The Benefits of Merch Fulfillment Services

Fulfillment services are more sought after now than it was just a few years ago. This comes with the rise in eCommerce, especially as brick and mortal stores were forced to shut down during 2020 due to Covid-19. As a Los Angeles Print Shop, we have seen a great opportunity for people to get into making their own merch and leave all the work to us. This hands-off approach is the most attractive aspect of our fulfillment services but there are also many other benefits and we have outlined them here.

So, what are the benefits?

Time

One of the biggest benefits of having someone else fulfill your orders is the amount of time you are saving and re-directing to your sales and business strategies. The most time consuming tasks of owning an eCommerce business includes the packing and shipping process, and if you’re not ready to invest in hiring an employee, a fulfillment service like ours is the perfect alternative.

Check Out When to shift from in-house to outsourced fulfillment

Space

Big apparel companies own one or several warehouses across the US to be able to hold their inventory for fulfillment. For most people that are just starting out may not have the capital to invest into a space to hold their stock and perhaps do not have the space in their homes, this is where we come in. Fulfillment services store your inventory, so you don’t have to worry about filling your coat closet with your merch.

Shipping Efficiency

In the age of Prime Shipping, people are becoming more and more impatient and want fast and efficient shipping. As a business, we have the man power to be able to fulfill hundreds of orders daily with a daily pick up from carriers such as USPS, FedEx, and UPS. This is all set in place to make the shipping process as smooth and efficient as possible.

Shipping Rates

Many fulfillment services will provide you with their discounted rates. These rates are negotiated based on volume shipped out of their facilities. These rates are not available to everybody and it’s based on shipping history. For someone just starting out, the shipping rates can be very high which can deter many from starting their online business. This is another great reason why fulfillment services can save you money on the long run.

Scalability

One of the draw backs of having a successful start up ecommerce business is the ability to grow by increasing stock and variations of your best sellers. Many eCommerce businesses begin with little stock to test the water and when a product becomes popular it can be hard to keep up with the demand if you’re worried about space and inventory.

By outsourcing fulfillment, you’ll be better equipped to handle an increase or perhaps even a massive seasonal influx of orders.

Reduced Operation Costs

It can be incredibly expensive to rent a space to store inventory as well as to hire staff to fulfill orders along with buying packing materials. In the case of what Family Industries does, we not only do all of the above but we also print apparel in-house, adding another valuable reason why our fulfillment service is so valuable.

As a fulfillment service provider, we also like to include branded goodie such as stickers and pins as well as branded packaging. This can be a great way to build brand awareness and loyalty.

Read more about Fulfillment Center vs. Warehouse: What Are the Differences?

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How Does Family Industries Do It?

Family Industries is a Los Angeles merch print shop focused on creating merch for eCommerce Brands, Public Figures, Musicians, and corporate companies.

Our mission is to ‘Bring Merch To The People’ by creating high quality prints and providing next level service to all of our clients. Not only do we store inventory for you and ship your orders, we take care of printing, finishing services, adding branded tags, and creating branded packaging. A true full-service experience!

Here is Phil from Family Industries explaining the process:

Want to know more?

Read our blog post about how Family Industries fulfillment services works

Author: Irene Floridia - Content Creator

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For FAQ, check out our site!

For any inquiries, send us a message!

OR

send us an e-mail at quotes@familyindustriesla.com

A Guide to Branding in [2023]

Author Irene Floridia, Content Creator

Thinking of starting your own business? Looking to improve your customer satisfaction or ensure customer retention? We have a guide on how to improve your branding efforts and new ways to enhance brand awareness in the fast-paced environment of consumerism.

What is Branding?

Branding is the process of researching, developing, and applying a specific set of criteria to an organization so that consumers can associate the brand with the product or service.

Branding is generally an action taken before the launch of a brand to ensure there is a cemented identity and to then establish standards for the product or service provided. This action also helps determine who the consumer for this product or service is to then tailor marketing efforts so as to target a specific group of people.

The Importance of Branding

The importance of establishing a brand is arguably the most important first step in starting a business. It gives your organization an identity, it makes your product or service memorable and it encourages consumers to support and trust your business. Being able to define your business and its purpose can have a big impact on the ability to build a consumer base. Most often, branding can be the deciding factor for consumers when they make a purchase decision.

