment in a minute, like, I'm not spending so much money on all of that. Shipping is not quite so expensive. But, it is hard as we kind of grow out the line a little bit to kind of maintain everything in stock.

So I'm kind of struggling with that. But at the same time, I do think I'm in in a better situation because I've got less inventory this time around this year. I think if I compare the inventory we had this time last year, I think I'm in a better situation. It's it's frustrating not having everything in stock because people ask you I'd imagine you find the same people, like, when is this coming back in? And and, and, you know, you wanna just be like, it's there.

Just I wanna give it to you. But, but, you know, you sometimes have to just take the rough with the smooth. Oh, that's such a good point because I think in the past I've struggled and I still struggle with this when I get those emails and people DM me or whatever, that sort of thing where they're like, hey. When is this shirt getting in stock? When is this color coming back?

That sort of thing. And I'm always like, oh, no. We need to have everything in stock always. But it's really hard to do that. And I always go back to that quote from the, like I think it was the nine operators pod where they basically one of them was, like, you you'll always be off an inventory, either over or under.

And you definitely wanna on the side of under because that it has less there's less complications there. I feel like I need to, like, print that out and put it up on my wall or staple it to my forehead so I remember it, but it's a good one. Yeah. Yeah. For sure.

How's your how are you doing? Yeah. I'm doing okay. Yeah. I think, like I said, this, I'm hoping I've got inventory coming in June.

I've been travelling quite a bit this year and, more more maybe than I'd like, but it's it's been fun. But I'm actually, because, because I we're we're going into film in a minute, but because I do the film in The US and I have somebody who like a storage unit and somebody I pay to do the storage in The US. I haven't visited that person for eighteen months now. And so, like, I mean, I speak to them every day on Slack and stuff like that, but I haven't seen them in a while. And I've I'm actually starting to do a bit of shipment shipments for a few other brands for another brand as well, and they're sending like a container worth of stuff to me.

So I've got to go out there in June. So I'm planning a trip out there, and gonna just quickly spend like five days there just kind of, making sure that we can actually we're actually set up to ship out their stuff as well. You know, all the kind of boring stuff. And I think this kind of will get into some of the conversation, but that yeah. It's when you're when you have to manage it yourself, you kind of have to make sure everything's set up properly.

Otherwise, you get some headaches and things. And, that's kind of what, what I'm dealing with at the moment, trying to make sure we're set up properly for that. Nice. Nice. That's cool.

Well, welcome welcome to The US. It'll be the East Coast, right, not the not the West Coast? East Coast, Virginia, which is where I was born. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Like, you're saying that's nice. Nice. Yeah. So it's kinda weird because I always thought when I left The US when I was, like, 13 or 14, I would never go back to Virginia. But but then but then when I started to set up the, like, the shipping and everything in The US, I just thought, well, you know, Virginia's not that expensive in comparison to other places in The US.

I know people there. Like, storage is cheap. I know people there. You know, maybe this is what I should be doing. And, and, yeah, so for some reason now, I've got a tie back to to Roanoke, Virginia.

Small town in in Southwest. Yeah. Funny. Is where do you end up with the yeah. Southeast, sort of.

I would say that's, like, Mid Southeast, not super anyways. Yeah. Where'd you end up with the the Kickstarter? Like, I remember you're tossing that idea around for new Patel bags, I think. Is that right?

Yeah. So we got we the bag is coming in June as well. So we did we did do a pre order, and I was kind of decided whether to do it on, like, Kickstarter or on our site and lots of stuff. And I basically ended up doing it on our site for better or for worse. And it's done okay.

I mean, we've got maybe nine, ten thousand in preorders or something of it, mostly from our email list, which is which I mean, it sound it sounds good. I mean, that You know, it's a $200 bag, so you don't have to sell a whole lot to get to get there. But, yeah, I was kind of I was kind of I was in my head, you know, we always kinda go fantasize, you know, you think, like, things are gonna end up much better. I was gonna hoping, I will sell out of, like, all 200 before they even arrive, then we'll just ship them out when they arrive. You know, we've we've sold maybe 50 or 60 bags or something to preorders, and then we've got, I'm hoping that we can get a few more over there kind of I think because we're gonna end the campaign in like a week or two, so I'm hoping I can get a few more in because, like, people kind of Mhmm.

Last minute last minute chance to get it at, like, the pre order discount. But it's been pretty, like, well received. And it's nice to be able to sell something before it's arrived because it kind of put some money in the bank to kind of use for other things. Oh, yeah. So that's been really good.

