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Why Print on Demand Businesses Should Embrace a Multi-Carrier Parcel Management Solution

by Gooten Editorial Team on May 27, 2022

Imagine that you had an old college friend come to spend the weekend with you. A few hours after the friend departs, you notice that they accidentally left behind some valuable personal items. After a moment of panic, you settle on a simple solution: You head to the nearest UPS, FedEx, or United States Postal Service location and mail the items back to them.

When you’re just shipping personal items, or the occasional low-volume orders for your small-scale Etsy store, finding the right shipping partner is pretty straightforward. UPS, FedEx, the USPS… it’s really just a matter of what’s most convenient for you.

But when you have a full-scale print on demand company up and running, shipping suddenly becomes a lot more important… and a lot more complicated. Simply put, the shipping options you select can have a big impact on your bottom line, and on your customers’ experience.

Frankly, navigating shipping solutions for on-demand manufacturing has gotten more challenging in recent years because the number of people doing their shopping online has increased so significantly. This has led the e-commerce titans, like Amazon, to develop their own distribution networks, allowing customers to get their products quickly and easily.

How can your on-demand manufacturing business keep pace with companies like Amazon? One option is to embrace a multi-carrier parcel management solution.

What is Multi-Carrier Parcel Management?

Multi-carrier parcel management is exactly what the name suggests: A way for print on demand companies to enlist multiple carriers to transport their goods to different locations.

This approach allows your on-demand manufacturing business to enable faster shipping while keeping prices in check. That’s because multi-carrier parcel management effectively lets you choose which carrier to use on a package-by-package basis, allowing you to optimize according to weight, point of origin, destination, and shipping speed.

To put it another way, a multi-carrier solution allows you to cater to your customers’ needs in a way that a single carrier can’t. For example, one customer may want the cheapest shipping option possible; the next customer may be willing to pay a lot more to get their package shipped overnight. If you’re working with different carriers, you may be able to accommodate both customers’ wishes.

Multi-Carrier Shipping Solutions: Challenges and Opportunities

While embracing a multi-carrier solution can enable your print on demand business to keep up with customer needs, and even to create an experience comparable to what Amazon can offer, it’s not without some challenges and limitations.

The most obvious challenge is that managing multiple carrier relations can be time-consuming. And, if your print on demand business has to manually decide which carrier to use for each parcel, that could almost become a full-time job unto itself.

That’s why most on demand manufacturing businesses don’t actually manage their own shipping solutions. Instead, they outsource to companies that can provide a range of carrier options, all in one place. Gooten is one such company. We’d love to tell you more about the seamless shipping solutions that we can furnish for your customized products and print on demand apparel.

On-Demand Shipping Solutions from Gooten

One of the primary reasons why print on demand companies choose to work with Gooten is that we handle shipping on our end, always providing fast and affordable options for the end user. This means you don’t have to deal with hassle and headache, while your customers get the kind of shipping experience they’re accustomed to. Everybody wins!

We’re able to supply these benefits by implementing multi-carrier shipping solutions. Not only that, but Gooten is a multi-source provider, meaning we can manufacture and ship from a number of different locations, just depending on where the customer is located.

We’re proud to utilize convenient and cost-effective shipping options, including worldwide distribution methods. We’d love to tell you more about the services we provide to our print on demand partners, including POD marketing, fulfillment, and beyond.

Connect with Gooten Today

Ready to chat with our team about your print on demand shipping and fulfillment needs? We’d love to help however we can. Get started with one of our print on demand experts today.