152: Streamline Your Subscription Box with a Fulfillment Center

Are boxes taking over your living room? Have you had to stop growing because you just don't know how to handle any more subscribers? Has the thought of getting a warehouse space crossed your mind? Join me for this episode as I chat with my friend Ryan from Lessgistics. All your questions about using a fulfillment center are answered. Grab your headphones and come join us. Welcome to the Launch Your Box podcast with weekly tips, tricks, and strategies to start, launch, and grow your subscription box. Now here's your host, Sarah Williams. Welcome back to the Launch Your Box podcast. I have a returning guest for you today. I have Ryan with Lessgistics. It is a 3PL fulfillment center. If you don't understand what that is, it is a place that specializes in fulfilling your orders, and his specialty is subscription boxes. So that's what we're talking about today. What if you never had to pack and ship a subscription box again? How would that change your business? How would that change your life? Um, we're going to get into it today because Ryan has the answers. We're going to talk through lots of different topics about fulfillment centers, specifically his fulfillment center, and how it can help you in your subscription box business. Ryan, I'm so excited to have you on the podcast. Why don't you give everybody listening a little bit of your background and what logistics is.

Thanks for having me again, Sarah. Yeah, just a little bit about my background. I've been working in supply chain for about 20 years now, helped run some Fortune 500 companies' supply chain. And then I wanted to start out kind of getting to startups, right? Because I kind of saw it, got all the information. I said, look, I'm going to do this on my own. So the first thing I did is I actually started a health and wellness subscription box. In 2018 with my partner. We scaled that, went up selling that in 2021. I also started Lessgistix, which we're talking about today, in January of 2020 to help other subscription partners be able to have fulfillment. So Lessgistix is based out of Indianapolis. We've got 60,000 square feet, help about 20 different subscription partners that ranges from anywhere from 250 boxes a month to 5,000 boxes a month. So there's some startups in there, there's some established ones in there. We definitely have some that are bimonthly, quarterly. We do special projects, B2B boxes. We do a little bit of everything. And then I also have another subscription brand right now called Platterful, which is a charcuterie of the month club.

I love it. We were just talking before we started recording the podcast of why him and I decide on the most complicated subscriptions that anyone could ever— I'm customizing monogramming every single box. He's got refrigeration and all kinds of things going on in his box. Like, why do we do this to ourselves? Why don't we know the business? We know how to make it as easy as possible, yet we go the most complicated route. But I mean, we love a challenge, right, Ry?

We do. We do.

Okay, so let's talk about my listeners, right? So if you're out there listening and you've got your subscription box launched, and you're thinking about what— there's a couple things that I, I really want to hone in into on this episode. And one is, where do I need to be at for my subscription to be able to use a fulfillment center like Lessgistix?

Yeah, it's a great question, great starting question. And I do think this is different fulfillment center to fulfillment center. Okay, so if you were to interview other fulfillment centers they would probably say we want to start till 1,000 boxes or 2,000 or 3,000 boxes. We're startup-based, we're bootstrapped, we do subscriptions too. So we like to partner with those startups that are starting to show that growth. So we will go down usually about 250 to 300 subscribers is a good starting point.

Okay.

That's also giving you a lot of time to do self-fulfillment.

Yes.

To really understand your box. Understand your offering, go through your packaging, if you're using crinkle paper or tissue paper, just everything. By the time you're ready to go to a fulfillment center, you've probably had several months to a year of doing it yourself and kind of know what you want.

Yeah.

But you don't have the time and you need to focus on growing your business versus fulfilling your business.