In a 2015 global Nielsen Survey, almost 60% of shoppers said they actively buy from brands they know, and 21% said they bought a product because they liked the brand.

How To Create A Brand Strategy

• Establish Target Audience

  • Branding leads to awareness, recognition, and revenue; this outcome stems from customers. The first step in constructing a strategy, as a business, you will need to understand who your audience is and that is how you will understand what will resonate with them. Who does your product serve? Who is your ideal customer? Read about what is Brand Awareness.

• Mission Statement

  • To establish a mission statement you must ask yourself ‘why did I create my business?’ Answering this question will help you write your mission statement, which defines the purpose of your brand. Check out ‘How to Define Inspiring Mission and Vision Statements”

• Define Features and Benefits

  • There are most likely other businesses or services in your industry, and it’s important to set yourself apart from them to engage consumers and convince them that you are the best option. Ask yourself, what is the one thing that your business has that no one else has? take some time to write down unique values, benefits, and qualities that set you apart from the competition. Read “How to Develop a Unique & Memorable Brand Identity”.

• Create Visual Assets

  • Some will argue that this is one of the most important steps when building a brand. People are attracted to well-thought-out designs, this means having a good logo, color palette, attractive typography, iconography, and other visual components. To create these elements, building a brand guideline is helpful to create a composition and use of your visual assets.

• Find Your Brand Voice

  • How your brand communicates with the consumer is important, think about what this voice would sound like if it were a person. The brand voice is particularly important for a well-rounded marketing campaign, social media, blog posts, and your brand story. How you communicate with your targeted audience sets a tone and should be consistent throughout all of your written content.

How to put your branding to work

Social Media

All posts, cover art, and branded imagery should reflect your brand. Using your logo as your profile image will make it easier for customers to recognize your business. All of your content such as blog posts, product copy, captions, and videos should reflect your brand voice.

Packaging

If you have a physical product, your packaging should reflect your branding - this means, design, color pallet, fonts, size, and feel. Detailed packaging helps build confidence with consumers as it reflects on how much you care about your product. Packaging also assures the buyer that they have purchased something that is high-quality and this way you can build brand trust and loyalty.

Businesses like Family Industries can help create packaging with logos and preferred color pallets as well as fulfill your orders directly. Not only is Family Industries a screen printing shop, but they offer a variety of different services from branded apparel tags, to stickers and soft enamel pins to be included in your package.

Marketing

Marketing such as advertising, both digital and print, are tools used to establish brand awareness and introduce consumers to your brand, therefore, it is critical that they reflect your branding. All this work on your brand identity should make the marketing ads creation process easier - by following your brand style guide, you will already know how your ads should look and what type of copy to write.

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Pro Tip: Overall consistency is key to brand recognition, brand trust, and loyalty.

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For questions, send us an e-mail at quotes@familyindustriesla.com, or give us a call at 323.227.1547 and we'd be happy to help.

Our showroom at 2755 Fruitdale Street, Los Angeles, CA 90039 is open by appointment only from 10 am - 4 pm Monday through Friday.

Author: Irene Floridia - Content Creator

A Guide To Creating Your Own Merch

Creating a brand is a way to develop your unique business personality, connect with the consumer and establish yourself within the corporate market. Once you have solidified your brand, the next step can be creating merchandise that is exciting and viable to market to new or existing customers.

Some businesses may appear more suited for merch than others. For example, creative businesses or businesses that deal in similar merchandise may seem more well-placed to sell custom promotional products on the frontlines. However, the truth is that all businesses can benefit from creating merch for their own brand, no matter the product or service.

Creating merchandise for your own brand can give you the freedom to sell and use swag as custom products for any service. It’s a great and creative way to get your brand design out in front of other people and make some extra income while doing so.

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“Conversation is not simply a two-way process, but also a continuous process. Brand research enables brands to ask the questions and listen to their customers, allowing them to keep their finger on the pulse and adapt appropriately.”

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Research

Researching your audience whether you’re a service provider or a product retailer is a must. By identifying your customer demographics, you will be able to gear your merch products more specifically and ensure a successful launch.

