Ask any online seller and they’ll tell you that seemingly nothing about sales tax is easy. Collecting, filing, and staying informed of rate and law changes are all challenging. Shipping as it relates to sales tax is no exception.

Here are a few things to keep in mind for your business when it comes to shipping and sales tax:

The Sales Tax Landscape is Changing

Nowadays, more and more states are cash-strapped, so they’re looking for ways to add more revenue to their budgets. That’s led to states changing their definition of nexus—whether a business has a legal “presence” in that state—so they can require more sellers to pay them sales tax. That means the days of only having to file and pay sales tax to your state are coming to an end (for a lot of you selling through Amazon, they’ve already ended). Be sure to stay informed on what states you’re legally required to stay compliant for sales tax.

Shipping Laws Aren’t Universal

Once the need arises to pay sales tax to a state other than where your business is physically based, be sure to do your homework. Unfortunately, not every state handles sales tax the same way. Find out of if that state considers shipping taxable. In Washington, for example, shipping is considered taxable. In Kansas, if you deliver a taxable item yourself to a Kansas address (not using the Postal Service or UPS) then you are considered to have nexus and have to pay sales tax to Kansas. When in doubt, call the state and speak to someone about your business. Many states even offer a service for sellers to get an in-writing response that will hold up in court.

How You Display Shipping Charges Matters

In some states, how you display shipping charges as part of an order determines whether sales tax should be collected on that shipping charge. This is where things can be tricky and it’s important to check with a state if you have any doubt.

In California, for example, if shipping charges are listed separately from the cost of an item, then the shipping charge is not taxable. It is taxable if you include shipping in the cost of the item. The same is true in Virginia. But Washington and Connecticut say it doesn’t matter. Shipping charges are taxable in those states no matter how they’re displayed.

The bottom line, really, about shipping and sales tax is be in the know. Use whatever resources you can to find the information applicable to your business. This is where companies like TaxJar can help, in addition to your local CPA and tax authorities.

This year marks the first of the series that events are being held all over the country, culminating in a special event in Washington D.C. on Friday where they’ll announce the state and national Small Business Person of the Year awards! The government is also live-streaming most of the content, so if you wanted to attend, but don’t live in the cities they’re hosting the events in, there’s your ticket! You can view the whole schedule here and the stream is up on the homepage.

Small Business Week runs from Monday to Friday (17th – 21st) and will be in the following cities each day:

• Monday: Seattle, WA
• Tuesday: Dallas, TX
• Wednesday: St. Louis, MO
• Thursday: Pittsburgh, PA
• Friday: Washington, D.C.

All this week, whether you’re at the events or not, we’ll be asking for how you’re celebrating Small Business Week, and if the raised awareness of all the small businesses everywhere is helping yours any.

• Post in the comments right down below this post
• Comment on our Facebook
• Tweet us your pictures & thoughts on Twitter

Larger businesses: maybe you can add some insight to how you got started, and the things you learned along the way. Anything you want to talk about in the realm of “Small Biz,” we want to talk with you!

We met with a lot of people, and our feet were killing us, but we had a really great time. In case you missed our tweets & pictures, there were four of the ShipStation crew at IRCE 2013.

(From left to right): Angel, Curtis, Robert, & Erin

It’s sometimes difficult to see just how booming the ecommerce industry is, because it is so digital with online marketplaces, orders, payments, customers, etc. However, as I scanned through aisle after aisle of exhibitors and spoke with dozens of customers and partners, I was struck by how HUGE this industry really is. I ran into companies that can help build your search index, analyze customer data and trends, market your product, design your website—there’s so much!
- Angel, Tech Support Extraordinaire

While there, we also met with a bunch of our partners, including Shopify, StitchLabs, Brightpearl, ChannelAdvisor, Magento and more! It was great to catch up with the guys we work with on a regular basis, but don’t really get to see all that much.

