Online shopping becomes more popular, and more ubiquitous, with each passing year. To keep pace with surging customer demand, and to gain an edge over their competitors, most online merchants have tried to optimize their front-end consumer purchasing experience as much as possible.
Curiously, though, not as many merchants are as zealous about optimizing their back end. In other words, online merchants aren’t doing much to keep pace with the increasingly convoluted nature of the supply chain, nor to do everything they can to help customers get their products as quickly, conveniently, and affordably as possible.
Missed Opportunities
By not optimizing their back-end functions, businesses are missing a number of opportunities. Consider:
- Retailers who manage lengthy go-to-market strategies and costly order minimums miss opportunities to quickly, expediently test new products or experiment with trendy new designs.
- Merchandising companies, plus businesses that try to juggle a number of vendors at one time, miss opportunities to grow and scale as efficiently as possible.
- Finally, e-commerce stores that confine themselves to just one or two vendors miss opportunities to test out new products and markets.
One solution for capitalizing on these opportunities? Enlisting the services of an on-demand fulfillment company.
The Benefits of On-Demand Fulfillment
The print on demand model, powered by on-demand fulfillment, provides a much nimbler alternative to the outdated method of bulk production and warehousing. These old-fashioned methods too often result in inventory waste, missed sales opportunities, and a stale product line. By contrast, consider some of the benefits of embracing the print on demand method and working with an on-demand fulfillment partner, like Gooten.
These benefits include:
- Cost-effectiveness. With the print on demand option, businesses can ensure that they only pay for the products that they actually sell. This removes the expense associated with carrying a big inventory.
- Low risk. By not purchasing or warehousing inventory, businesses can remove their balance sheet and stock write-down risks.
- Speed to market. Finally, by not carrying an inventory, businesses remain nimble, flexible, and innovative, quickly testing new products or designs and rushing them to market without much hassle.
Choosing the Right Partner for On-Demand Fulfillment
Clearly, switching to print on demand is advantageous. But to fully reap the advantages of this method, businesses should consider outsourcing core functions to an on-demand fulfillment provider, like Gooten. This can be exponentially more effective and efficient than handling everything in-house, creating real long-term value for your business.
There are a number of reasons for this, but one of them is simply this: Running a business requires you to make countless decisions every single day. Each decision point can be a source of stress, and potentially a source of inefficiency. And when business owners have to focus much of their time on less-impactful decisions, it means they have less time to focus on the core, value-adding aspects of their business.
By outsourcing a lot of those peripheral decisions, you can streamline your business operation considerably. That’s where print on demand fulfillment partners like Gooten are invaluable. A big part of what we do is help print on demand businesses simplify their operations, allowing space for more strategic decisions.
The bottom line? The right on-demand fulfillment partner can be well worth the investment, because it will mean you have to make fewer decisions each day while still reaping the benefits of lower costs, lower risk, and greater speed to market.
Find Out More About the Benefits of Outsourcing
There’s so much more that we could say about the real cost-of-business benefits of outsourcing to a partner like Gooten. In fact, we wrote an entire e-book about it, going into greater detail about some of the challenges facing online sellers today, and the ways in which print on demand partners can help meet those challenges.
As you consider your budget for the holiday shopping season and beyond, we invite you to put on-demand order fulfillment on your radar. A good way to start is by downloading our e-book.
If you have any additional questions about the benefits of outsourcing on-demand fulfillment to Gooten, feel free to reach out to us directly. We’re always here to talk to our partners and potential partners in the print on demand space.
