| ISMagazine.com | Business First |
November, 1999 |
ifulfill.com Lifts Burden of Ordering and Shipping for Small Web-based Businesses
DUNDEE, MI - November 5, 1999 -- You've finally taken the plunge. The new website is finally up and running and you're ready to make your millions selling widgets on the Internet. Now how do you handle the less-than-exciting and often complicated work of warehousing, billing, shipping, packing and tracking your product? ifulfill.com has the answer. The unique Internet-based company now offers e-commerce fulfillment services previously only affordable for large businesses.
"Lots of people who start Internet businesses don't realize that getting their products to the buyers can be time consuming, expensive and complex," says Paul Purdue, president of ifulfill.com. "ifulfill is offering a level of infrastructure and sophistication that people who may ship only a few orders per month never had access to before, and all without any startup fees or up front costs. Think of us as the distributor for the products you sell on your website."
ifulfill.com's system is simple. With a click of the mouse, customers browsing a merchant's website are seamlessly transported to ifulfill.com's online ordering system.
There they complete their credit card-based order on the secure, shopping cart-style site. By the next morning, ifulfill.com processes, packs and ships the order from its warehouse, and confirms the customer's order via email. The customer receives merchandise ASAP, and the merchant receives a detailed ledger of items shipped each month.
"We spent literally thousands of hours setting up a totally automated system to make all this happen. Not only are merchants not paying the costs associated with e-commerce, like credit card merchant accounts and shopping carts, they don't have to do any of the often tedious work of billing and shipping," Purdue notes. "We handle all the details and headaches."
For its complete package of billing and credit card-ordering services, warehousing and shipping, ifulfill.com keeps 7 percent of price of each item sent, plus a per-order fee of $1 to $4, plus $.30 per item, depending on the number of orders shipped. A merchant, for example, who sells five orders per month, would pay a total of $20 plus 7 percent, but someone who sells more than 50 orders in a given month receives the much lower $1 per order fee. Either way, merchants pay no up front costs, and because of the large overall volume it handles, ifulfill.com can pass on the savings to its clients.
In addition to lifting much of the burden of running a business from merchants, ifulfill's automated system also notifies web owners when their supplies are low and replenishments are needed. Merchants are responsible for shipping their stock to ifulfill.com's warehouse. The ifulfill.com system offers plenty of perks for the customer as well, including a toll-free number for billing and shipping inquiries. Customers may also track their shipments online via http://www.ifulfill.com.