When doing your research, you’ll want to follow these questions.

• How old is your audience?

• What are generally their interests?

• What is the general socioeconomic status?

• What is their employment industry?

The use of social media often can also be very revealing. Sometimes people aren’t that willing to share details over interviews or creating an account on your platform / store, or simply aren’t aware of their own habits.

Following your audience on social media can most often give you a very good idea of what they are into, this requires a lot of time but can be very rewarding.

Design

After the research phase, design becomes the focus. It may be enough to add your logo to a cool gadget or a wearable good, but if you are looking to make a profit, adding an element of design can really bump up the interest in your merch. It’s necessary to try to make a statement by either creating a clever design or creating a product with a lot of color and character.

Some companies may hire an artist to create a work of art to be printed unto their merch, which makes those pieces a little more valuable than if it was just your logo or a simple component of your branding aesthetic.

Diversify Your Merch

Not all merch is created equal, and not all merch is equally useful for everyone.

By diversifying the products offered, you’re giving the consumer a choice of products that best serves them. Your demographic according to your research may have different variants, this is when you should make the decision of creating different products for different people.

Anyone willing to buy merchandise is usually happy to browse a range of products and see what you have on offer, rather than only having the option to buy one thing. Happy merchandise consumers may also return to your online store to buy a different item next time, so having a choice is key.

Budget

Maximizing your budget can make all the difference. If you’re unable to offer a variety of products, concentrate on the product you think will perform the best according to your audience research.

Many brands will also launch a pre-order product(s) and can fund their merch production using this method as the purchase will be done upfront making it easier to increase your budget. While this works for most companies, we suggest you advise your customer of potential lead-times as printing and production times my vary.

Read more about What To Include In Your Promotional Products Budget

Fulfillment

If your budget allows it, we recommend using companies such as Family Industries for all your fulfillment needs. The good thing about this process is that you will never have to touch the product, they will be made, printed, packed, and shipped all from a single source. Fulfillment can become overwhelming if you have a large following and a healthy stream of daily orders, and services like fulfillment can be a time-saver and allow for you to focus on your overall business.

Author: Irene Floridia - Content Creator

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Follow us on Instagram and Facebook!

For FAQ, check out our site!

For any inquiries, send us a message!

OR

send us an e-mail at quotes@familyindustriesla.com

eCommerce: Apparel Fulfillment Service

Fulfillment for a small clothing brand can be a challenging task, especially if you are receiving hundreds of orders in a single day and you’re competing with larger operations that may have more resources to get the orders out the door faster. In the age of instant gratification, small brands are having a harder time ensuring customer satisfaction when it comes to shipping efficiency. At Family Industries, we offer a solution to all of your fulfillment needs.

How Does It Work?

As a full-service print shop, we feature white-label fulfillment which means we not only print your merch but we also pick, pack, and ship your orders directly to the buyer. We also include any other promotional items such as pins or stickers and branded packaging. This allows you to focus on your business strategy and your creative process to push your sales, while we worry about getting those orders to your customers.

Integrations

We can connect directly to your e-commerce store and sync your product SKUs to begin receiving orders. Integration time may vary and depend on where the e-commerce store is hosted. In most cases, this can be done in a single day.

Invoicing / Restocking

We invoice your monthly for your orders and services, we also track your inventory so re-stocking is easy and we ensure you’re never sold out of your most popular items.

Client Services

We’re always here if you have questions or concerns, our goal is to ensure 100% satisfaction with all the brands we work with. While we don’t directly contact your customers, we are always here to address your concerns.

Shipping & Returns

We offer white-label shipping which means your brand logo, name, address, and phone number will be on the shipping labels as well as any other promotional items included in the package. We simply do the work for you ensuring tracking information is available for your client by alerting them via email.

Benefits of Fulfillment Services

Time

If you’re like most business owners, you have your hands in every aspect of your operation. As you continue to grow your brand, tasks such as shipping become a daily time-consuming chore that must be done in a timely manner. Most start-up brands eventually run into difficulties when it comes to shipping on-time and this also becomes something that can damage your brand and reputation. Not to mention, in order to survive you also need to be constantly innovating to retain those customers, therefore, time becomes of the essence. You will need to dedicate more time designing and/or scaling your business, and for this reason, you will need fulfillment to be done and taken care of in a timely manner.

