As more and more end-buyers asked for fulfillment during the pandemic, distributors were under pressure to offer a menu of services in which many of them had scant experience. It was a true baptism by fire as teams scrambled to reorganize last year in the middle of the pandemic, and figure out the best way to quickly kit and drop-ship hundreds, sometimes thousands, of packages at a time.

In a recent webinar, Sara Lavenduski, executive editor of digital content, ASI Media, spoke with Anna Nguyen, partner and vice president of sales and operations at Monarch & Company (asi/275403), and Mitch Silver, vice president of marketing and sales at Printable Promotions (asi/299458), about their experiences this past year with offering more kitting and drop-shipping than they ever had before, and what they learned along the way.

Anna Nguyen, Monarch & Company, and Mitch Silver, Printable Promotions

“Before the pandemic, we were doing one to two kitting projects every few months to brand ambassadors and influencers,” says Nguyen. “Now, we’re shipping anywhere from 50 to 1,000 individual shipments a week. So, it’s increased pretty substantially, and the audience has also shifted.” She adds that, even though states have been reopening and the vaccine has rolled out consistently, they’ve seen no decrease in demand.

When everything shut down last year, Silver says they had maybe five tables used for fulfillment that were folded up and tucked in a corner of their office space, and only used them about three or four times a year. They became permanent installments a month later and soon, after sending out a “hang in there” self-promo kit with work-from-home items for top clients, the orders started coming in quickly.

“That was the turning point,” says Silver. “The tables went to 10 to 12, we added rolling carts and we had to nail down a pricing model. Before the pandemic, it was an inexact science.”

While much of Monarch’s business was partnering with clients on experiential marketing, which suffered this past year as in-person events were canceled, Nguyen says they used their expertise from the brand activation and influencer markets to help with corporate gifting during the pandemic.

“We now had the opportunity to show what we could do with kitting and shipping to homes, and people started seeing the benefits of that,” says Nguyen.

Meanwhile, supply chain disruption around the world because of COVID has made a complicated process even more challenging. Nguyen says it’s imperative to overcommunicate and pad delivery days to mitigate the risk of late packages.

“Luckily, our clients have been understanding,” she says. “Everybody’s been seeing it, even with their personal shipments.”

With so many virtual and hybrid events still taking place, clients’ address lists have grown significantly and now often include recipients in other countries. That’s where it gets particularly complicated, especially when the customer wants an estimate of total costs early on in the process.

 “When you’re shipping domestically, those numbers are pretty easy to get out to the client up front,” says Silver. “But if you’re shipping internationally, things definitely get a little trickier. … It’s a challenging and moving target to quote the duties and taxes up front and we generally don’t. We simply ask for the client’s shipper number and we charge them $15 for the [overseas] paperwork.”

All the time it takes to get packages out the door – the picking and packing, the shipment paperwork and more – should be included in the total cost. Avoid giving away services for free to try to keep the cost low for the customer.

“Don’t be afraid to charge for your value,” says Nguyen. “That’s how we can elevate ourselves as an industry and make sure that we’re getting paid for the value that we’re providing.”