Right. You don't have the time or you don't have the space. And I think that is what's important because A lot of our listeners start their subscription boxes from their home, and so they are fulfilling from home, they are working from home. And when you start to grow your subscription box in the hundreds of subscribers, you start to literally run out of space in your home. So you have to make decisions. Do I go get a, a building? Do I go rent a space or a warehouse or some kind of space to not only house all my product in? Because at this point You should be having product coming in months in advance. And then how am I going to pack all of these in this tiny little space? Like, I think about one of our members, Lo, who had 800 subscribers that she was fulfilling out of her one-bedroom apartment in Austin, Texas. And I remember seeing some pictures of her living room. Like, it is— there's a couch and there's wall-to-wall boxes behind her couch. There's her bar in her kitchen covered in supplies to pack those boxes. At some point you outgrow your home-based business where you've been able to save the overhead, you've been able to save the cost because you're doing it out of your home. And then there's also people like, I think about Amy Green, who needs help fulfilling, but she doesn't really want someone in her home to fulfill those boxes for her. Like, that's our personal space, that's our coveted space. So having an employee come to your home, like, it's kind of— you get to a crossroads. And this is where a fulfillment center is great in so many ways. Let's, let's talk a little bit about the benefits of shifting from fulfilling yourself to having a fulfillment center, because I think that's important to understand.

Yeah, absolutely. And I think the biggest thing you get is economies of scale, really. Right. Our warehouse is built for this. We've got 24 giant Uline tables where people are building thousands of boxes every single day, right? We'll literally have a team that just does this every single day. So we're building all of your boxes at once. So you see all the advantage there of everything being uniform. A lot of times I started out shipping at home myself for my health and wellness box in 2018. And same thing, it overtook my basement. My wife is like, you got to get the hell out of here. Yes, I think that may have— I think that may have led into logistics a little bit. But the benefit is obviously, like you're saying, you get that out of your house. To me, it's both a blessing and a curse to have it in your house, right? Because then you never get away from it either, right? I remember going down at like 8:00, 9:00 at night, just shipping orders after I'd already shipped that day at like 4 or 5. And it's like, I'm trying to improve the customer experience because I'm new.

Yeah.

But at the same time, I had no disconnect. Right, right.

Because it's staring at you in your face all day long, or you're thinking about it, or it's 20, 20 feet from where I'm sitting eating dinner.

I might as well go downstairs and do something with it. Yeah, right. You got to have that separation. So that's one. And two really is the benefit of the shipping rates, right? If I'm shipping 25,000, 30,000 boxes a month, I have a lot of buying power. So I can get better rates and share those with all of our partners. So typically when I do an analysis, the savings are anywhere from 15 to 30% because people are shipping different ways and honestly they're shipping in geographical locations that may not be right, the most correct place. So a lot of people I talk with are on the West Coast, so they're importing products which makes sense for that. They're saving on that, but they're not thinking about the bigger expenses to the end user. So if they're shipping across country, the Midwest, East Coast, South, I mean, they're losing money on every shipment versus shipping with somebody Midwest or central.

Let's talk about shipping rates for a second because you're very centralized. And so you're going to get not only better shipping rates because you're going left or right across the country, right? But you have buying power with your shippers because you ship for 20 different subscription boxes every single month. So you have a volume, so you're getting a volume discount. And I know when you and I have talked before, the volume discount that you can provide to people like me or my listeners typically pays for your service in full.

Yes.

So that what I'm saying is if I'm spending $11 shipping one of my monogram boxes over to Washington, Um, you could probably ship it better, quicker, better rates for the price that it would cost for me to pay you to even ship that box. So in the end, I am not out any more money by using the fulfillment center, and I don't have to touch a thing at all. It's, um, it's incredible. Can we talk about the cost? Because I think that's what some people worry about, like Okay, this— I've been doing it all myself. I'm free labor, right? When we, when we start out, we're free labor, although our time is money as we start to grow. And if you're in the hundreds of subscribers, your time is very valuable at this point. You should be marketing. You should be showing up in your business. You should be thinking about the big picture. You should be planning more subscription boxes, curating, getting ahead. You should not be fulfilling when you're in the hundreds of subscribers at this point. And I know I did. I fulfilled till probably I hit 1,000. But at some point you have to remove yourself from that part of the business so that you can grow your business. And when we think about the cost, that's the scary part. Like, well, I can't even afford to hire someone right now, so how would I afford a 3PL? That's where these discounts come in because you're not even out any money with the money that, that you can save on what we're paying for shipping, right?