There were also some epic times at the FedEx, Endicia, and other companies’ after parties, where we got to let loose a teeny bit with our partners and connect with both old and new friends.

Favorite moments: Connecting with all of the people who we saw, whether it was dinner with Blair and Mat from Shopify and Jake from Stitch Labs or at the Art Institute of Chicago, the Field Museum, or Chicago’s Alder Planetarium.
- Curtis, Business Development Wizard

I thought it was great having dinner with Shopify & StitchLabs; getting to personally know our partners build relationships with them was a great experience. I also enjoyed being able to meet with accounts I previously had only corresponded with by phone and email. It was rewarding to hear in-person how much ShipStation has played a hand in helping to grow their businesses. I also enjoyed meeting face-to-face with prospective accounts and showing them just how much ShipStation can help to overcome their current shipping challenges.
- Erin, Senior Account Guru

For me, just being able to reconnect with all the vendors I once knew as a merchant was awesome to do from the other side of the table.
- Robert, Marketing Genius

All in all, it was a fantastic conference, and we can’t wait to go back next year. Luckily, IRCE will be stationed in Chicago at least through 2020. It runs next year from June 10th – 14th, and we really hope we’ll see you there!

This post was contributed by Stitch Labs, the must-have inventory management suite for small businesses. Stitch integrates in real-time with ShipStation, eBay, Amazon, Shopify, Bigcommerce, Etsy, and more.

The surest way to lose potential sales is to be out-of-stock. Not only do you lose the sale on that item, but also you risk losing sales on additional items both that same day and in the future.

Almost one-half of intended purchases are lost when a consumer finds an item is out of stock according to an Emory University study.

Preventing stock-outs seems simple enough, right? All you have to do is make sure you have enough units in stock. Of course, as a seller, you know there is a delicate balance between having enough stock on hand and overstocking.

Luckily, with a few numbers in hand, you can prevent lost sales due to stock-outs by knowing exactly when to restock your inventory, how to make it easy for customers to buy, and ordering inventory by product options.

1. Know when to restock your inventory.

In order to know when to restock your inventory, you need to be able to answer:

• What products are selling?
• When do I expect more units to arrive?
• How many additional units am I awaiting?

Closely monitoring your inventory level is critical for being able to answer questions like these.

Use automation to make restocking inventory easy. For example, low stock alerts can automatically inform you that your stock is getting low and it’s time to order more.

Knowing that you need to replenish your stock is only one component of the challenge to making sure you get the number of units you need, when you need them. Also, intimately understand how your suppliers work.

Ask yourself these questions to plan appropriately:

• By how much does your supplier typically under provide or short you?
• How long does it take for your order to arrive?
• Is your supplier typically on time or delayed? By how much?

If you don’t know any of this information, go back in your records or start taking notes now. Use this information to create optimal purchase orders. By planning for delays or receiving for less stock up front, you can help prevent stock outs (and stress) up front.

2. Make it easy for customers to buy.

Particularly during stock-outs, it’s important to remove as much friction in the buying process as you can to help close sales.

Establish trust and allay your customers’ fears. Be able to accurately and confidently answer, “When will you have more?”. When customers hear “I don’t know”, they quickly think waiting is not worth it, or worse: you don’t know what is going on in your own business. If you want to be really on top of things, don’t make them ask for this information either. With the numbers you should have collected above, you should be able to tell them on your site exactly how long it’ll take before you’ll have more in stock.

Make it easy for your customer to purchase the item when stock is replenished. Create a system to notify customers when orders have arrived. Or, even better, allow backordering of your products.

Allowing customers to order out of stock products can be an effective strategy to guaranteeing the sale. Customers can pay up to 100% of the cost of the product up front, so that all the customer needs to do is await the arrival of their products.

Selling online has pros and cons. While you are less likely to interact with a customer to know which item they wish they could buy, it’s easy to automate notifying customers when new stock of an item arrives.