But, yeah, I think I I I don't know whether Kickstarter would have been the right thing to do. I just I was looking into, like, the fees associated, waiting thirty days for the payment. I think our cash flow, quite honestly, just can't support, like like thirty waiting thirty days for a campaign to end and then to get paid. Well, it's like fifteen days after. So it'd be like forty five days from when you launch the campaign to actually getting any money in the bank.

And I just on I I just thought, like, practically, I can't do that. So as much as maybe I wanted to do it on a Kickstarter platform, I just couldn't do it. So maybe I would have made more money doing it on Kickstarter in terms of like reaching out to another audience and not just our existing audience, but Yeah. I think another thing I was hoping is that running Yeah, exactly. I was kind of hoping that running ads to it would do well just because of maybe the social proof because we've got like a a car, you know, like how much we've raised.

Kind of like tried to kind of kick start a style on the product page. It was how much we've raised and all that sort of stuff and like a very long form type of landing page for it and everything that kind of really explains Oh, cool. In, like, detail everything about the bag and why, like, why he made it and all that sort of stuff. And so I was kind of hoping that. And I think, yeah, I think I should probably try and, like, create a specific campaign for that because I've kind of just thrown those ads in with with everything else and try to, like, just see if it if it hits.

But, yeah, I'm kinda hoping that I can kind of get a few more sales through there and and maybe hit, like, I mean, my dream I think it'll be ideal if I could hit, like, a hundred before it arrives, but we'll see what happens. Mhmm. Mhmm. Cool. Well, good luck.

That's pretty interesting. I wanna I'm gonna ask for a link after the episode so I can check it out. Yeah. Because Send it away. Curious about, like, how you executed on it and, like, where you did it and that sort of thing, which you covered all that.

Cool. I've got I've got two products of jacket and the shorts that I'm thinking about doing a preorder as well for just for funding purposes. Not ideal, but it will help alleviate that upfront cost. So I'm curious. Yeah.

Well, I don't know if I told you. I'm in, like, a sub group with in in the underdog ecom, like a like a sort of a chat, like a chat between three of us between, is it Jono? Do you know Jono from the from our from from from yeah. And then and then also, Cody, as well from Rally, because they're both doing some, like, pre order campaigns. I think I think Jonas launches very soon, so, like, they've been giving me loads of tips and, like, we've been sharing stuff, and, that's been really helpful.

But, yeah, he's he does bags as well, so he's gonna launch it on Kickstarter. So pretty interesting to see, like, what he does and all that sort of stuff. Oh, that's cool. Nice. Nice.

Underdog ecom coming through. I love it. Yeah. There's the plug. Cool.

Yeah. There's the plug. You don't even have to wait till the end this time. Nice. Nice.

Alright. Shipping. Who likes shipping? You can ship your pants out here. So we thought thought about topics for this episode.

Definitely give us a shout in the comments if you wanna hear about anything specific. We've got a load of load of ideas to run through. Shipping has always been an interesting topic, I think, and it's pretty important. Like, granted, it's, like, fundamental to the brand. Right?

Like, how do you get your stuff into people's hands? And so thinking through the major decision point on that is typically, would you go with a three p l? And do you do that from day one? Do you ship in house? What does it look like to ship in house?

Why do you would you do either? And so we're gonna dig into that a little bit more. Maybe, Jack, you can kick it off and tell us, like, how you ship and why and those sorts of things. Yeah. So I I do it in house.

I've dabbled with three p l's to a very limited extent. I think I mentioned on one of the other episodes that there was at one point I because we manufacture in in in East Asia. So I one point, for, like, a Sun product, I did I went with a three PL in, in Hong Kong to kind of speed things up when we were launching, like, a preorder that I wanted to get out. That's the only time I've done with a three PL. The rest of the time, it's always been, in house, and I've done it I say in house, like, it really did start with me packaging up all the orders like most people, and even my dad getting involved in, like, getting him to package up orders as well when I couldn't do them all in a day.

But, but yeah. And then and then it kind of I was it just my I I as I mentioned, I think once before is I started Cancher in The UK, but then ended up kind of migrating over to The US because all the customers were there and everything, and, it just seemed like more opportunity. And so, because I wasn't living in The US, I was looking at 3PLs and things, but I I I set up doing it with a basically with a friend of mine, who who was quite up for it and, and wanted kind of the the business on the side. And he's and since then, he's taken on somebody else. So, like, between the two of them, I've got them shipping out orders, even wholesale stuff when it comes in.

And I've just got, like, a maybe, like, a 20 foot container or something at any one time worth of worth of stock that that like we can draw from. And, you know, that's We Like he has a He he operates like a tennis center, so he has like packing space. We have all like the boxes and well, more like shipping bags, lots of stuff there. And so he does all the packing, and then UPS comes there anyway. So I can and UPS, FedEx, all of them come there anyway, so I can you know, they've got pickups and things to spare these from that.