Yeah, for the most part, yes. And that's where the analysis comes in. So what happens is you really shift your shipping zone, right? Everything for USPS, UPS, FedEx, postal consolidators, it's everything domestically is all zone-based. So it makes sense if you're shipping in the middle of country, it's a shorter distance to most areas. Like out of Indiana, it's a 2-day transit for 80% of the population, right? So yes, longer for West Coast, it's longer for Northeast, but you're not shipping coast to coast, right? So you get— so you get rezoned. So like, for example, out of Indiana, we typically average about a Zone 4. So looking at that rate, a 1-pound rate right now— and these are new rates, we just got our new rates for January, everybody ups their rates in January for the carriers— $5.71. For a 1-pound rate zone 4. Now every package is different, every makeup is different, right? So if you have a larger box, you got to be really conscientious about DIMMs and your DIMM weight, right? Because you're always going to pay the greater of the actual weight or the DIMM weight.

And I want to come back to that because I think we need to, we need to teach and train about DIMM weight. But I want to go, I want to stay on the cost for a minute.

Sure.

So let's say all variables were the same, shipping was not going to save me a bunch, but I know it will. Um, let's talk about the cost of using a fulfillment center because I think it's important to understand.

Yeah, so right now we're typically doing— and there is some breaks, I will, you know, just like anything in life, if you're shipping 2,000 boxes, you may have a little bit of a break versus somebody shipping 250.

Let's use me as an example. Let's just say I have 500 boxes. Okay, perfect. I have 5 items in my box plus an insert and a sticker. Okay, let's use this as an example.

You'd be at $2.25 then.

So you could fold my boxes, pack my boxes, put my insert and my sticker in there, and ship them out for $2.25 a box. Yep, all day, every day, I think that all day.

And anything, anything additional over 8 touches, it's just 10 cents. So we've got 10 cents per touch. I'm sorry, I have to clear that.

This is crazy to me why anybody at this point would not use a fulfillment center. And we know why I don't use a fulfillment center, because I have to monogram and everything's custom. And Ryan says heck no, I'm not taking your box. Nobody in their right mind would take my box to fulfill it because it's custom. Every box is custom. But for someone that doesn't have a custom monogram on every one of their boxes, this is a no-brainer, right?

Yeah.

For $225 for me not to have— you know, I pay almost $6,000 in rent for my warehouse every single month. So let's just add that. Then I have to heat my warehouse. I have to cool my warehouse in the Texas summers. I have tables, I have racks, I have all kinds of overhead. Then I have all the employees that I have to staff all month long to fulfill my subscription box once a month. And when you look at the overhead cost involved in something like that, it doesn't even make sense not to use a fulfillment center, especially one that specializes in subscription box kitting and packing. That, you know, your, your stuff is going to get out and it's going to be, it's going to be taken care of and you don't have to worry about it. You get it. And if you're not in a place where you have all the overhead like I do, if you're at home and you're sitting there listening to this podcast right now, you could probably look around and see boxes and packing supplies and products and leftover products sitting around and all kinds of things in your space right now that you wish weren't there. And for $2.25 a box, it's a no-brainer.

Yeah. And it's, it's, it's one of those things, I think, to play devil's advocate, in the subscription box owner's mind, it's hard to let go of your baby. Yeah, right. And not all 3PLs are created equally, right? I've worked for 3PLs, I've worked with 3PLs, and I am now with 3PL.

Yeah.

So my 15 years of working with and for, I really understood that the pitfalls of sometimes working with an external partner.

Yeah.

So we've crafted a lot of things internally at logistics to make sure the communication is super clean. We're always on the same page. The monthly box builds are very clean. You always know when your orders are going out, you know, your return management. It's, it's meant to be. We're not taking it and you have no visibility. You still have visibility to what's going on with your brand.