3. Know exactly which product options are your best sellers.

Bestsellers are great. They are fast-moving sales and help keep your order volume up. Often, retailers don’t stock enough of their bestsellers.

Since best sellers are the first to go, their space on the shelf can sit empty as you wait for slower turning products to sell. By not having the right mix of products on your shelves, you lose sales.

Avoid the situation when customer after customer wants to buy your medium, plaid shirt, but abandons their cart after finding only smalls and larges available.

Use your product data down to the product option level to ensure you purchase the best mix of inventory and get the right number of product options you need. For example, know that for every one small you sell, you sell five mediums and two larges. When ordering new units, order five times as many mediums as smalls and twice as many larges as smalls.

Multi-channel Seller Tips

By allocating your limited stock to a particular channel and dividing your stock, you increase the likelihood of a stock out and lost sales.

A centralized pool of inventory for all of your channels helps you balance uncertainty in demand and ensures all of your stock is available through each channel.

Inventory management software, like Stitch Labs, offers real-time inventory and order syncing makes it easy to sell from a centralized pool of inventory so you can leverage all of your stock, while also preventing selling items you don’t actually have in stock.

Perfecting inventory management to prevent lost sales can seem like an art. With the right systems, tools and know-how, you can turn inventory management into a science.

Of course, please check with your phone carrier for any additional charges you may incur due to the text messages being sent to your phone. These e-mail to text messages are considered “normal” texts, but double-check to be extra sure you won’t get charged any additional fees.

The first step is to create an e-mail template. (Here’s a help article on how to do that if you’re unsure.) While I won’t go through the whole process in this post, here’s a screenshot of what my template looks like. You can see that I didn’t add anything much because of the limitations of text messages. I just wanted to be able to be alerted if I have an Express Order that imported so I can get that order out as soon as possible.

Once I have my e-mail template created, I have to create the filter & automation rules for ShipStation to know to send the e-mail. First, let’s tackle the filters. (You can do that here, as long as you’re signed into the app.) For my business, I have two different filters to create since Amazon and eBay use different identifiers for Express Orders. This is where you’ll have to look at your particular situation and build your filter to specifically reference your business and how your orders come in. Your filter may want to look for “2 Day” instead of “Expedited” or something different.

Here’s my Amazon Filter:

And my eBay Filter:

Now I need to create the two automation rules. Since I can’t have one automation rule run on multiple filters, I have to create two separate Automation Rules to handle the Amazon and eBay Filters.

Here’s the Amazon one:

And eBay (only the filter and name really changed):

Here is a list of common carriers and the email addresses you should use for each:

• AT&T – cellnumber@txt.att.net
• Verizon – cellnumber@vtext.com
• T-Mobile – cellnumber@tmomail.net
• Sprint PCS – cellnumber@messaging.sprintpcs.com
• Virgin Mobile – cellnumber@vmobl.com
• US Cellular – cellnumber@email.uscc.net
• Nextel – cellnumber@messaging.nextel.com
• Boost - cellnumber@myboostmobile.com
• Alltel – cellnumber@message.alltel.com

If yours is not listed here, you should be able to search Google or ask your carrier for the email address to use when sending information to your phone as a text message.

That’s it! When you get an expedited order, you should get a message something like this:

Have any questions about the process? Or have some examples of amazing automation rules you’ve made in the past? Let us know in the comments! We’d love to hear from you!

I’m Joe, the Lead Support Engineer for ShipStation and I help by handling the tickets that may need a developer’s eye or they’re just those “out of the ordinary” issues that need some time to troubleshoot. I enjoy helping out customers and especially giving them knowledge about ShipStation. In my free time, I enjoy fishing, playing soccer, and spending time with my wife and kids.

