Launching a Product - How do I deliver products to customers?

Hello, my name is Ian Peterman. I'm CEO and founder of Peterman Design Firm, and today we're going to talk about how we can deliver products. And this comes up a lot, people that are starting out and haven't shipped products before, because they You start to look down that path and you figure out there's a bunch of different ways to do it. There are many options. There's a lot of companies that work in that space, and logistics as a whole is a massive industry. Material handling, it's, it's huge. So, you know, when you're looking at how to deliver your product, there's a few different key things to, to be looking at. One is You know, what's the kind— what kind of product is it? Is it digital or is it physical? Is kind of the first, first splitting decision. If it's digital, then things are a lot easier for delivery. You look at, you know, different software packages or online platforms that allow you to download it or view it, you know, courses, you can view it online, subscription models, or one-time purchases. There's the delivery method around digital products is pretty broad, but very easy in terms of framework and resources it takes to launch it. That's why people launch courses online all the time. That's why people are starting new, new little PDFs that they can download and sell, you know, yoga classes or workout. A lot of the fitness industry is huge into that area. And thanks to 2020, pretty much every other area in terms of education or anything that you can consume digitally, visually, audible, reading, textual, all of those content is being created in massive amounts. It's very cheap to launch. So your options are to find a good sales platform and Sign up, basically. A lot of— there's a lot of free options. You can look at different things for courses, different things for downloads. So it's very, very easy. Now you can always get into much more complicated digital distribution systems, so things like the Adobe suite of products that you can download, access, work with their cloud system. Much larger platform. There's cloud, cloud information and a cloud backend for data, your data as well as theirs. There's also applications you download to your devices. And it all talks to each other, and you're on a subscription or however you've purchased it. And so you can get very complicated, but at the end of the day, it's very simple and direct. You download something, you, in exchange for money. And that's a very easy, very clear path. Nothing, nothing rocket science about it. Everybody can understand that. So moving back over to the physical product side, it's also very simple. We all understand it. Object moves from wherever it's at to you, the customer, and you have it. Now, as a business, There's a lot of different options and how to go. Just like there's a bunch of different tools and platforms, there's even more options and different ways to handle it and different types of companies that can handle it. So for example, if you're direct-to-consumer, then what you're really doing is getting it from manufacturer, whoever's produced, and this is the final manufacturer. So if you have a multi-part assembly that gets turned into a product, it— then it's the assembler, and then it's whoever packages it. So if your assembler packages it, as in it puts in the packaging, it's customer-facing ready, then great, that's who does it. Sometimes you end up having a finishing stage where manufacturer does mostly assembly Most, and then components, maybe the packaging comes from one manufacturer, the product comes from another manufacturer, and they meet up in one place that puts your product inside the packaging, and then it's ready to go. That person, basically you have your— in your logistics of getting your products to your customer, you have assembly, that final assembly, Then you have packaging, then you have warehousing. And somewhere in here you usually have QC involved, right? And after warehousing, you have the actual— in between each point, you could have actual transportation. So it gets on a truck, plane, train, whatever, boat. It moves, it's moving locations. And then after you have a warehouse, you have direct-to-consumer. It goes from warehouse to consumer. Typically it may move to multiple warehouses. So if you're at an, you know, large enough that you have West Coast and East Coast on the US, then maybe you're splitting your inventory and half goes West Coast, half goes to East Coast. Right, but either way, it's going to one of your warehouses and then goes straight to the customer. Depending on who you're working with, one or more of these pieces may be done by one company. There's companies that will do final— what's called light assembly, meaning they'll put some screws in, they'll put electronics into a enclosure. They will zip, you know, fill up a Ziploc bag with something or a heat-seal bag. They'll put your instructions inside the plastic bag and heat seal and cut it and put that in. They'll kit, so they'll take, you know, your— say you have 5 products that all come together to equal 1, you put all— they'll put all 5 in a box for you. Put this, you know, foam or bubble wrap or whatever other packing material, and they'll box it all up nicely, seal the box, and ship it. And, or you'll have people you'll end up having to do separate because maybe, maybe you have the product, and this is the case for a lot of, or can be the case for more products that fall under like cosmetics or food Where you have a food, let's say, we'll