And we have, like, a reserve storage type of thing where we kind of where he kind of fulfill, like, you know, whenever he's running out of a certain SKU, he'll take, you know, ten, fifteen, 20 of them back and then ship from there. So that's kind of how I've done it. And yeah. I I don't know. It's interesting because I I've always looked at 3PLs, and my original reason for not using a three PL was because actually the size of our products was quite hard to find some three PLs that wanted to ship them.

And also, I just had some, like I just had some heard lots of horror stories about three PLs. But I think what we're gonna talk about a lot is also, like, that sometimes, you know, you can it's not worth it's not worth even if it is cheaper, like, on paper to do it yourself, like, it's maybe not even worth the hassle. But I don't know. What's your experience been? Yeah.

I've, it's been interesting. I have also been tempted by the three p l route. I have, since day zero, shipped in house. I mean, it's it was me in my house literally in our spare bedroom for years shipping stuff. And I remember lining up orders outside our house for the mail lady to pick up.

And, that was fun, especially on, like, big sale days, like, Black Friday and stuff like that. Had a ton of orders. I mean, not a ton. It was, like, 20 or something like that. But the 20 boxes looks pretty cool outside your Yeah.

Outside your house. And over the years, that grew and grew. And then over probably, like, three, four years ago or something like that now, I built this backyard warehouse that I'm in right now. Warehouse. Sorry.

Shed. It's a shed. It's not that big. It's 200 square feet, so it's actually a decent size. And apparel takes up a lot of space.

Granted, not as big as tennis bags. But it I outgrew it pretty fast. I feel like within a year, I just had to start looking at warehouse space around the area because, I'd like, there's boxes spilling out onto the lawn, and that was a lot of when the wholesale stuff was kicking off. And so I was ordering t shirts in quantities of, like, 200 and that sort of thing and a bunch of different shirts. And it it's crazy how much space you need it, and you don't really realize it until you do.

And so at that point, I migrated to a local warehouse. I found I chopped around a little bit, but I found one that was actually pretty close to my house, which I feel very fortunate about. And I looked at some others. And that point too, I was also looking around at three p l's and trying to figure out, like, what makes the most sense for the brand. From a strictly cost perspective and doing an analysis deep dive into the numbers, it's definitely cheaper to use a three p l, even though I feel like the costs are more upfront in some ways.

Like, you see the charge from the three p l at the end of the month. Like, you get the bill, you get the invoice, and you can see that and be like, oh, wow. That's huge. But you when you're paying for it yourself, you don't and there's, like, a charge here for the person doing it if they're doing it. And there's a charge here for the warehouse.

And there's your shipping cost built in Shopify and that sort of thing. Like, those are spread out enough where you're like, oh, it's it's not that much. But it was interesting to do that deep dive into the actual numbers themselves and run through and be like, oh, well, it would save money. If money is the top line goal, it would save money to ship via three p l. I've got a myriad of items of why I don't ship with a three p l, and maybe at some point, I probably will.

I it's been sort of an ongoing discussion in my head what's best. And I think that granted like, I almost feel like the mainstream advice from a lot of brands, especially in, like, the zero to seven figure or maybe not zero. It's probably more like here here's what I would say. Like, you should I think you should ship in house until you get to, like, a hundred k a year or something like that. You should get I think you should ship my opinion is you should ship in house until you hate it because it's really important to get that knowledge and build up that experience of doing it so that you kind of know what to look for when you're shopping for a three p l or you when you're hiring someone to do it.

And controlling that customer experience is pretty important and I think underrated in a lot of ways. And when you outsource from day zero, you don't have that exposure and you don't have that knowledge. And also, I don't know if it makes sense when you're shipping a couple orders a week to to do it via three p l. But when you get to that fork in the road, the reason why I went with the shipping in house is so that I can control basically, have more control. I'm kind of a control freak, which I guess is generally a good thing for running your own brand and being, like, a CEO kind of person.

But I wanted more control over a lot of the processes, being able to throw in, like, freebies and packing cards and not get charged for them, do, like, mystery drops, do QA on the products themselves, be able to, basically, I I did want I did a went with a local warehouse because I want to be able to get things out quickly. Most of my customers probably half my orders are from in state. And so that things can get to other cities here in the area pretty quickly. And so that's helpful. I also work with a lot of nonprofit partners, and so they generally are like, hey.