How long does it take for your customers to go through your checkout process? Think about the last time you went through the process at a new site. Did you get frustrated? Did you actually complete the purchase, end up purchasing it at a familiar vendor, or abandon the purchase completely? If you went through the process, you probably had to do something like this:

1. Find the product.
2. Choose the appropriate options.
3. Add it to your cart.
4. Choose between creating an account or checking out as a guest (if you’re lucky.)
5. Enter in your shipping address.
   Now, either:
   1. Check “Also Bill To.”
   2. Enter a billing address.
6. Find out the shipping cost and choose one.
7. Enter in your credit card information. (Or go to someone else’s website to finish.)
8. Get a confirmation.

Or maybe you had an experience like Google’s tongue-in-cheek parody video (very much worth the 2 min. watching time)

You’re in the selling business. Whether it’s on eBay or Amazon and you can only control so much, to having your own site where you’ve got the world at your fingertips, people are going through your checkout. And they’re either loving it, tolerating it just enough to buy something, or becoming one of those people (abandoned). None of us want you to have those last types of customers.

1. Not Offering Multiple Payment Gateways

First, look at the payment gateways you use. Offering a number of options can help. PayPal + an on-page credit card gateway can encourage people familiar with PayPal to trust you without forcing all of your clientele there. Contrary to popular belief, not everyone has or uses their PayPal account. Obviously for eBay users, this is a bit different, but for an online store, letting a customer stay directly on your site should help with conversions.

2. Too Many Requirements

Next, streamline your checkout process as much as possible. Not requiring an account can help (again, mainly for e-commerce stores versus selling in a marketplace), but also having a single-page process will help, as well. It’s like reading a blog post. As soon as you get to the end of the page and realize that you have to load another page to get the rest of the content, you have a break. You feel disjointed. It’s a potential place where you can lose customers. Don’t take the chance.

3. High Shipping Prices

Then, look at your shipping costs. In ShipStation, it’s easy to look at reports of how much profit you’re actually making (or not making) on your shipping. Nobody likes high shipping costs, whether you’re paying them or your customers are. Offering discounted shipping rates by getting the best deals yourself can also help to deter customers abandoning their purchase. On the flip side, being up front and transparent about how much something will cost to ship (and why, especially if the product is weirdly shaped or especially heavy) can help with the “omg” moment customers may get when finally choosing a shipping method with these products in the checkout process.

4. Not Testing

Finally, (though there are tons more tips we could offer, since this topic can get crazy complex), test it. There’s a reason that there are A/B and multivariate testing websites like Google Analytics, Visual Website Optimizer, and KISSmetrics. Your initial intuition might contradict what your customers actually do. People work in different ways, and your particular demographic needs its own study.

No one will ever be able to tell you exactly what you need to do for your business. Since, after all, it’s your business. You’ve built something particular to your product line, your personality, and your demographic. So you’ll have to do the dirty work: get knee-deep in the raw data and work through it.

But don’t worry, it’s worth it. Once you look at that conversion rate start to rise, and the profit start coming in more heavily, you’ll thank yourself for all that hard work.

I’m Erika, the social media & content manager for ShipStation. You’ll find me on Twitter, Facebook, our Community Forums and the other areas of the ShipStation world. In my free time, I’m a lover of video games, my cats, and other generally nerdy things. :)

For our specific case, seeing as how we only build software here at ShipStation, we reference developers as those who are building, fixing, and improving our platform every single day through hours of programming (coding). To get some insight into a developer’s mind (what’s funny is that they really do think a bit differently from all that logic training), I interviewed our lead developer: James.

A humorous and fairly truthful take (albiet a little old) on the different views of what a developer job entails.

Tell me a bit about your background.

Some of you may know this from my office decorations, but I love comic books and I’ve collected them since I was a kid. I loved them so much I even envisioned myself to be a comic book artist when I grew up, and traced the art in my books. They always looked a little bit off, but of course, when I tried drawing them on my own, I found out I had absolutely no artistic talent whatsoever. Luckily, my dad started studying chess around the time of my realization and he brought me into that world and taught me the lay of the land, so to speak. And I latched onto it like nothing else; I played constantly. Learning chess and being governed by its rules I think really helped me become as logical as I am and shaped me into the programmer I am today.