Space

One of the many pain points of an eCommerce business is inventory and the capacity to store those items. With fulfillment services, you have the freedom to keep as much stock as possible, ensuring that you will not run out of the popular items in your catalog. This also prevents “out of stock” products and diminishes the amount of “stock availability” inquiries from potential buyers.

Shipping Rates

In many cases, fulfillment services will provide you with their negotiated shipping rates. If you’re a brand that is just getting started, chances are, your shipping rates will be high and you don’t have the leverage that some of these bigger companies have with a long record of packages shipped. In order to be able to negotiate a discounted rate, as a business owner, you would need to show the carrier that you have the volume they would like to see in order to offer you those discounts. With fulfillment services, discounted rates are almost always offered and can be highly beneficial economically.

Quality Assurance

Because printing and shipping are done in the same location, the quality of the product tends to be the main priority, and inspections are done prior to drop-shipping. The fulfillment process requires quality checks and ensures your buyers are happy with their purchase.

Re-Stocking

A fulfillment service company will keep track of your inventory and replenish it as needed to ensure you never run out. Restocking is generally done per SKU, calculating sales velocity and production time to ensure restocking is done on time before running out. This calculation can also be adjusted depending on the seasonality and other factors such as special sales days or in preparation for the holidays.

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If you’re thinking about using a fulfillment service, hit us up!



Author: Irene Floridia - Content Creator

Meet A Family Member - Kerin Amit

Each month we bring you inside our warehouse to introduce you to a member of our Family.

Kerin Amit

Fulfillment Department Manager / Master of Direct to Garment

Though it is far from finished, we’ve been working out of Camp Family (our new facility in Frogtown, LA) for quite some time now. Simultaneously managing the workflow of two separate locations would be a much more difficult and stressful situation if it weren’t for one person: Kerin Amit. Over here at the Chinatown warehouse we’re fortunate enough to work alongside our fellow Family members, with someone always there to help pick up the slack. Meanwhile, at Camp Family, Kerin has had to handle the bulk of everything on her own. Most people would lose their minds, but somehow she manages to stay above it all. She’s the very definition of hard worker, and her ability to handle everything with poise and a level head is what makes her an invaluable member of the Family. The Fulfillment Department is a non-stop, ever-changing machine; yet somehow Kerin makes managing it look easy. Add to that the fact that she’s our go-to Direct to Garment printer, and you begin to wonder: is Kerin half human, half machine? Simply put, without Kerin we would be lost. Very few people could do what she does on a daily basis and manage to keep their head on straight. There is never a moment of nuttiness (of which there are plenty) that Kerin let’s get to her. She’s Camp Family’s knight in shining armor, and there isn’t a day that goes by that she doesn’t make us feel lucky as hell for getting to call her a member of our Family.

Without further ado, we’re excited to finally introduce you to THE Kerin Amit.

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What do you do at Family Industries?

To put it simply, I manage the Fulfillment department and run the Direct to Garment printers. I also do live events. I can pretty much do anything. DTG, embroidery, screen print, sublimation, vinyl, heat transfer.

Breaking it down, my main job is to work with clients in managing and maintaining their online store. We offer on demand printing for fulfillment, so when orders come in, I’ll either print them or if there is printed stock I’ll pull from inventory. And then I ship everything out. We can get anywhere between 40-100 orders overnight, so it’s always busy.

What piece of clothing that you own could you not live without?

High waisted pants.

At the moment, what are your top three songs?

1. “Lost On You” - LP

2. “Little Bit” - Terror Jr.

3. “Needy” - Ariana Grande

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“THE OVER-SHARE QUESTIONNAIRE”

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On top of steering the ship known as Camp Family, Kerin is also an incredible artist. If you attended Record Store Day 2019 at Amoeba Records, you might have snagged a shirt with Kerin’s design on it. That’s right, she’s the amazing artist behind this year’s Amoeba Tape design!

AND FINALLY,

DESCRIBE YOURSELF IN ONE GIF:

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