Can we have a donation tomorrow? Which wouldn't necessarily be possible if it was at a three p l in in Missouri or something like that. The unboxing, I think there's also a hidden benefit of the doing a lot of b t BTS behind the scenes and content. And that's sort of possible if you have a 3PL, but you don't have as much help with it. So that's been also really helpful in the process to kind of, like, pull back the curtain and share on social and and give those behind the scenes looks.

QA is an important part in my process because I don't necessarily like, I'm changing products all the time. I'm changing designs all the time. And so being able to QA them when they come in and have a really detailed look at them to make sure that they're good. I know that that process can be done at the factory end. I'm not big enough to really have, like, a QA person at a factory do it for me, although a lot of my suppliers do it.

I I still find some mistakes when they arrive. So that's been an important reason for it. I think one of the biggest drawbacks, though, is, like, you basically it's, like, at the end of the day, the question is, do you wanna run your brand or do you wanna run a warehouse? And it's it's a good question because I do find myself it is time intensive. Like, there's a lot of you know, you're running a warehouse, so you're like, I'm doing HR for the person that I've hired to do stuff.

And I'm doing a lot of warehouse things where, like, orders get lost or things get lost and doing a lot of logistics planning and all sorts of stuff that that is not necessarily, like, building the brand. And so that's that's one of the biggest drawbacks I see is, like, it is a lot of time and money that you could be spending elsewhere. So I totally understand why why people go with a three p l. It's also expensive, like, buying shelving, buying all the Oh, yeah. Things to use.

And, like, we get, obviously, discounted rates through Shopify or ShipStation or whatever you're using, but you you're you're not probably getting the same discounted rate as a 3BL would get. So you do pay a little bit more in shipping. I also use customized packaging. I forgot to mention that. I use customized packaging for a lot of my products and shipping them out.

And so that's just if a three bill can do that, that's just like another cost. And, my unboxing experience is important to me. The brand itself is is important to me. And a lot of those elements are, like, under the department of branding I as I see it. And so I want that more I want more control over it than the 3BL would offer.

Yeah. I think that control side of things is is really a big one. I think it's that's, like, the biggest one because I mean, I I remember a year ago, like, we had, like, a, there was, like, a pro tennis player that bought one of our bags and that I knew. I saw the name. I thought, that can't be them.

And I was so glad that, like, I had control over the better of it. We're just gonna No. If only. If only. No.

I was I was so, like, it was amazing that she that she, that she'd bought it. And, like, I I wanted, like, to make sure we yeah. No. But, I wish that would I would I'd be saying of the name if it was Serena Williams. But anyway, yeah, so I wanted to have a control over it, so I wanted to add some stuff in there like a little note, something like that.

And there's there's been various times when I've wanted to just like add stuff in or like a wholesale order, I want to like throw something in because I'm because they're the first time they've ordered or something. And it's nice to have control over that. And even though, like, you have more control because it's within very close distance to you whereas mine's in another country, but I still speak Yeah. I mean But I Because I'm able to speak to the person who is doing it every day and they will often reach out to me and say, like, or even with returns. Like, we don't get that many returns, but it's nice that, like, that there's proper inspection of the returns because, you know, there's been times where, I don't know, a customer returns an like, an order of four items and they've returned one item, and and I've been told that.

Whereas sometimes with three pills, I get the impression it's just kind of like, oh, return in the bin, off we go to the next one sort of thing. Like, so that's the I think definitely control. The other thing I think is such a nightmare with three pills is there's so many of them. Like, how do you even know where to go? It's almost like, decision paralysis with three PLs.

And I I've I've looked into things like, if you heard of the fulfill.com, I think where, like, they, like, help you source three PLs. Yep. But sometimes I've done that. Yeah. I spoke I spoke to them before as well in the past when I've kinda looked into things, and they'll give you, like, eight three PLs, and you don't really know which one to go with.

Like, you the they they've helped you find these, like, eight three PLs, but then it's like at that point, it's like, well, you know, I can go and speak to them and get an idea of, you know but, you know, most three pills are gonna tell you the same thing or we have, you know, we've really got really good care of our, you know, Us products. We all the shipping and, you know, we don't charge that we were really transparent with our pricing. Like, every three pill tells you the same thing. So how are you ever gonna know? And and I think that's kind of what stopped me as well is the fear of getting products stuck in a three PL and and not wanting to have to deal with that situation, whereas, like, I have complete control over it.

So I think it's a mix of, like, like, the mass amount of three PLs out there plus the lack of control once you've handed stuff over to them. Mhmm. Mhmm. Yeah. Definitely.

