Author Topic: Online Fulfillment  (Read 7001 times)

Offline mikee440

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Online Fulfillment
« on: August 17, 2023, 08:36:55 PM »
Greetings TSBers.  I 'd like to first say how thankful I am that this resource still exists.  I have been lurking for years & have gained much insight....  My issue. One of my oldest customers J. started a fast food type business several years ago. At that time I was a small business as was his.  Fast forward to today and I am still a small but growing business, but J. has several locations and is looking to expand locally.  He has revealed to me that he & his partners eventually,hope to franchise the business in the near future and have big plans in the workse.  They have little time to store, order, reorder and distribute the company uniforms ( a few tees and an embroidered cap or two).  Without my knowledge and with much heaviness to my heart (I bust my ass for all my customers) the partners have actually tried a bigger online type company to take this matter off their plate. Fortunately for me they were disappointed and still appreciate the quality of my product.  So how do I go about creating a place/ website that will take employee uniform orders.  It will have to look like the company "page". The employees will be responsible for payment. I will be responsible for fulfillment./ Thanks M.
« Last Edit: August 17, 2023, 08:52:07 PM by mikee440 »


Offline Sbrem

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Re: Online Fulfillment
« Reply #1 on: August 18, 2023, 10:29:58 AM »
There are a number of options of course. I only have a dozen or so school stores, which we run on a schedule, that is, the store is "open" only for 2 to 3 weeks, then it closes and we can collate the orders and produce. You want to be able to take orders and fulfill them quickly, and that's just another way to do it. You would have to consider the cost of doing a few at a time as compared to a good sized bulk order, but you charge for that. We use Order My Gear, about as simply as we can, we don't do a deep dive into all it's features, though I'm sure others here do, and will chime in. Oddly enough, I have an email this morning from the teacher of the vocational school Metal Fab wanting to open the store again.

Steve
I made a mistake once; I thought I was wrong about something; I wasn't

Offline ebscreen

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Re: Online Fulfillment
« Reply #2 on: August 18, 2023, 11:20:28 AM »
I can't help with the store thing, we won't touch that with someone else's ten foot pole.

But I did want to mention that employers that make employees purchase their own work shirts
need to be tarred and feathered. That's the ultimate boomer business move and I'm pretty sure
it's illegal in some states.

Offline Frog

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Re: Online Fulfillment
« Reply #3 on: August 18, 2023, 01:17:19 PM »
I can't help with the store thing, we won't touch that with someone else's ten foot pole.

But I did want to mention that employers that make employees purchase their own work shirts
need to be tarred and feathered. That's the ultimate boomer business move and I'm pretty sure
it's illegal in some states.

Wonder if it could be set up so that workers could "purchase" the made-to-order shirts, but the employer pays.
That rug really tied the room together, did it not?

Offline ebscreen

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Re: Online Fulfillment
« Reply #4 on: August 18, 2023, 01:59:18 PM »

but the employer pays.

Out of your first paycheck...

A friend of mine had a horror story of his first job at Red Robin, forced to buy several
button up denim work shirts with enormous embroidery on the back, first check was basically a wash.

Offline Sbrem

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Re: Online Fulfillment
« Reply #5 on: August 18, 2023, 03:42:40 PM »
I can't help with the store thing, we won't touch that with someone else's ten foot pole.

But I did want to mention that employers that make employees purchase their own work shirts
need to be tarred and feathered. That's the ultimate boomer business move and I'm pretty sure
it's illegal in some states.

Wonder if it could be set up so that workers could "purchase" the made-to-order shirts, but the employer pays.

I believe you can, but as I said, I haven't had to do that yet, so I don't know for sure. I'm about to reopen a store over the weekend, so I'll check it out.

Steve
I made a mistake once; I thought I was wrong about something; I wasn't

Offline Homer

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Re: Online Fulfillment
« Reply #6 on: August 18, 2023, 04:37:44 PM »
I can't help with the store thing, we won't touch that with someone else's ten foot pole.

But I did want to mention that employers that make employees purchase their own work shirts
need to be tarred and feathered. That's the ultimate boomer business move and I'm pretty sure
it's illegal in some states.

Wonder if it could be set up so that workers could "purchase" the made-to-order shirts, but the employer pays.

I believe you can, but as I said, I haven't had to do that yet, so I don't know for sure. I'm about to reopen a store over the weekend, so I'll check it out.

Steve

yes it's a click of a button in OMG... payment and info tab, top left, first option....

as far as the worker paying for their own shirts? I'd quit on the spot. You require me to wear this decorated garbage bag, Then you pay for it... It's not a privilege to work here, it's a job.... HOWEVER.... if you issue me a few Ts and I lose them, then you can bill me for being irresponsible... that would make sense...
...keep doing what you're doing, you'll only get what you've got...

Offline whitewater

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Re: Online Fulfillment
« Reply #7 on: August 18, 2023, 04:47:02 PM »
So a few years ago we had an arena football team here that we had store for. Open all the time. Every 2 days we would go in and check sales. Pull and ship.

We were and are small. So there's no way we can print on demand, or print a couple here and there. Plus they had 10 designs.

So what we worked out with the team was they would pay us to print 48-100 pcs of each design. We would keep it here in house. We would check to see if there were orders and if there were we would pull and ship. If a size was getting low on a particular design they would order more to fill.

The store was set up so the team would receive the payments. We paid for the shipping, and we would bill them every 2 weeks.
We set up the store through Wix. It was easy to design it. They paid for all the fees and set ups. I also charged them for my time in setting up what I needed. They put the link on their website and it directed to the six page.


This may sound confusing but it really worked well.

Offline mikee440

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Re: Online Fulfillment
« Reply #8 on: August 18, 2023, 09:17:32 PM »
Thanks to all for the input.  At first I thought about making the employees purchase the uniforms was bs too.  One day, however, I was dropping off caps & tees and informed the owner about the drop. I guess he never made it down to the location that day because the next day he was re- ordering caps as most of them were already "borrowed" without his permission.  J. does care about his workers and pays them a good wage, so I was initially puzzled by this uniform
requirement.  Often workers, just walk out after a short period too.