New Automatic Dropshipping

One of the areas I felt was important from the beginning when we launched Finerworks a while back was the ability to make fulfillment of artists’ orders as stress free for them as well as for us so that we can minimize any mistakes. Since most of the artists which use FinerWorks are selling direct to their customers we knew from early on it was important for us to remain in the background. For that reason we never bothered with fancy boxes with our brand name nor do we remarket to those addresses which we ship orders to. If we did it would make it hard for artists and photographers to use us, especially if they are offering prints under their own brand.

The Worse Case Scenario for the Artist

Imagine you were to spend about $25 on a nice print on Fine Art Paper and have us ship it to your customer. Your customer receives the package and first notices the shipping label has FinerWorks as the shipper. They then open the package and see on the packing slip the print was $25 but you charged them $100. They then call you up and ask why you charged them $100 when the print only cost $25. Then imagine how embarrassing that might be. Never mind that you have to make a profit. All the customer sees is you charged them more.

While this scenario is somewhat out of the norm, it does happen on occasion. To explain what goes on  behind the scenes is when the drop ship checkbox is checked and an order is placed, our system prints out the appropriate packing slips and shipping label which excluded any pricing information or mention of FinerWorks. It is a completely automated process so our staff does not have to even check to see if the correct form and label is printed.

But occasionally an order the artist wants drop shipped is not drop shipped like we want.  There are only two ways this might happen. The biggest cause is the artist simply forgetting to check the drop ship box on the final review page. We get calls all the time by artists asking if we could update their order so it is drop shipped. The second cause is due to the artist quickly clicking next to the checkbox without bothering to make sure the box was actually checked.

Setting Up Automatic Dropshipping

So even though those situations are rare enough, I thought we needed to come up with something a little more reliable in case of either scenario. The solution was to have our shopping cart programmed to take note if you as a registered users had uploaded a logo to your account. If it sees there is a logo, the shopping cart automatically checks the drop ship box for you because it assumes you are a business or self published artist.  In order to manage this, all you need to do is login to your account, select the "Business" option in your account menu and upload your logo file. Again, failed drop shipped orders are rare with us but I think this will make drop shipping a little easier to manage for all.