Yeah. Let's talk about one of my mastermind members for a second. So it was about a year ago that I got on a phone call with Stacy Collins, and she wanted to start this pillow cover subscription. And she was like, I can't fulfill this. I, I can't even think about starting this subscription because I don't have a space where I could pack and ship. And, and the thought of doing that is not something she wanted to do, or even manage hiring to do that. And I said, why wouldn't you use logistics? Why wouldn't you use a fulfillment center? All you have to do is design your pillowcases, have them shipped from the manufacturer over to the fulfillment center, and let them pack and ship your pillow subscription every single month. And it was that moment that she was like, oh, I can do that. I can do that. And we're going to get it launched. And I knew she would have enough when she launched to be able to use you. She was less confident, but I was super confident in her to have that. And so can we talk about that workflow a little bit with Stacy? So how far in advance do you need to have her pillowcases there?

Yeah, so it's a great question. So first, Stacy is a rock star, right? So she's got, she's got two different boxes, right? She's got a Decor to Door which we do, which is a quarterly box. And then, as you said, she— we helped her launch the pillowcase subscription, which has been a huge success, and she's, she's definitely doing numbers. So how that typically works, just like you're saying, she's sourcing that overseas. We've got a communication sheet that keeps us all synced that says, hey, this is what January's pillowcases look like, here's the name, here's some pictures, here's the quantity I've ordered, right? Here's tracking if I get it. We know vendors sometimes don't like to give it to you, so here's tracking if I get it. We like to have tracking if it shows up just to be able to match it up. So once that product gets there, my team knows to go into the specific partner sheet, check in that product, mark it green if all matches, mark it yellow and comment if it's short or damaged or we're missing a, a box or a poly bag. That happens, right? Because if we don't say anything and the partner's not watching, they could be short. So it's important that we notify of any type of damage or shortage. Right. But once we have that received, you know, Stacy's good enough, she gets far enough in advance and we have her— we have a very built-out ship schedule which says this is this partnership window. Sometimes it's a day, sometimes it's 3 days, depending on how much is involved with the partner. Some of our partners have 20 touches, right?

She doesn't because it's a one item. You're right. It's like the perfect subscription, right?

It is. And I'm not going to say what she's paying, but she is not paying $2.25 because we're just putting a pillowcase or 2 pillowcases in a bag.

Right. Let's talk about that too, because she does have a variation. So her subscription, they can get 1 pillowcase or they can get a set of 2 pillowcases. So now there's a variable here. And when I think about variables, I think about sizes. Like if somebody has a shirt or a sweatshirt or something, you can handle that very easily, correct?

Correct. Yep. So we use ShipStation. So we connect that to all of our partners' channels. So if you're selling on Shopify, even if you're selling on Amazon, eBay, Walmart, I mean, they connect to tons of different marketplaces. All of those orders will automatically import in. And then what we do is just work with our partners on like a batching process.

Right.

Right. So Stacy, for example, with the Pillowcase Club, Essentially, she's got ones that will have one quantity, which is maybe most of it, 80% maybe, and then maybe 20 or maybe 15% get two.

Okay.

And maybe 5% get four.

Okay.

Those will all be in separate batches. So my team, the subscription team, knows we'll go in, we'll pack all the ones first, print all those out, get them shipped same day. Then move on to the 2s and move on to the 4s.

Okay.

That way. And we've got a lot of different partners that have variations.

Yeah. So don't worry about that if you have variation.

No, it's all about doing it in order though, and not mixing variations at the same time.

Right. Because that's where mistakes come in.

100%.

Yes.

Yes.

So she has the pillowcase and insert and a poly mailer bag. That's what you're working with for hers, or 2 or 4, depending on what their subscription is.

A branded poly mailer looks great. So that's got her branding on it.

Yeah.

Then like you said, it's got an insert and X number of pillowcases.

So she ships you the poly mailers, she ships you the insert, she has the manufacturer ship you the pillows, and you communicate via your channels of communication. And she knows that. She knows when they're going out. She knows when they've gone out. And what happens if there's a customer service issue? So say somebody gets their pillow, the bag's ripped open, it's it's torn, we need to replace it. How does that process work?

