Joe Brieger is the co-founder of Fulfillrite, a leading e-commerce fulfillment company now in its sixth year of growth. The Fulfillrite team specializes in working with crowdfunding campaigns, guiding them from inception through the fulfillment stage. Their sharing of knowledge has helped many campaigns grow into long-running successful businesses.
In this interview, we will explore how Fulfillrite became such a part of the crowdfunding community. They have been a big supporter of CrowdCrux since our launch and sponsored amazing and helpful content for creators, including our podcast episodes. To see our comparison between them and other fulfillment companies, check out our review here.
Hello Joe, thank you for taking the time to speak. So, how did you become involved in helping crowdfunding projects?
We started working with crowdfunding projects close to four years ago, when it was still pretty new. Back then, if you asked someone what crowdfunding or Kickstarter or Indiegogo was, they would’ve said “Kick what?” These days, just about everyone not only knows what crowdfunding is, but chances are has probably backed a campaign or two at one time or another.
When we first started working with crowdfunding projects, it was a natural fit – they are the innovators, we wanted to support what they were doing and their community and the way we could help was with our knowledge and guidance on the process of fulfillment. We reached out to a few to offer our services and it turned out to be a great community partnership.
Can you tell us a bit about this partnership? How do you help crowdfunders?
Well, crowdfunding requires a lot of patience and dedication. It’s not like a “regular” business, which I think takes some creators by surprise. Many of them aren’t even thinking about the long-term things like packaging, which shopping cart solution to use, or about importing headaches and shipping at the outset of their campaign. These are important pieces which could make or break a project.
Most crowdfunding projects take anywhere from 1-6+ months to reach the fulfillment stage. During that time, we work with the creators to answer all of their questions and concerns and to help them learn about the complicated world of shipping, without any charges or contracts. Many of the larger companies out there don’t have this level of commitment, they sign you up and that’s it, you’re just a number. We form real partnerships.
What are some common mistakes you see when working with creators during and after their campaigns?
The most common issue I’ve seen is planning, especially for what happens after they’ve raised the money and the many unexpected expenses that pop up. For example, I mentioned packaging – did you know that something as small as the packaging of the final product could mean the difference in having enough money for fulfillment? A simple decision such as shipping a box vs. a printed cardboard sleeve could throw their whole budget over. They’re obligated to complete their fulfillment, now what do they do? It’s details like these where our help and knowledge comes in as we work with them throughout the process.
In many cases, customers will underestimate the cost of their product, ending up with less money than planned and they simply don’t have the funds to pay for fulfillment. For instance, some projects will scope out their costs pre-launch and think that they have a solid plan. But then what often happens is that some opportunistic (greedy!) manufacturer sees that their client raised lots of cash, so they start nickel and diming them, causing them to run short on expected funding.
Crowdfunding can help you launch a successful business if you plan it right, or it can go south and end up in failure. It’s not easy – even though at times it may seem like easy money, it’s still a business and you have to work at it, building a customer base and profits, dealing with manufacturers, etc. In the end, it’s a good learning experience so that when the business does grow, they know what’s involved and what to expect.
Does Fulfillrite offer any tools that can help creators calculate shipping and fulfillment costs?
We don’t believe in a specific one-size-fits-all standard price, especially when it comes to crowdfunding as we really work with them to give the best pricing we can. Knowing that they are dealing with challenges right out of the gate, we offer a discount for crowdfunding of 20-30% off our regular rates. We offer this because we understand their challenges, which are mainly that:
– Their projects are already profit-sharing with Kickstarter/Indiegogo.
– They are working with low margins, especially since they’re just starting out.
We encourage everyone to use our Customized Price Quote form to get in touch personally.
Why should a start-up choose Fulfillrite over other fulfillment companies?
My co-founder Charlie and I come from e-commerce/warehousing backgrounds and we share something in common, which is our love of technology. We work hard to be on the forefront of what’s new and the best at what we do in offering our customers the most up-to-date solutions and a seamless order fulfillment experience, which is why we actively support over 20 shopping cart partners. We also partnered with Backerkit about a year ago to offer crowdfunding customers an all-in-one crowdfunding rewards management solution.
E-commerce order fulfillment customers today have a different set of needs than what most of the old-school order fulfillment centers are offering. Today’s customers expect everything to be automated.
They want the latest e-commerce integrations to be available out of the box, a modern web portal where they can access all of their account info and they expect it to be included with the service. Companies who have been around for decades, are trying to keep up, because they know they have to. We not only keep up but also are excited to offer our customers every new integration we can. I mean, there are still companies charging for web portal use and integration – a customer should never have to pay a premium for what by today’s standards should be included.
What is your best advice for a crowdfunder/creator hoping to learn some insights while they plan their very own crowdfunding campaign?
Be smart, plan ahead. Setting up your project right can mean the difference between long-term success and failure. There are a lot of projects that do well and keep the success going 1, 2, even 5 months after the campaign, but then they fizzle out. If you really do your research, you’ll see that projects that turn into growing businesses and keep that momentum going two years post-campaign are in a very small minority.
I’ll end with my simple advice – get as much guidance as you can and plan ahead for long-term success. Best of luck!
Read more about the successful projects Joe and Fulfillrite have worked with in their 6-part series, Kickstarter Success Stories, found at Fulfillrite.com/blog.
