You may have heard people talking about order fulfillment when it comes to Kickstarter and Indiegogo campaigns.
But what is order fulfillment, anyway?
In this post, we’ll be taking you through the process behind correctly assembling and shipping out orders for backers that have claimed rewards on your campaign.
Whether you’re planning to do order fulfillment by yourself or outsource to an order fulfillment center, this article will take you through the steps.
It’s time to get the product to the customer with as little fuss as possible.
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For now, let’s do a deep-dive into the order fulfillment process!
Understanding the Supply Chain
In order to effectively implement your order fulfillment strategy, it’s important that you understand the supply chain.
Let’s break it down step-by-step all the way from manufacturing to backer’s doorsteps.
Manufacturing Stage
The first step in order fulfillment is manufacturing.
You’ll have to find a manufacturer — whether that be overseas or domestic — who has the capability to create the various components of your project.
Once the manufacturer has produced the raw goods, they will then ship those goods to either you or a professional order fulfillment service like Fulfillrite.
For the sake of this article, let’s continue under the assumption that you are using a fulfillment service (most common).
Receiving Stage
The fulfillment company will take the manufactured goods and be tasked with organizing them for delivery to customer’s doorsteps. This process includes:
- Identifying SKUs
- Organizing barcodes
- Performing quality-control checks
- Adding information to software for accuracy
Inventory / Storage Stage
After the organizing that occurs in the receiving stage, the fulfillment company will then store the items on their shelves.
Order fulfillment companies use highly efficient strategies to ensure that products are easily identifiable and ready to be shipped out.
Order Processing Stage
Now that goods have been organized according to their particular SKUs and stored on the shelves, it’s time for the order fulfillment company to begin processing the orders.
This means bundling your product into streamlined packaging and implementing marketing inserts so that the delivery looks beautiful as it arrives at backer’s doorsteps.
There’s also one final round of quality-control here so that no mistakes are made in the delivery of materials. You’ll be able to monitor this as it syncs with the cloud.
Shipping Stage
With everything packaged and triple-checked, it’s time to actually ship out the product to your backers.
The fulfillment company will deal with things like international shipping requirements and identifying delivery methods (UPS, USPS, Courier Service, etc.)
This is probably the most exciting stage of order fulfillment, as it’s finally time for your backers to receive their reward for backing your campaign!
Returns Stage
Unfortunately, there is a chance that your backers aren’t satisfied with your product once it arrives.
This shouldn’t be too big of a problem — especially if you are delivering the product you promised during your campaign and use a reputable order fulfillment service.
Still — things happen. Products can be damaged during shipping, mistakes can be made.
It’ll mostly be up to the order fulfillment company to address this, but make sure to stay attentive throughout the process.
Conclusions
This article has laid out for you step-by-step as to how to complete order fulfillment throughout the supply chain.
While it might not be the most exciting element of your overall Kickstarter campaign launch, it’s essential that you have a deep understanding of it so that fulfillment goes off without a hitch.
With a dedicated strategy, you’ll save tons of time and money and establish yourself as a reputable brand that delivers on its promises.
Check out this article to discover all the best order fulfillment companies in the industry.
Looking for more in-depth analysis of the fulfillment process?
Check out my book, The Kickstarter Launch Formula, or my UDEMY Course that gets way more nitty-gritty into the X’s and O’s of order fulfillment.
And if you’re looking for more personalized help with any aspect of your campaign, book a coaching call with me. I’ve helped tons of campaigns reach their goals in the past, and I’m ready to go to work for you!
Hope this article was helpful. Good luck on your order fulfillment journey!
