One of the side effects of the pandemic of 2020 is the rapid growth of ecommerce. More people are shopping online than ever before. We saw an increase in online shipping of over 21% on Black Friday, 30% on Small Business Saturday, and 15% on Cyber Monday.
One year ago, Shopify’s stock price hovered under $400. Today it tops $1,200. Etsy stock price has moved from $50 to almost $200 a share.
More and more people are starting online stores to capitalize on the trend.
Shopify is perhaps the most well-known ecommerce platform, but Etsy is popular for people who want to get started online easily without some of the headaches of setting up an online marketplace.
However, one of the challenges that Etsy does not eliminate is order fulfillment. Because of that, many people running Etsy shops consider using third party order fulfillment services to handle all of their fulfillment needs.
What is Etsy?
Etsy is its own online marketplace that connects sellers with buyers. On Etsy you will primarily find sellers of vintage items, handmade jewelry, small-batch cosmetics, clothing, crafts, and art.
Etsy offers a fast and easy setup. You open an account providing some basic information about yourself and business and can almost immediately start listing items without needing to set up your own website. Sellers pay a $0.20 per item listing fee and 5% transaction fee on sales. There are also options for pay-per-click advertising in the Etsy marketplace to get your products seen by more visitors.
The big appeal of Etsy is its ease of set up and use and the fact that there is a built in market to display your items to.
Unlike some other platforms such as Amazon which does provide some through their Fulfillment by Amazon service, order fulfillment is left entirely up to the seller. Etsy does allow you to purchase shipping labels through them which will save you a little bit on shipping costs compared to if you took a package directly to the shipping carrier yourself, but there are no options for the actual order fulfillment process.
Outsourcing Order Fulfillment to a 3PL Company
From the time a customer places an order in your shop to when the shipment arrives at their door, there are a lot of opportunities for things to go wrong. The order might be missing items or contain the wrong products. It might not arrive to them when promised. Something in their order could be damaged or defective and need to be returned and/or replaced.
Great marketing and buzz about your shop can be completely derailed by bad order fulfillment and customer service.
Most Etsy shop owners want to spend their time focusing on creating new products, building inventory, advertising, and generally growing their business. They do not want to be bogged down with the challenges of fulfilling all of their orders. For that reason, they often choose to outsource to a third-party logistics company like ShipBuddies.
Some of the services third-party logistics and order fulfillment companies can offer you include:
- Warehouse storage of your inventory.
- Picking and packing services, including custom packaging.
- Order shipping with affordable rates.
- Return handling.
Benefits of Outsourcing Your Etsy Fulfillment to ShipBuddies
ShipBuddies helps Etsy merchants to fulfill their orders quickly and accurately to keep your customers coming back again and again.
Affordable Shipping
We have partnered with major shipping services like USPS, FedEx, UPS, and DHL and by leveraging the shipping volume of all of our customers have negotiated competitive shipping rates that we can pass on to meet your needs.
Automation
In addition to offering you more affordable shipping, our software platform integrates directly with Etsy, making it easy to import your inventory and orders.
Information will flow between your Etsy store and our software platform letting you track things like inventory levels, customers, and shipments in real-time.
All of your orders are automatically sent to ShipBuddies for fulfillment. When an order is placed on your Etsy store, the order and customer information is immediately sent to the ShipBuddies fulfillment center.
There are no extra steps for you to process an order on your end.
Our staff will receive a picking list and retrieve the necessary inventory to fulfill the order. It is then boxed up to your specifications and shipped.
Keep Your Customers in the Loop
It’s important for ecommerce stores to keep their customers in the loop for their order processing and shipping, and ShipBuddies understands that. ShipBuddies will send a notice to your Etsy store when an order ships and provide your customers with tracking information.
Ready to Get Started?
Are you ready to see how ShipBuddies can simplify your Etsy order fulfillment process so you can focus on growing your business to new heights? Just click the request a quote button below to get in touch with us and learn more.
