#logistics-operations

@Chad Michael Carleton any suggestions here?

Man I would hit up @Matt Hertz - ThirdPerson.​co for the right 3PL. Tidal Wave 3PL might have this available

+1 for @Matt Hertz - ThirdPerson.​co

Awesome, much appreciate. From a 3PL perspective, I think we’re pretty solid. The bigger issue is all the manual labor involved in creating mock-ups, sending the designs to the laser engraver, coordinating inventory, etc.

It’s a bit of a mess, but for larger orders we can engrave at our factory in China, and ship directly to the customer.

The issue is the high volume of smaller orders. We have an engraver in the US who will keep our cans on hand, and engrave when we order. It’s a good setup for now, but the entire flow is prone to human error and doesn’t feel particularly scalable.

Thanks @Chad Michael Carleton and @Deb Mukherjee 🙏

I've worked with a handful of brands that have done custom engraving both at their 3PL as well as outsourced to "a guy down the street".

Without hesitation the latter has always worked out better, for many of the reasons you mentioned. The handoff, the tracking, the time lag, etc.

Could be a play to partner with a 3PL who does this in-house (there are few, but those who do it are great) and maybe you just segregate a portion of inventory for these high volume of smaller orders, while allowing your non-customizable stuff to flow through your normal 3PL and the high volume orders in China.

Happy to chat and see if I can help make any connections.

Thanks Matt, just DM’d you.

I think what I’m most frustrated by is all the extra customer service, design work, inventory monitoring, quality control, etc. that goes into custom orders --> long-story short I think it’s more of a business model problem where I may need to add additional design fees to make the whole thing worth it.

If anyone has any other thoughts on streamlining that process, would love to hear.