What made you want to be a developer?

It was my dad. He’s been in computers for his entire career (he does more hardware work, like server maintenance and mainframe work.) He knows a lot of the old school languages like FORTRAN and COBOL, and since it’s expensive for large companies to build new infrastructure using the newer languages, guys like him are always needed.

Can you describe a typical day for you?

Hah, not really. My mornings usually go the same way, though: on my drive into work I create a plan for what that day will encompass. By 10am, it’s all shot to hell. However, I have to say it’s one of the things I like the most about my job: I’m always challenged. There’s no shortage of puzzles or challenges that will come with each new day. I think it’s also one of the reasons why I’m a “company” developer versus a “freelancer.”

What’s the difference?

Well, in a very broad and generic sense, you basically have two different types of jobs when it comes to development: choosing to work on a singular project that you never touch again, or coding for a company where you’re always working towards a bigger and better product. There are, of course, many more ways to categorize developers, but these are the two basic groups.

When you’re “in the zone,” is there any music or specific things that you do to help you focus?

Music, for sure. When I’m working on something and I’m really grooving, music that doesn’t have any words or lyrics helps the most. It’s usually in the realm of trance and electronic, but I’ll throw some “regular” classical music in there to help. (This is one of my favorites.) I think what genre I choose really depends on what I’m working on in that moment. It’s really there to help negate any potential distractions from overhearing conversations or anything else that my brain might pick up on and completely derail my train of thought.

I think one thing that people might not understand about developers is that everything in coding is relational. You have a set library of commands you can use and ways with which you can manipulate the data, and it changes with each piece of a product I work on. Every time I go in to work on a blog of code, I have to wrap my mind around the logic of whatever module or piece of the product I’m working on, and it’s usually different from the other pieces of that product. So, every distraction I have pulls me away from that mindset, and to code any further on that piece, I have to get myself back into that mindset. It’s one of the reasons why you’ll usually see devs with noise-canceling earbuds and a dark room; it cancels out as much of the surrounding distractions as possible.

What’s your favorite thing about being a developer?

It really goes back to the challenge. I very much enjoy doing all sorts of puzzles: crossword, chess, video games, etc. and all of the problems I’m tasked with solving challenges me. One of the biggest things to know about programmers is that we’re always learning. We’re always figuring out new ways of solving things and better ways to solve problems with new technology or new methods of thinking. I really enjoy that challenge and that I’m honestly never bored.

Have any questions for James about being a developer? Ask us in the comments!

I’m Erika, the social media & content manager for ShipStation. You’ll find me on Twitter, Facebook, our Community Forums and the other areas of the ShipStation world. In my free time, I’m a lover of video games, my cats, and other generally nerdy things. :)

You ever hear the phrase “Jack of all trades, but master of none” (or something similar)? Just in case you haven’t, here’s the gist of it: if you try to be good at everything, eventually you end up being good at none of them. Most people take this to refer to what you do with your skills as a professional or—more generally—as a human being. However, the same case could be made for your business: the more you try to please and appeal to everybody, the more you’ll please and appeal to nobody.

Let’s take a look at Amazon for a moment. Yes, it’s the bane of our existence as small business retailers, but it’s a fact of life that it exists. So, what do people end up using Amazon for? To buy pretty much anything you want, right? You can get books, movies, games, furniture, electronics, food, clothes, and other things I probably couldn’t even imagine. But none of it is uniquely available at Amazon. It’s the Wal-Mart of the digital world, and if you try to do the same thing, chances are you’ll ultimately fail.

The part where Amazon falls short is if someone is looking for something unique. Something just for them that perhaps has been loved before, or was created with just them in mind. If you want something handmade, you probably won’t find it on Amazon. Something antique? Probably not Amazon. What about anything customized directly for your tastes? Not Amazon.