even just use the example of, you know, if you're using a cosmetic, you have a cream that you're selling, you can get the cream made over here. But maybe they put it in 20-gallon buckets. And then you take it to a co-packer and they take it, they pull it out, they put it into little nice little jars. And they close it up and they seal it. And then they don't touch the packaging. So they then send it to someone who actually receives the product. They put it in its box. And then they put that into a shipping box. And then they ship it to your customer. And you can hire all this out. You can bring some of this in. But all of these components work together in order to actually get product to your customer. The last mile is what everybody's familiar with, like UPS, FedEx, DHL, and all that. That is just usually your warehouse, whatever warehouse it is, whether it is an all-in-one— you have a manufacturer that does all the packaging, preps it all, warehouses it for you, and ships directly to your customer— which those people exist, they're very handy to use, uh, they simplify it. They also charge Was the convenience that they know they're giving you, uh, because it's, it's easier. You go to one person, you say, I need you to make these and ship them on demand. So that's all possible. It's gonna cost more in some ways, but it's easier and it's simpler and faster. You're not having to send between different warehouses. You're not having to send between different companies. A lot of advantages to it, and cost is— Because it's kind of a disadvantage there. As well as specialty, if you need something really specialized in that world, in whatever world you're working in, then you may want to look at— you may need to look at specialized independent people. But this is all just to get it to the warehouse. Then the last mile, now you're doing a couple of things. You're working with shipping companies, actual— the big shipping companies or little ones, DHL, UPS, them. And that is your last leg. In a non-direct-to-consumer, when you're working with a distribution company, as in they're a retailer, reseller, somebody like that, it all gets to wherever your warehouse is and it sits there. And then when you get an order, you end up shipping from your warehouse to their warehouse. And in their warehouse, it sits there waiting for an order to come through, and they either ship it out to their stores if it's a storefront. You know, if you get into Target or Walmart, they're going to ship it to all their warehouses, and then they're going to distribute it again to their actual stores. So large stores like that, they have stores and warehouses that are offsite. And it's all a distribution channel. That way they can get things en masse and then break it out as they need to into actual store locations. If you— sometimes you work in where you ship for those distribution companies, so it's almost a direct-to-consumer, but it's using their platform to sell. And that's something like Amazon. When you don't fulfill by Amazon, you are warehousing it Amazon's taking the order, then you ship to the customer. And it just looks— you're adding an extra third man in there because they do marketing, they sell for you, and they're able to get your product out there in front of more people. So those are— that's all that's involved in order to get your product out. And obviously sometimes you'll be a little bit simpler. You can be a company that skips most packaging. Um, you know, there's products out there that are stripped down to where they might come in a bag. You'll see that a lot with Amazon. There's almost no packaging for products that come from Amazon because you're looking at it digitally. There's no— you don't have to sell anybody. You don't have to catch anybody's eye on the store shelves. And so you can see this huge difference in that. And what they're doing is they're basically taking the packaging node of this whole whole chain and they're pulling it out and saying, well, we don't need to spend any money there. Now we have somebody that manufactures it, sticks it in a baggie, and ships it out. And so there's a lot to go there. There's— and it varies on how you're going to sell. And some people, even though they sell online, they still do the packaging. And it's because their, their customer journey, which we've talked about wanting to know, and, and part of knowing that customer journey First will tell you whether you are going to need packaging and whether you want it and whether it's part of your experience that you're creating. And so that's just part of the chain that takes you from product to customer. So I hope that this has answered some questions about how you actually get your product to your customer. And those are a lot. It's a very in-depth conversation. There's a lot of negotiating and finding good resources and work that we do with our clients in order to get that part of it. And that's, you know, your supply chain. It's the tail end of your supply chain, and it is very important because it's what your customers end up experiencing, and you care about that. Hey, thanks for watching. We really appreciate our viewers, and if you haven't subscribed yet, please do subscribe to our channel so you can get more great videos like this in your feed and like the video. If you want to learn more about the Peterman Design Firm, please check us out on our website, petermanfirm.com. You'll find link and information in the description. And of course, we're on all social media as well. So check us out there. All right. Thank you.