How to speed up fulfilling orders

When we first published the Anonymous Creative Futures Report, we were excited to bask in what we’d created. Orders came in from local folks and abroad, and we couldn’t wait to get everything out into the world. At the same time, those are the logistics that can cause a bit of dread.

This is common for anyone making work that ends up living beyond their home or studio. It means we also have to figure out how it will travel, but this can feel daunting when we’re trained to think everything after making the work is just “extra.”

With a number of releases under our belt, we’ve learned that the period after a work is complete can be just as rewarding. We feel accomplished and excited by what we’ve made, and we get to customize the experience of how someone else will spend time with it too.

What we’ve also learned is that the best way to keep the fun going is to have a plan, and to create one a little sooner than you think. 

When we release work independently, we retain control over things like how creative our packaging is, when and how to talk to our audiences directly, whether to include little notes or whatever feels right alongside the work. We get to create a world around our work that is an equal reflection of us.

Here’s what we do to stay on top of it all:

1. Do some packing research

Once the Anonymous Creative Futures Report design was finalized and on its way to print, we had our final dimensions and a test print. That meant we knew enough to figure out how to mail it.

Generally flat envelopes and soft mailers are the cheapest thing you can ship, so we used our dimensions and test print to find the right size envelope and the weight of our package overall. 

Visualizing our packaging, we also realized it would be a nice moment to share more of the creation story with a Collector’s Note we could print on our regular printer. We also remembered we had a cute address stamp that’d be perfect too.

2. Set your shipping pricing

It’s easy to get lost in the weeds at this stage because there are so…many…carrier options, and usually their websites are dense and hard to navigate. 

Our first point of advice? Go to your local post office and talk to a person. Even when we don’t end up shipping through USPS, being able to talk it through and understand all our options with someone with a soul (rather than gauging our eyes out with the USPS website) has been a life saver.

Our second lifesaver? Using a service like Shippo and Pirate Ship for bulk mailers (Shippo is great for non-bulk too because it’s free with less than 30/orders a month). They take imported csv files and generate shipping labels you can print at home rather than waiting in line at the post office. (Here’s how to generate an order csv on Metalabel). You can see estimated costs for multiple carriers and choose your favorite.

Usually these kinds of services have discounted rates for postage. People always say USPS’s media mail option is the cheapest, but Shippo and Pirate Ship provide other kinds of discounted rates. It’s slightly more than media mail but comes with perks like tracking numbers you can share with collectors and return service if something is up with the destination address. Handy if you have limited inventory or can’t replace orders that may get lost.

3. Make an action plan

The most important piece of this puzzle was figuring out our workflow. We took four steps.

1. Made the ship date a week from when we launched the release so that we would hopefully have a batch of orders to fulfill all at once.
2. Prepped almost our whole inventory for shipment. Even though it was a big time investment at the start, we knew we'd be grateful later to just have to add postage and drop off at the post office.
3. We set our international ship date a week after our domestic ship date. This gave us time to use some initial orders to make sure the price we set for international shipping covered different destinations.
4. Most importantly we decided on when we were going to fulfill orders: what day we would print labels, what day we’d take things to the post office, etc. Makes everything so much less stressful and avoids keeping collectors waiting to have a consistent rhythm.

So how does all this translate to you? Here’s what we would recommend:

• Once the work is complete but before you’ve published your release, do some research on how it will ship. What will you ship it in? How heavy will it be? How expensive will it be to ship locally vs internationally? How often can you make it to your mail carrier/mailbox? Your answers inform your ship date and what info you might want to include for your collectors in your release description. They’ll also help you feel prepared to manage whatever comes your way.

• Based on your edition size and how much time you have, it’s worth considering third party support for label-making and discounted rates. Pro-tip: if you have the funds, get a label maker and print your labels on stickers at home. We used Shippo and a label maker to fulfill over 100 Report orders in under an hour. Game changer.

• If you’re working with a limited edition with a set inventory that’s already been produced, it’s worth it to spend an afternoon packing everything individually. One less thing to think about in the future!

• If you know you really won’t have time to fulfill your orders and have the means, consider producing in bulk and using a fulfillment service. This kind of thing is generally best for books or a single item edition that’s easy to package. They charge a fee to receive all your inventory, and you’re just tasked with uploading to their system a css of orders. They handle mailing and postage; while you still manage correspondence with your collectors. We like Amplifier in Austin, TX and Breezer Printing in Brooklyn, NY.