It's it is, like you said, analysis paralysis. And there are they all say the same thing, and there's a million of them, and you hear these horror stories. And I'm sure there's good ones out there because people are still in business doing it and that sort of thing. And I've looked at a few and been close to been like, oh, do I ship everything down to them and let them take over? And maybe I might do that at some point, but I I don't I don't know.

It's it is like a huge decision, and it feels like sort of a ripped a Band Aid off moment. It's like, do you rip that Band Aid off or do you leave it on? And right now, I'm kinda kinda leaving it on. I have felt I have felt a lot of pain recently about doing it in house because I don't batch my orders, and I haven't just because that's how I started. I was doing them one by one.

And I actually used to draw mountain sketches on the back of the sticker envelope orders, and people loved that. And I've, like, I've had customers tell me they collected those envelopes and, like, stored them away because they were so cool. And it was fun to practice sketching out mountains. It was good practice for design. That's not possible anymore.

It was quickly not or it was after, like, a couple years, it was not possible. But that was fun, and it was, like, a very personal touch. But recently, I've been digging into switching to ShipStation from Shopify and just to expediate things and reduce errors. Reduce errors, I think, is the big thing. It's, like, my person's very accurate.

She's she's awesome at doing what she's doing. She's been with me for a year now, which is pretty incredible. The longest time I've had someone on board with me. And I'm also looking at using her for other tasks and, like, sort of extending her role into more things, which I think is pretty valuable. And so getting to ShipStation is, like, I'm working on the ShipStation migration where we're gonna switch to it for our processes.

We're gonna use barcodes on everything. I'm only barcoding select products right now for wholesalers who want it. And so that means we're picking by site, basically. And there's I've there's been issues that have come up. Like, our I'm gonna start tracking our accuracy rate more closely, but we're pretty good right now.

But there are some errors that pop up where it's like, a customer says they get a sticker instead of a patch, and it's the same exact design. It's really hard to tell in Shopify based on the image if it's a sticker or patch. Granted, there's, like, a SKU there, which is pretty close, but it's not the exact same. And so I'm working on barcoding everything and going through that process where it's like, okay, we probably should batch stuff as well. And it is.

It's like, I have to spend a couple hours learning how to do all this and then train my person on all of it, or I could be spending that elsewhere in the business. So it's there's definitely an opportunity cost when it comes down to it. I also am pretty interested in shipping for other people. Like, you mentioned you do that a little bit. I've done that a little bit in the past, and it's helpful, I think, to turn your cost center into more of a profit center in some ways.

At the end of the day, like, I don't wanna operate a 3PL, so I want them to be, like, lower volume people. But it's it's helpful to be, like, okay, so we're collecting some income by storing their stuff and shipping it out here. So it's not just like a huge cost on the balance sheet. Yeah. Yeah.

I think it's really interesting because because, the thing about when you outsource it I I even I one thing I forgot to mention is that when I first started shipping in The US, before I found the guy that I've got and set set up all up where I used to live, I actually went to another brand based in Arizona who I just met in another community, and they were quite a big brand, something supplements and stuff. And and and they they actually offered to me. They said, well, we can ship out your stuff. And so I sent stock to them, and it basically got to the point where they actually just didn't really want to do it anymore. And of course, stock stock got stuck there, and then it, like, costs a lot of money to get it away out of there.

And because they had they had their own, like, turnover because they had, you know, very big business. So the they basically assigned someone to ship our stuff and that person left and then they didn't you know, you know, you then you're then speaking to the founder again trying to get them to set this up for you again and it's like that sort of stuff. So I obviously don't wanna provide that experience to anyone else. But at the same time, there's a benefit, obviously, when you're doing it in house, you can outsource it to other people and you can start you can, like, take away that call center. At the same time Mhmm.

You are putting yourself in, you know, you're you're solidifying, you know, the fact that you are you're doing this because there's suddenly now another business is depending on you for shipments. Mhmm. And you're taking away that flexibility. And I do think in ecommerce, like, flexibility is a huge benefit. Mhmm.

Especially when like, it's at the least amount of fixed costs you can have and more variable costs. And this is something that we've spoken about, but, like, the more the more, like, variable costs you have, even if they're slightly more expensive from a cash flow perspective, is just so much more important. And this is something I think I've heard quite a lot from, like, a lot of, like, the ecom gurus, this person like Taylor Holiday. And people say, like, if your staff are are completely variable in the in, like, in terms of the workload, then as an ecom business, it can be, like, hugely beneficial because in those slow months, you're not burning so much cash. And so that's the benefit of the three players.