Kind of the same thing. So we'll have a customer service batch, it's just always a living batch. So if the partner needs to replace an order, we just ask them to put in an order, put them in that batch, and that's shipped. Like, we do our customer service 3 times a week, usually Monday, Wednesday, Friday. That is for everything outside of batch shipping, right? So that would be new orders, If you— if we have a partner that says, I like to ship my first order with 24 to 48 hours, that take care of that and any types of customer service issues.

Okay. So what happens if she's got pillowcases left over? Because I know she does. So at the end of the month, maybe she has 100 pillowcases left over and she wants to sell them as one-offs on her website. Can you handle the fulfillment on that, or do you need to ship those to her to handle?

My house is looking amazing. I've got all of her pillows now. Now, now. So whatever's extra, We offer— honestly, it's almost customizable to whatever partner needs, right? We just like it to be a little bit static though. We don't want to be changing month to month. So if you have leftover, you can always do past boxes, past bags, right? You can do mystery boxes, mystery bags. So you could take multiple pillowcases and put them together. Some partners do want that inventory back because they may have an e-com shop, right, that they're managing separately or even on a different marketplace. That they don't want logistics to manage at that time.

But if I throw them in my Shopify shop and we sell them as one-offs, that can be routed to you and you can ship those as they sell, correct?

Correct. Yes. That would just go in that kind of that e-commerce batch of, hey, I'm selling these extra items. We, we, our partners do a really good job of not having tons of excess inventory, but we've got lots of ways to help them work through it if they do.

Okay, I love that. Can we talk—

just one thing real quick. Yeah, I can.

Yep.

Just want to touch on that schedule you mentioned earlier. So we do have a production schedule that is based on when all of our partners normally ship based on what they communicate to the customers online. All we ask for that, we definitely want stuff as early as possible, but we ask that we have at least 5 business days of lead time.

Okay.

So say, say your box shipped the 15th of the month every month. We would just say, perfect, just have that last item to us by the 10th. Yeah. And if it, if it slides, because we know this happens with vendor production issues, I'll tell you what the biggest production issue we have is, it's the content card, the content, the answer inside the— by far. Because, because I think too, you're buying all the products and sometimes you're switching stuff in and out and you can't create that till the end, right? And the print company usually doesn't expedite it. So like, if you just back that up and say, okay, 5 days before my ship date is a pretty good barometer to say I should have everything to my fulfillment center.

Yeah. And that was great because that was my next question is, say, say I'm a maker, right? Like, and I make my products, but I just want to focus on making my products and I don't want to do the fulfillment. How far in advance would I need them? You really only need them 5 days before your ship date. So it's not like I'm gonna have to create all this product 3 months in advance. I mean, the sooner the better because we know shipping delays happen, but really you can ship them a couple weeks before they need to go out and you'll be set with your center.

Yes, I always say, I think we've talked about this, like a lot of people plan their boxes 2, 3, 4 months in advance, which you should.

You should be 6 months, Ryan. They should be 6 months.

I've got data. Yes, I agree. It should be 6. But also a lot of these, the smaller businesses are starting up. They do have to turn that cash, right?

Right.

So when they're getting that big renewal cycle, a lot of times using that cash to buy the products.

Right.

So we have to just somewhat account for that sometimes. And it's hard to buy 3 or 4 months in advance for some individuals to start out. Now, what you're saying, though, with a maker may be different. Where they have to buy raw materials, right? Make it right. And we, and we could hold it. So if they send it to us, say that was for an April box, they can send it to us in January, February, we'll hold it. There'll be a storage charge for that pallet. That's essentially it.

