For print on demand sellers, the holiday shopping season can go by in a flash. It’s a frenzy of activity, hopefully culminating in some of your most robust revenues of the year. It can be a rewarding season, but also demanding. To make it through without issue or incident, and to ensure you’re making the most of the holiday rush, it’s important to have the right partners in place offering support.
That’s where Gooten comes in. We’ve been in the print on demand business long enough to know how hectic Q4 can be, but also to develop some strategies and procedures to navigate it effectively. We’re thrilled to work with our print on demand partners to ensure a profitable end-of-year, and in this post we’ll highlight just a few of the ways in which we can help.
How We’re Supporting Our Print on Demand Partners During Holiday 2022
1) Consistent communication with our supply chain team.
By now we’re all well-acquainted with the various supply chain issues that have been so disruptive throughout 2022. While many of these issues have started to recede, we want our partners to know that we’re keeping a close eye on the supply chain just to make sure there are no unwarranted surprises or delays.
Specifically, we’re conducting daily standups with our supply chain team to ensure fulfillment is running smoothly, product stock levels are maintained, and any other potential issues are appropriately addressed.
2) Management of manufacturer relationships.
One of Gooten’s unique benefits is our distributed global fulfillment network (aka the Gooten Network), so our internal vendor team will be proactively managing relationships with our manufacturers to anticipate issues before they happen, work to resolve issues quickly and in a timely manner, optimize the team bandwidth, and communicate daily reporting and status check-ins.
This is another way in which we’re trying to minimize the risk of disruption for our print on demand partners and their customers.
3) Follow-up with performance issues.
Additionally, Gooten’s Operation and Supply Chain teams will be consistently conducting the following activities: following up on escalation or performance issues, managing SLA delays, managing volume and rates, and ensuring efficient routing.
Essentially, we are offering a coordinated, full-team effort to deliver the smoothest possible holiday 2022 shopping season for our partners.
4) Being intentional about risk management.
Finally, we’re well aware that a big aspect of peak season is risk management, which entails monitoring various external factors. We’ll specifically be keeping an eye on:
- Stock issues: We’ve been proactively sending volume estimates to all of our vendors since June, with a monthly cadence, and we’re constantly talking about stock levels for all products. So far there are no flags raised, but we continue to monitor daily.
- Labor issues: This has been a very prominent issue in 2022. Multiple vendors have been struggling with having enough staff on the production floor, but they are all scaling based on the forecasts we gave them and there are currently no indications that they won’t be able to fulfill our orders.
- Production issues (mechanical and software): We’re closely monitoring equipment failures resulting in production disruption and ensuring the right preventative steps to keep these equipment issues from occurring in the first place.
- Technical issues: Relatedly, we’re keeping our eyes out for any inability to submit orders to vendors due to an API issue (on the vendor’s side).
- Shipping issues: We’re also monitoring our entire network for any disruptions caused by shipping carriers, including but not limited to capacity constraints, limiting pickups, weather problems, and beyond.
Choose Gooten for a Successful Holiday 2022
These are just a few examples of how we’re supporting our partners during the peak season. We haven’t even mentioned our enhanced quality control checks, increased customer support capacity, or more regular reports and check-ins with our pro and elite accounts.
The bottom line? The holiday shopping season can be incredibly rewarding, but only if you have the support you need to ensure a smooth, disruption-free experience for your shoppers. That’s something Gooten is passionate about. Contact us directly to discuss some of the further benefits to working with us during the peak season.