Well, they might the storage, you know, is constant, but at least, like, you know, you're, you know, you you you've you've got other things where, like whereas, like, the person I'm paying I got for shipping, I pay them as fixed amount every month. And it's actually it works out really cheaply on the months where we've got high volume. On other months, it's not it's not so much. And so, I want it to work out for them as well because, you know, they they are taking a risk in doing this. They're getting this taking away their time to do this.

You wanna make sure it works out for them. And so even with the other brand that I'm shipping for, I just said to them, you know, from the shipping side, build them what you want. That'll be between you and them, and we'll just charge them a storage fee. Because, in in in, like, from my perspective, I wanna take away I wanna obviously, wanna take away some of our storage costs, but at the same time, I wanna make sure that they are making money out of it. And I can't sometimes it's hard to justify paying them for the what they've done to ship it, plus adding something on top and charging that to somebody else.

It suddenly becomes a bit unwieldy from their side, especially for the brand we're doing because they're quite small items, and so they're, you know, that's hard to add a big, big cost on top. So, yeah, I think flexibility is is is part of the whole equation as well. Mhmm. Mhmm. Yeah.

Definitely. I think that's interesting about like, being able to kinda sorta scale up and down in the in the on and off seasons because it is so so wild when it comes to, like, what the income looks like or the sales look like from a revenue standpoint. Would you if you were starting from day zero, would you go with the three p l, or would you stick with your setup? Yeah. That's a good question.

Because part of the reason I still do this is because I don't wanna let the person down that I've got shipping for me, because because, you know, they've they're making a bit of money on the side. They don't touch it. It go they they build like a separate bank account, they told me. Like, they or PayPal. They don't even touch their PayPal.

It just goes into their PayPal each month. They're, like, building up a little it's almost like a little small investment for them of, like, a bit of money each month just going and sitting aside. So, like, I feel and they're a good friend of mine, so I feel bad, you know, because I think that it's a it it is working for us at the moment, and I'll keep it going for a while. But, you know, it's one of those things where, you know, you you that's the trouble about business sometimes is it's hard to make those decisions because you're like, what's best for the business is not always what's best for people you know. So that's a tough one.

I think if I started from scratch from day day zero, I would still be shipping everything out myself until I I mean, not now, but I would have continued to do what I did at the beginning, shipping everything out myself. But I probably would have gone for three PL. Yeah. And I probably would have just gone through the, like, the effort and the annoyance of, like, maybe not liking a three PL, having to move and do all that stuff at the beginning and not do it now. And now now I can't be I I'm, you know, I just the thought of it doing it now is not But I suppose it might even be worse in three years' time.

So it's one of those things where we keep putting it off. Get harder. Rip the band aid off. I wanna I wanted to know about, like, ShipStation though because, in terms of, like, just I mean, just in terms of, like, software in general because, we've like, the guy I've got doing our shipping does a lot of shipping through Shopify because that's just the easiest for him. Like, he finds it so he got used to using Shopify, printing off the labels rightly directly within the order.

And, like, it annoys me that no other shipping apps integrate within the Shopify dashboard apart from Shopify shipping because, it would be so nice to be able to just, like, print off a label within Shopify dashboard, but it's, you know, connected to ShipStation or something like that. So, yeah. Why I guess my question is why did you decide to do that? And is it is it that much? Is it gonna, like, make things that much more simple for you slash whoever's doing it for you through ShipStation?

Yeah. It's basically I I looked at a few different shipping platforms a couple years ago, including, like, Shippo and one other one. I think the parent company of ShipStation basically bought all of them, so they kind of have a monopoly, which is not ideal. I could be wrong there. And ShipStation, I've tried in the past too, and I hated it because I'm a super snob when it comes to website software UI and UX.

And it's really ugly and not very easy to use. It's just not pretty. I mean, it's kind of easy to use, but a speed and accuracy are the main reasons. So with Shopify, it's like a bunch of clicks to print out a label. From what I've been reading and researching, ShipStation, you can do labels way faster.

Just the process of shipping in orders way faster. And then the accuracy standpoint, Shopify, funny enough, Shopify doesn't, until yesterday, doesn't allow you to do, like, packing lists where you're like, okay. I'm gonna go do a bunch of orders because I'm gonna do batch shipping. So I'm gonna do, like, 20 orders or 50 orders right now. Go collect the different things around the warehouse.

You know? There's five hats over here. There's 10 sweatshirts over here. 10 stickers over here. ShipStation allows you to batch like that, and it also allows you to scan the barcode for the product to make sure that it's accurate.

And that process of scanning to make sure it's the right product in the right order is very important for the accuracy standpoint. Shopify until yesterday didn't have, like, a packing list, so you couldn't do batch shipping very easily. They announced yesterday at additions one of their their, like, quarterly feature drop, basically, which they they're incredible. Their software innovation pace is unmatched in this world right now. Yeah.