Yeah. I'm thinking about my own warehouse right now. Like I have probably 3 or 4 months where the boxes, product sitting there on pallets, but that comes from 2020. Yeah, the things getting lost or stuck in the ocean. I'm at a point where I can't sleep at night if my stuff isn't there a month early because stuff happens. I was so badly scarred in 2020 and '21 of product not making it in time. But I also have the benefit of being able to afford buying product out that far in advance. I have relationships with, with vendors that have terms that I don't have to pay for it all up front, but I've built that over time. But I was in a place where I needed the payments to run so I could buy the next month's product, especially as I was growing rapidly. Because, you know, if I'm buying 100 extra every month to, to keep up with my growth, all my profits going back into there and my cash flow is really, really strapped. And so it takes— there's a curve to that. There's kind of a curve that you have to— you're going to get there and it feels hard when you're in it. But that's another reason why I talk about not having such fast growth so, so early because it does hurt. Like sometimes we need to slow down to catch up and, and we don't want to because we want to just grow, grow, grow. But you're going to want to when you can't pay your employees because you're having to buy so much more product the next month. Like there is issues there. And yes, you can get capital and there's so many things that you can do to help with that growth curve. But really, you have understanding that it's only temporary. You've got to work through that. You've got to catch up to your growth. You've got to sit there for a minute, and then you can, you can push on the gas to go to that next level. But we need to catch up to our growth so that our cash isn't strapped for every single month for a year. You don't want to live in that state. That's the most stressful state you can live in as a business owner. And I lived in that because I just had so much growth so quickly over about an 18-month time span, and I didn't understand how I was making so much money and had so little in the bank account every single month. And this was why. And I didn't understand I felt like a business owner. Yeah, you're just, you are chasing it. And it made me feel like a failure. Like, what am I doing wrong? And I wasn't doing anything wrong.

But you were killing it.

Yeah. And I didn't know that at that point. But once you kind of get to a spot that you can stay out for a few months and kind of level out, then you're going to have the profit to reinvest and okay, let's push the gas now. Again, we've leveled out, we've got stuff going, let's keep going. But there's that growth curve that we have to kind of, it's kind of, growing pains, and a lot of entrepreneurs don't make it through that growth curve because they don't understand that it's temporary and they don't understand what they need to do to get through the curve of that cash flow strap.

To your point, though, it should be a very happy, joyous time. Yeah, but it— but if you're chasing it the whole time, you don't like— you feel like a failure. You're actually a winner, but you just kind of feel it due to the model.

Right, right. So let's talk through a little bit of kind of expectations between you and maybe your, your subscription box owners. Like, what kind of things do you guys talk through or that we need to understand going into having— using a fulfillment center?

Yeah, for sure. So we definitely have like an onboarding process where we'll meet with our partners. I do all the prospecting. So if you were to write into the website and say, I want to talk to somebody, you talk with me. I'll gather all the information, quote it back to you in a very digestible way. A lot of 3PLs, they'll hide pricing or not have transparent pricing. We're very transparent. This is our pricing and this is all you'll be charged once you start. And then the thing I like to do as well is do that side-by-side shipping comparison.

Yes.

That thing can be very impactful because say you give me 60 days or 90 days of data. To see that on a line-by-line item, say I'm saving $1.50 here, I'm saving $2.20 here, like it's going to add up and it makes it, makes it real, the savings real, right?

Because then they can understand, like my, my example earlier, my 500 boxes at $2.25, so I'm going to be paying you about $1,200 a month to fulfill my subscription boxes. But if you're going to save me on average a dollar per shipping, like really that's only $1.25 out of my pocket. And who wouldn't, who wouldn't give $1.25 a box to have somebody else handle all of that for them, especially if they were doing it well like your company does.

Yes, I mean, we've got plenty of referrals that you can talk to. That's something I always suggest. And even me talking as a 3PL owner, I do suggest talking to multiple 3PLs. Yeah, don't just talk to us, talk to multiples, get quotes. Don't always look at— don't always look just at price, right? Right. Service really matters in this industry. This is not e-commerce where I'm just picking this phone and I'm shipping this 10,000 times a day. Right?

Right.

I— we are making an experience.

Absolutely. I'm glad that you said that.

Right?

Yeah.

So it's like, let's make sure you're picking the right partner that really understands it. There's truly only about 3 to 5 fulfillment centers that focus in this and specialize in the US. There's probably 70 or 80 that said they will do it.

Yeah.