Being Generic is Boring

That’s why when looking at your business, you have to decide on a niche. Don’t sell just t-shirts, pick a specific type and method of sale. Perhaps you enlist the millions of budding t-shirt designers on the Internet and give them a theme, like Shirt.Woot does with its weekly Derbies. (Even still, the shirts all pretty much have an overarching theme of science and geekery.) Take blipshift, one of our customers that we featured last week. They could have gone into the t-shirt business and opened it up to every theme possible, but instead they geared themselves towards just the automotive industry.

Think about all the people you’ve seen on Shark Tank or know to be successful. They all have their niche. Simple Sugars sells only a few versions of sugar scrubs. Just really, really good sugar scrubs. Need another example? Take Duke Cannon Supply Co. and their 3 versions of manly soap. Their “About Us” page screams their personality—and their intentions for their business—loud & clear. The limited offerings of these two companies is not a detriment by any means. Rather, it’s their calling card. People flock to companies such as these because they have mastered their product, found their niche, and are owning it.

Bilbo Baggins said in Fellowship of the Ring that “I feel [...] sort of stretched, like butter scraped over too much bread,” when referencing his unnaturally long life due to his possession of the Ring. That’s how I imagine a business and its employees feel if it’s trying to do too much. It’s an easy trap to fall into. Your customers will ask you to offer more, do more for them. It can be really tough to say no.

Don’t Be a Faceless Shelf of Stuff

It’s why when you decide on your niche, you also need to build a personality around it. Amazon doesn’t have a personality as a company. Not really. Jeff Bezos certainly has a personality, and some may associate it with his company, but look at the Twitter or Facebook of Amazon. It’s all very neutral. You equate Amazon with “buy lots of stuff,” or “2-day free shipping” or something of the like. You don’t associate Amazon with a fun and quirky entity with whom you can have a conversation. If you take a peek at the Simple Sugars Twitter page, you’ll notice lots of conversations, pictures of their fabulous sushi lunches, and other things that make them human.

People identify with this, and start thinking of your company as more along the lines of a friend than a line item on their credit card bill. As you find your niche and solidify your personality, you’ll find your community. With a strong community comes more engagement with your customers, possibly a higher retention and re-order rate, and a higher chance for your regulars to become your evangelists.

If you’re just starting your business and thinking about what you should sell, take a good look at your proposed product line. Think about what you’d do if you got an order every day for one of each of your products. Does it make your head spin? Fix it.

Then look at your customer communications, product descriptions, and website copy. Can you easily identify your company’s tone of voice and persona by reading it? Does it sound like a human or a dictionary? If not, fix it. Be personable. Be unique. Go niche.

I’m Erika, the social media & content manager for ShipStation. You’ll find me on Twitter, Facebook, our Community Forums and the other areas of the ShipStation world. In my free time, I’m a lover of video games, my cats, and other generally nerdy things. :)

Wish is one of those words where it makes us start thinking of all the things (tangible or not) that we want. For some people it might be a new scarf or an upgraded power tool. (Personally, I was a huge fan of—and immediately Wished for—some glow-in-the-dark nail polish.) Wish.com is one of those places where you have the world open to you and thus, you can find things you never even knew you wanted needed. Wish combines a mobile Instagram-like fun shopping experience with highly intelligent recommendation technology to provide merchants with the most efficient merchant sales platform.

Now, for the consumer in all of us, it’s easy to see why we’d want to shop on Wish, but as a seller, you should see this as a huge opportunity. Today, we at ShipStation are happy to announce that we’ve integrated with Wish, so you can set up your account on Wish and list products. Over twelve million people on Wish have added hundreds of millions of products to their wishlists, and based on these wishlists, Wish can instantly find thousands of qualified consumers for any product a merchant chooses to promote. As people find your items and buy them, as long you’ve set up your Wish account in ShipStation, the orders will import just like any other platform.