Unbelievable. And they have hundreds of features that they're announcing. And one of them, I was looking through the list really quickly, was the ability to do a packing list. So it seems like they're pushing a little bit more in that direction. But in terms of, like, an advanced solution for shipping, it seems like ShipStation is the answer.

It is annoying to pay another fixed cost. It's gonna be, I don't know, 30 to a hundred dollars or something a month depending on order volumes. And so that's pretty annoying. And I'll also not super psyched to train my person on it because then I have to be very knowledgeable on it, and they're not super enthused to be switching platforms. But Yeah.

It is what I think ultimately yeah. I think it ultimately will be a win. I'm curious to see what those shipping rates will look like. Because whenever I shop around for shipping rates, it seems like everyone has the same sort of, quote, unquote, commercial rates where you can save up to 85%, whether it's pirate ship or whatever platform it is or ShipStation. So I don't know if ShipStation will have more cost effective rates or not.

That's that'll be really interesting, but it's definitely more for the ability to scan barcodes and do batch shipping, and get things out quicker and more accurately. So we'll see hopefully in the next month, I'll I'll be done with it, and I can circle back around and share some of the stuff from from that migration. Yeah. It's really interesting. I was talking about, like, Shopify editions because, one thing I also noticed, which I thought was really cool, is I don't know if you do much shipping outside The US.

For us, it's quite it, it's quite a big deal in the sense that in the sense that maybe 40% of our orders outside The US, and therefore, it can Wow. It can crush our our margins or can be okay depending on how we do it. And it's really hard to accurately calculate for all of that, mostly but not actually because of duties. Like, people think it's because of duties and or shipping costs. It's usually because, like, couriers, they charge a handling fee for shipping duty paid.

So a lot or, like, nowadays, most customers don't wanna get, like, a a, like, duty charged them when a when a product arrives. Like, it's not a good experience for someone to buy. It's someone in France to buy, say, a bag of ours, and then the UPS sends them an email saying, well, we're not gonna deliver this until you pay €30 in in duty or €40 in duty. Like, most people are pretty upset about that. So due so Shopify has, like, duty and tax collections at checkout.

Of course, they've got stuff like, Shopify markets, managed markets, there we are. Where they basically collected all at checkout and things like that. And so I was using that for a little while because obviously it adds it all in. Mhmm. One thing I found that didn't work is that you can't do preorders with Shopify managed markets because they don't pay you out on any international sales till they're shipped.

Yeah. And so that was a big problem. That was a big problem. Yeah. Yeah.

So I found that out the hard way. But one thing I was gonna say about Shopify Shipping is they recently also added in DHL ecommerce, which is like a DDP, like, deliver duty paid shipping thing. So it's not just u because the problem with UPS and FedEx is that if you if you ship anywhere outside The US, they don't they they will handle the duty charges and everything and calculate, but they'll charge you sometimes like 40 or $50 to manage that. It's like crazy. Wow.

So Wow. So sometimes you can have a shipment that would have cost like $35 to send and it's like almost over a hundred dollars to send because because they're just charging a ridiculous fee to manage the duty. And so, I've been struggling a lot with that because we ship sell out a lot of from most of it from The US. And so, obviously, the nice thing with Shopify with, like, the shipping, with, like, adding more DDP stuff into Shopify shipping is that we can, like I think DHL is the only one that doesn't charge or charge, like, a very low handling fee for, like, duties. So, like, I'm obviously looking forward to that.

But what I was gonna say is that we use another app called, Easy Ship. I don't know if you heard of that one. But they're, like, mostly, like, around international shipping, in terms of, like, providing good rates of international shipping. So we've been using a lot of that. But, again, getting somebody else up to speed with using that, for a while, I was any international orders, like, I was he was telling me, okay.

Can you create the label? I will create the label, send it to him, and he package it up. And it would be like, I don't wanna be doing this. You know? So but it's Some of these platforms like ShipStation, EasyShip, they're Especially if, like, when it gets into international shipping stuff, it's not easy to navigate.

And so it's much easier for somebody who's not, like, natively used to this type of stuff to just go in Shopify, see the order, print off the label, done sort of thing. So yeah. Mhmm. Mhmm. Interesting.

Yeah. That's I haven't done a whole lot of international, and I wanna expand into that realm at some point. So I'm logging all this away because it is kind of a pain. And when I've done it, I've only done DHL actually like that. I think I have my global rates in Shopify, like, only only enabled for DHL stuff, because it does seem more hands off and DDP is nice.