Right. But it's like you— it's a salesperson selling it, right? Then you get into it's like, who's going to execute it? Who knows subscriptions, right?

It's, it's like me, right? Like you can get a business coach all day long. You can find a couple hundred on the internet business coaches, but I specialize in subscription boxes. So when you get coached by me, You know that I know the ins and outs of the subscription box industry, and that's really the same benefit you have by going through someone like you that not— you're not only a subscription box owner, you've sold one, you have a new one, but you run a fulfillment center that specializes in kitting and shipping for subscription boxes. You know the problems we're going to have. You know the drill that we go through every month. You are like us. It's the same reason that people look at me as the coach, because I still have a multimillion-dollar subscription box business that I run every single day. You do too. So that's why I think finding someone that actually specializes in what you're doing is going to just be so much benefit to you in the long run because they don't have to figure out what you're doing.

Right, exactly. You know, your, your options are either to become an expert or find expertise, right? It's like, who's doing it every day? Who's doing thousands and thousands of these every day? So like, we can help hold that hand and make that bridge, that transition, right? Because we know from onboarding partners what has worked well, what hasn't. We've updated our processes over the years. Like, it's, it's not plug and play, but it's pretty darn close.

Yeah. So let's talk a little bit about international shipping. Do you ship internationally from your fulfillment center?

We do. I would say about 25 to 30% of our subscription box partners ship internationally.

How does that affect their shipping rates? Is there—

yeah, so obviously much more expensive to ship internationally, right? So there's multiple options. You can either do— I know Pirate Ship has that simple export program, which is honestly the cheapest international program that I see. It's also very slow, 1 to 4 weeks.

Oh my gosh, 1 to 4 weeks. Yeah. Okay.

It is more so on the 1 to 2 week side, but rural areas could be definitely 4 weeks. So that's an option. Then first class international is the most other common option that everybody knows. That's usually 1 to 2 weeks. That's direct through USPS. Most of our partners, if you're going to start out in international, just go with Canada to start. That's a nice little entry. The country demographics are similar to the US, right? So you're not having to really relearn a populace for a different nation. So most of what we do is like Canada is probably 90% and then probably 10% rest of the world. But that rest of the world is mostly like UK. Australia, you know, things like that. It's not like Uzbekistan or anything like that, right?

So you understand international shipping. So if that's something that I've not been able to offer because I can't figure out what I need to do there, that's an easy fix because you, you do that on a regular basis.

Yes, I will say the only thing— and we can help you with this— is, but you, you do have to identify like your Harmony tariff codes, right? Because it's specific to each brand and what you're purchasing. That has to be classified. Now that I, that I see, if you're shipping to Canada, a lot of stuff is duty-free because it's under a certain limit. Okay. But you still have to have the Harmonized Tariff Code to ship it. I will say this to those, Sarah, the ones that do international is a very, very small piece of their business, 1 to 2% max. I will say there's so much to focus on with like the US and domestically. I like to say try to get that going really, really well first before looking for international expansion.

Right. Okay.

Because you don't get, if you have an issue out of country, there's no return, right?

Yeah.

If there's a customs issue and you have to get involved, it's like, it's, it's a little, it's just, it's just different.

Focus on that 80% that's bringing you the business and not, this is what I tell them all the time. They're like, well, I've had somebody ask me for this and can I add this? I'm like, we don't, we're not trying to please everybody. We're trying to make this the most efficient and productive for us. To run a business, and that doesn't always mean that we can cater to every single buddy. And I know that we want to do that in the beginning, you know, we want— yeah, we want to be able to take care of everybody's needs, but what happens when you do that is you lose sight of the, the goal. You lose sight of what's actually driving the business, and if you're trying over here spending 30 minutes dealing with one customer and their special needs, then you lost 30 minutes that you could be helping the rest of your customers and really providing value.

