By Paul Lang, Editor, Sell It!
December 8th, 1999

See Also   The Insider Secrets to Marketing Your Business on the Internet   Alternative Payment Solutions   Fraud Prevention Tools   Top Tools to Help You Boost Customer Service   iV-Caller Verification Service   Make Your Price Sell!   FindWhat.com   Make Your Knowledge Sell!   HumanClick   Netship   iFulfill.com   Nexchange   Nothing But 'Net   Netwhistle.com   Bigstep.com   Make Your Site Sell!   AWeber   GoTo.com   Constant Contact   WebAdverts   PersonalStore   SiteInspector   LinkExchange   ClickTrade   Safe   eCHARGE   MilliCent

Product	iFulfill.com
Description	Fulfilment service for small online businesses
Available	Now
Pricing	7% of transaction value plus $1 to $4 per order

When you start a new, small business, it is naturally very tempting to try and do everything yourself in an attempt to save money and to retain full control of your venture. This is especially true when setting up a Web store because there are so many great tools available to help you build and run your online business. And once you've built your store, all you need to do is clear some space in your garage to hold your inventory and you're in business!

However, as tempting an approach as this may be, trying to do everything yourself is not always the best solution, especially for the smaller e-tailer operating within tight monetary and time constraints.

From a financial perspective, the costs of building a store can quickly mount up: there is the cost of the shopping cart, ISP hosting fees, merchant account set-up and transactions fees, shipping costs and customer support costs.

Second, and probably most important, is the time needed to set up and run a do-it-yourself solution. Small businesses need to spend the vast majority of their limited time marketing if they are to be successful, and not fulfilling customer orders or dealing with day-to-day problems.

In the brick-and-mortar world, the major players have long realised that they need to focus on their strengths and leave other aspects of their business – like order fulfilment – to companies that specialise in those areas. However, whilst there are many third party fulfilment services targeted at medium to large businesses, there has been little available to assist the small, online business. This is a gap in the market that a new fulfilment service – iFulfill.com – aims to fill.

iFulfill.com promotes its services as “E-Commerce from the 'buy' button back”, which accurately describes what it aims to do. They leave the Web merchant to focus on marketing whilst they take on full responsibility for hosting the shopping cart, processing credit card transactions, holding inventory, shipping goods to customers and providing customer support.

Of course, all this comes at a cost, but the fee structure is designed to allow even the smallest Web business (e.g. even those shipping only one order per month) to take advantage of the service. Fees are divided in two parts: there is a per transaction fee, which comes in at 7% of the amount charged to your customer's credit card; there is also a per order fee which operates on a sliding scale from $4 to $1 for the first item (dependant on the number of orders shipped during a month) plus $0.30 for each additional item. There are no set-up or monthly charges, although a monthly minimum fee of $4 per item stocked is applied.

The service is also suitable for merchants who want to ship their products themselves but have iFulfill.com do the rest (i.e. process credit card transactions etc.). In this case the per transaction fee is 9% of the amount charged to the customer's credit card, with no per order fee.

iFulfill.com is happy to accept applications from non-US merchants, as long as they are willing to price all their goods in US dollars. On the face of it this sounds great as non-US businesses often struggle to get credit card merchant accounts. However, because iFulfill.com only has a single distribution centre (in Michigan), their service only makes sense for non-US merchants who are shipping a large proportion of their orders into the US.

As you would expect from a service targeted at small businesses, setting up to use iFulfill.com is a straightforward process. The merchant first completes a simple sign up form, and once their application is approved they are given access to the Merchant Zone control panel. Here they enter some basic details about the products they wish to sell and are then given the appropriate HTML code to include in their Web site. An important point to note is that iFulfill.com does not build or host the store itself, only the shopping cart. It is the merchant's responsibility to build a Web site and then to link it to the iFulfil.com site using the HTML code provided.

Another limitation to note is that iFulfill.com deals only with tangible products – their service cannot be used for selling “soft” products such as electronic books or software.

Once the merchant has defined the items they wish to sell, iFulfill.com issues instructions as to how the products should be shipped to their warehouse. When the goods are received they are shown as being "in stock" in the Merchant Zone and the merchant can begin to sell them on their site. iFullfill.com regularly monitor inventory levels and advises the merchant when they need to top-up their stocks.

From a customer's perspective, the system is equally straightforward. The customer clicks on a link on the merchant's Web site and is then transferred to the iFulfill.com Web site where they make their purchase using the iFulfill.com shopping cart and credit card transaction system. After placing their order, they are transferred to a “thank you” screen that includes a link back to the originating merchant's Web site. They also receive a receipt by email and, once the goods are shipped, they are sent a second email that gives an estimated delivery date plus details of how they can track the shipment online.

Merchants are also sent an email when an order is received that has full order and customer information, with the exception of the credit card number.

iFullfil.com cuts checks for their merchants on the 25th of each month for 80% of the value of sales made in the previous month, less their fees. The balance of 20% is retained until the following month.

This all sounds great, but what about the disadvantages?

I mentioned at the top of the article that many big corporations were already using third-party fulfilment services. One major advantage they have is that their volume of transactions is so large that the fulfilment company can justify customising their service for them. As a result, the customer usually does not know they are dealing with a third party: all the paperwork, packaging etc. only mentions the originating merchant's name.

However, the iFulfill.com service is aimed at the smaller merchant who would find the costs of such a customised service prohibitive. Indeed, from a legal perspective it is actually iFulfill.com who are selling the goods to the customer, and not the merchant. As a result, the customer is fully aware they are dealing with a third party and this may deter some of them from making a purchase.

Merchants need also to weigh-up the risks involved in using any third party fulfilment service. Probably the key competitive advantage that a small business has is the ability to provide highly personalised, efficient customer service. But no matter how good the customer service a third party provides, it can never be as good as your own.

Verdict: If you are thinking about selling online but only plan to ship a small number of orders per month, then this is a service you should seriously consider using.