Listing a product on Wish.com

Perhaps the biggest draw to Wish for you, is by giving you access to qualified and relevant consumers for your product, they’re able to generate hundreds of transactions for you—for any SKU—within hours of promoting the product. They’re confident this is the fastest and most effective way for any merchant to generate a high volume of sales for your products.

The signup process for becoming a Wish.com merchant starts here.

So, if you’re looking for a new sales channel through which to sell your products, give Wish a try! You can login with your Facebook credentials, and start selling in minutes!

I’m Erika, the social media & content manager for ShipStation. You’ll find me on Twitter, Facebook, our Community Forums and the other areas of the ShipStation world. In my free time, I’m a lover of video games, my cats, and other generally nerdy things. :)

Name: Joe Oh, Sebastian Ruta and Hay-Won Byun, Founders

Website: blipshift.com

 
How did you choose to go into the “a t-shirt a day” business?

 
After many years of going to bars wearing less than awesome promotional car-themed tees, we realized that perhaps neon colors on an oversized shirt wasn’t helping our mingling potential. There are a number of companies offering crowdsourced t-shirt designs on a limited basis, but nothing for car guys like us. We figured it was about time that auto enthusiasts got a chance to get some fresh and witty apparel. We’re also super psyched to be giving artists from around the world another avenue to share their work. Collectively, we have experience in tech, fashion and manufacturing so we were able to get moving pretty quickly. We keep things pretty casual over here and make sure to have a good time doing what we’re doing. That is unless you show up to work not wearing your blipshift tee… in that case you start your day with three sets of push-ups.

A sample blipshift shirt: “Kimi’s Resume” by Gabor Vida — it may not mean anything to you, but ask any die-hard F1 fan and they’ll explain it.

On that note, what made you decide that the automotive puns would be your niche?

Despite what our better halves think, “car guy” isn’t just one type of dude (or dudette). There is a huge amount of diversity in this niche, if you can call it that – we think of it as massive interest group. We like hanging out with other car guys and gals, talking about all things auto and of course, telling stories. This is what gives us and artist contributors inspiration for design sweetness that car guys “get”. If you want a sci-fi or pop culture t-shirt, there are plenty of places online you can find one. But if you want a riff on the latest racing news or car blog meme there’s only one, blipshift.

How has ShipStation helped you with your business?

As a small business, we need to be growing the company, not spending hours optimizing shipping costs or standing in line. We knew early on that our focus needed be on creating awesome products, keeping customers happy and developing our brand. Dealing with order fulfillment and the post office can be pretty painful. It’s a thankless job that can take a bunch of time. We also don’t want to spend time building infrastructure where great tools already exist. ShipStation was super easy to setup and integrated with our e-commerce platform. Because it’s in the cloud, we’ve got a ton of flexibility on how we manage shipments and labels. Batching up a large number of orders is really simple and the ShipStation interface helps to reduce knucklehead errors. It definitely feels good to know that ShipStation provides reliable service and a big feature set that is able to scale as our business grows.

The Blipshift fulfillment team finishing up an order batch. Oooh, polybags!

What’s your favorite ShipStation feature?

Reports. We don’t just gobble up numbers and specs from the latest Porsche review. We’re suckers for metrics and any piece of data that provides us with more visibility on our business. The ShipStation reports are really great at giving us a quick view on our operations and fulfillment costs. ShipStation also makes it really easy for us to cross reference orders for customer support cases. When you’ve got a loyal following with customers ordering 5, 10 or even 20 times, it’s important for us to have visibility and easy access to the shipping history. By the way, does the sound of a team of label printers running in the background count as a feature? ‘cuz that’s awesome too.

If you or someone you know (even if it’s just a neighbor) who loves his or her cars, go to blipshift and get something nice! Remember, each design has a limited life cycle, so get them before they’re gone!

Want to be featured in our customer spotlight? Let us know!