But I've I've always been shocked when customer like, I had I remember one order that went to Canada A Couple Years ago, and it was, like, a $50 order. And the person was, like, I have to pay $50 in duties on this or something? I was, like, yeah. I guess I guess so. I don't boy, your taxes and duties are there.

But it was pretty crazy. It is it's cool when Shopify handles all of that for you. That's helpful that, like, they do try and mitigate that as much as possible. I like that. Yeah.

I think it's just crazy nowadays that, like, even between Canada and The US, there's still massive duty charges. Like, how is how is that the case? I don't understand. But yeah. Yeah.

That's a whole another upset. International economics and tariffs. Yeah. But I mean, I think in in summary, I think, like, obviously, as you scale, it gets harder and harder. I think the the use case for shipping in house for most for most brands, I think, who do it is because they have a very specific use case.

Like it's like, you know, furniture or something, you know, where they just like or like a custom built thing, you know, where it's like tons of components go into it. And, you know, people people you know, it's it's gonna be very hard to find a 3PL that's willing to take that on unless you're doing massive volume. So I can understand that. I do think us, given that we're not, like, a massive amount of, like, technical kitting or anything that goes into our shipping our products, you know, three p l is probably long term a better solution. I think it's just a case of when and when and where, I guess.

Mhmm. Mhmm. Yeah. It's definitely not I feel like it's a gray area. It's not, like, black or white.

There's not, like, one right answer for every business, and it does seem like a business that's specializing in shipping and logistics, a three PL, in that hard realm to operate in does make more sense, and especially if they're cheaper than doing it in house. So we'll see. We'll see where, I guess, the paths take us and if we decide to swap it up at some point and convert over. I don't know. I will be bummed when that happens.

I will I do I will miss, like, doing it all in house and and having that control and, like, being able to visit the warehouse and check on products and that sort of thing. I get that that's all sort of secondary to, like, the you know, the the goal of the brand is to grow and be profitable enough to to pay me someday. That would be nice. Cool. Another issue.

Cash flow. But it yeah. It'll be I'll be kinda bummed. But it it it's been quite the journey in the process, and I think it has been important to to have it where I've had it and, have my hands on it and that sort of thing. But I I do think, like, the the right answer almost is use the 3PL for most situations.

Yeah. And I think I mean, like, one thing I would say is I really enjoy, like, your content on, like, you know, behind the scenes showing the, showing, like, the packing, everything. I think it people love that. And so I think you do that extremely well. So obviously that's, like, a particular thing for your brand, especially if, like, you're seeing people are, like, really getting like, enjoying that sort of stuff, then it makes sense to keep it.

I guess if you think about one thing I hate is, like, almost feeling like I'm getting further and further, like, more detached from the product itself. Because you think about, like, outsourcing manufacturing, if you think about, like, a company hundred years ago, they would have, you know, maybe done their manufacturing in house, done their shipping in house, done everything in house, and everything would have been right there. But obviously nowadays, we're in a situation where everything is so much farther attack they're, like, detached, sorry, from, you know, where, you know, you know, maybe sometimes many, you know, you know, thousands of kilometers away from our products and, like, and, like, we've also got, you know, maybe people who who are, like, freelancers or people working with us who are also far away. And so I guess that is just what it is nowadays, but sometimes I think, yeah, definitely, like, having product close to hand and being able to do that kind of content is really cool. Yeah.

It's really like a modern philosophy to to do that where it's it's like, in the name of efficiency, specialize as much as possible and lean on economies of scale and, like, squeeze out every penny everywhere. And I think it's I like that old school mentality of, like, no. I'm gonna keep this tight to the chest or whatever. Like, this I want my hands on it. And it and it might be not the most economical route or whatever.

It might not make some most sense financially, but for from for the reasons that we've gone through, like, these are the reasons why I'm gonna hold on to it a little bit more and have that control over it. Yeah. Definitely. Yeah. Well, there we are, forty forty three minutes about shipping.

Alright. Where are the logistics people at? Yeah. Hope you guys, hope you guys enjoyed this podcast, liked this episode. We're still working through all this sort of stuff, so, yeah, I think, it's always a work in progress, but, it's always good to talk about kind of, like, share ideas, new ways to do this stuff.

I think cool things also things are evolving all the time, just like we talked about with, like, Shopify and, like, new and, like, new ship like, apps, new, like, opportunities for, like, shipping things cheaper. Sometimes, you you know, sometimes things change the game a little bit, and who knows? Maybe three p l's won't be needed so much in the future. Maybe there will be more. I don't know.

But, yeah. We'll we'll work through it somehow. Yeah. Good stuff. Alright.

Catch you all later.