It's time again for another crucial business decision. My warehouse Packer has handed in his notice and it means i need to find either a replacement or scrap in house fulfilment altogether and move to 3rd party.
There's positives and negatives to each side. The two things that are casting doubts from saying yes at the moment are firstly the cost. It's going to cost me roughly $1800 a month more. And secondly if i'm ever off work (i do customer service messages at the moment) the warehouse packer can do the messages on my behalf. (the person i have i mind to replace my current warehouse packer has worked for me previously for 7 years so would need no training).
If use a 3rd party fulfilment I would need to still ensure the messages are answered even if i went on holiday for instance.
We sell Power Adapters and a lot of the messages we get are technical questions so not just anyone can reply to them.
I did start training somebody up in the Philippines to do the messages but i'm currently trying to migrate away from selling power adapters long term anyway. It didn't seem a good use of time to train somebody up for a job that isn't going to be long term. They were fine chasing up missing orders or sending invoices but it would take some time to train them to answer the technical ones.
The cost price of fulfilment is an issue also. I'm barely making ends meet at the moment but i suppose i could look into trying to cut costs elsewhere to cover the extra monthly layout if i went down the 3rd party route. I could try and squeeze my supplier for cheaper costs or put my sales prices up although i'm in a competitive market as it is.
3rd Party Fulfillment would also free up a lot of my time to spend on growing the business so its a bit of catch 22 at the moment.
It's also simply not an option for me to do both the packing and customer service messages. I would not have much free time to grow the business and if i was ever off sick or for another reason the business would grind to a halt and 100 customers would not be getting there orders that day which would be a disaster and spell the end.
Any thoughts from anyone? I would really appreciate some input!
There's positives and negatives to each side. The two things that are casting doubts from saying yes at the moment are firstly the cost. It's going to cost me roughly $1800 a month more. And secondly if i'm ever off work (i do customer service messages at the moment) the warehouse packer can do the messages on my behalf. (the person i have i mind to replace my current warehouse packer has worked for me previously for 7 years so would need no training).
If use a 3rd party fulfilment I would need to still ensure the messages are answered even if i went on holiday for instance.
We sell Power Adapters and a lot of the messages we get are technical questions so not just anyone can reply to them.
I did start training somebody up in the Philippines to do the messages but i'm currently trying to migrate away from selling power adapters long term anyway. It didn't seem a good use of time to train somebody up for a job that isn't going to be long term. They were fine chasing up missing orders or sending invoices but it would take some time to train them to answer the technical ones.
The cost price of fulfilment is an issue also. I'm barely making ends meet at the moment but i suppose i could look into trying to cut costs elsewhere to cover the extra monthly layout if i went down the 3rd party route. I could try and squeeze my supplier for cheaper costs or put my sales prices up although i'm in a competitive market as it is.
3rd Party Fulfillment would also free up a lot of my time to spend on growing the business so its a bit of catch 22 at the moment.
It's also simply not an option for me to do both the packing and customer service messages. I would not have much free time to grow the business and if i was ever off sick or for another reason the business would grind to a halt and 100 customers would not be getting there orders that day which would be a disaster and spell the end.
Any thoughts from anyone? I would really appreciate some input!
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