That is so impactful. So even though it's outside this fulfillment, I call that the exception fallacy. It's where you look at something, this happens especially at first because to your point, you want to please every customer under the moon. Yeah, right. But you get so distracted when customer X says, hey, I don't like this item or I'm allergic to this or whatever. And then you're getting out of your business model now. You're focusing on the wrong things, right? You've got to look at your 95% of your customers. How do I make them happiest and build it from there?

Yeah. And let all the one-offs go because it will eat your time. It will eat your time and you will not—

business.

Yeah. You'll be in this rat race that you don't— you can't get out of.

You'll never get away from them. They're always going to be there.

Yeah. Yeah. So, okay, so if I decide I want to I want to start shipping my products for with you. I just need to reach out to you and get that initial contact going, right?

Exactly. Yep. I'll reach, I'll reach back out. We'll set up a time. We'll have a quick call. We'll talk about logistics a little more, talk about your brands. I'll ask some questions. How many items in your boxes? Where are you shipping from? What services are you using? It really helps me get the quote back. We do that really quickly. If the quote looks good, then we move to the contract. Once we have contracted, the nice thing is we don't have any fees that start like the day of the contract. Everything is transactional, right?

Right.

So say we signed in February. A lot of this doesn't start till April or May because you're, you've got stuff 2 or 3 months in advance. Either you're doing it or you have another fulfillment partner doing it. You just can't, you can't make a decision and switch the next day, right?

It takes, it's a process.

It takes time. Yeah, it takes time. I would say normally from contract signed to the first month that we're fulfilling is 2 to 3 months.

Okay.

And that's just standard. So it's like, we'll work with you to define that schedule, and then you can start shipping in your products anytime. So we'll get ahead, right? So say we're starting in April, we're going to treat it like you've been a customer forever, have this product to us by April 10th. We're talking and getting everything set up in that meantime.

So if you are listening right now and you're at the 250 subscriber mark or higher, I need you to really think about what this could do for your business and your personal life. We'll have Ryan's info in the show notes today, but it's important to keep thinking about how you can grow and scale your business. And if you have stopped growing and scaling because you can't handle the fulfillment this is the perfect opportunity for you to get not only some growth back in your business, but also get some of your time back in your business, a lot of your time back in your business. And there's really— unless you have a monogram box like, like Sarah does that you have to customize every single box, there's really not any reason that you shouldn't be and couldn't be using a fulfillment center. I know I've spoke with Julie Harkin with the Pilot Wives Club She loves less logistics. She loves not using, you know, having to fulfill her boxes. And if you're not at 250 yet, if you're sitting there and you maybe you're at 100 or 150 or even 75, make that be your goal. Say, you know what, I'm going to get out of the fulfillment rat race when I get to 250. So how can I get to 250? And let's put a plan in place so that we can get to 250. So that you don't have to pack and ship another box again.

Yes, and I've had multiple members of your community reach out that are at 100 or 150. Do that now. Let's make the contact. Let's get to know each other. As you grow, if you have questions, I can answer them. Like, we like fostering— again, we're a startup too, right? So we're trying to grow together. Um, so reach out now. Don't wait till you're at 250. If you're at 150 and you have an ambitious goal to be at 300 in 6 months, let's start talking because we may take it a little bit early, especially if your growth is showing that, right?

Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. I'm excited for them because I know this is a game changer for a lot of subscription box businesses. We can see it was a game changer for Stacy, it's been a game changer for Julie and so many other of our members that use you. But if you're ready for that, reach out to Ryan. Let's talk about it because the goal here is that we keep getting better and better. We keep upleveling what we're doing, and as business owners, we have to take those those things off of our plate. And for a couple bucks a box, it's one of the best things that you could take off of your plate. Ryan, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast, and I'm sure you're gonna be busy answering, uh, emails and phone calls from our members that are excited to get some help. Yeah.

All right, it was great, great connecting with you again. Always enjoy talking with you and look forward to chatting with your community.

Yeah, awesome. We'll be back next week with another great episode of the Launch Your Box podcast. Make sure you subscribe to the Launch Your Box podcast. I'd love for you to take a minute to rate and review it. Let me know which episode is your favorite so far. Don't forget to join me next week right here.