Ways to use fulfillment

Every customer is different—but generally for any brand that is selling merch online, we think our fulfillment services would be a good fit for you at these minimum volumes: 25 orders in the first month, 10 orders/month ongoing. We’ve found this to be enough demand to break even/have profit on a month-by-month basis while utilizing our fulfillment services. Not selling something, just need a place to store your inventory? That's cool, too! These numbers serve more as break-even metrics for ecommerce brands, but we've got some handy dandy pricing breakdowns for each of our fulfillment plans.

No, our fulfillment service currently does not include print-on-demand. T-shirts or other items are still ordered in bulk (our minimum is 20/design), then your inventory is stored and shipped safely at Real Thread HQ. You sell your shirts, and let us worry about the printing, storage, packing, and shipping.

If you’d like to sell t-shirts before taking on the inventory, you do have the option to pre-sell. You put up a mockup/sample of your product on your website, and then once you collect orders, we'll print the shirts and send them to your customers.

Yes, even if you don’t have a need for ongoing shipping of orders but still need to ship to individual addresses, our One-Time Fulfillment is a great service for you. Alternatively, if you do need to ship on an ongoing basis but don’t have a storefront, consider joining Real Thread fulfillment via the Swag Fulfillment plan, where we’ll create a platform for you that can hold your inventory and orders, and will then ship out those orders as they come in/as you need them.

Absolutely. Whatever items you’re selling in your store, we’re able to ship for you.

Yes! If you’d like to provide your own custom branded packaging for us to send your items in, simply send them to us and we’ll ship all of your orders out in style.

Our standard packaging for your items is a non-branded white poly mailer or a brown cardboard box.

Yes. To use our fulfillment services, you must be printing/embroidering products (like t-shirts, hats, bags, sweatshirts, etc.) with us.

Nope. We offer both monthly and annual fulfillment plans. With the monthly plan, there is a one-time setup cost involved—but if you sign up for an annual plan, we’ll waive that setup fee.

Yes, we do! We recommend shipping internationally through USPS International. Transit time is typically 1-3 weeks, depending on the end location.

Here are the quick & easy steps to printing tees while using our fulfillment program:

Step 1: We connect to your e-commerce platform.

Step 2: You place your bulk order(s) with us (20 units is our minimum).

Step 3: We create the magic and bring your shirts to life.

Step 4: We stock your inventory at our warehouse.

Step 5: We ship out your orders as soon as they roll in through your shopping platform.

We guarantee all orders will ship within 1-2 business days, however, 95% of items are shipped with 24 hours of receiving the order.

All inventory will live in your online storefront—there will also be a dedicated inventory receiving list (which we will create!) that can be referenced for production orders.

Onboarding takes about 2 business days (plus transit if we’re receiving additional product from you). During this time we’ll confirm your inventory, bin and label it, and sync to your store (if applicable) so that we’re ready to take online orders.

To help account for shipping and handling costs, our suggestion is to use the calculated rates for the services you’d like to provide, with an additional $2 + 10% for handling added in. Your end users will only see one price but this will help cover the cost of shipping incurred over the month.

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In terms of pricing - there are 3 cost components to our fulfillment program: shipping, packaging and the fulfillment!

1) The "shipping" component - this cost is up to you/your customer (meaning you/your customer chooses the shipping service to be used and you're billed that rate). You may choose to only allow your customers a single service, or you may allow several service/speed options (such as USPS First Class Mail, UPS Ground, UPS 2nd Day Air, UPS Next Day Air, Fedex, etc).

GOOD NEWS: You’ll always be billed at our discounted bulk rates! 😇

2) The "packaging" component - this cost is based on the size of the shipment. For a single shirt, a 10”x13” white poly mailer will cost you just $0.21.

3) The "fulfillment" component - this rate will change based on your monthly volume and whether you choose an annual contract or month-to-month contract. These rates are outlined in our rate sheet, which is attached.

The three costs above are billed at the end of each month and are separate from printing costs.

To give you a general idea on costs, here is what a shipment of one shirt would likely cost you if you ship out 1 - 99 orders in a month through fulfillment:

Shipping: $3.77 (via USPS First Class Mail)

Packaging: $0.21 (white 10 x 13" poly mailer)

Fulfillment Fee: $2.50

Total: $6.48

Phew, that's a lot of numbers. Have follow-up questions? Ask our team!

We’re able to integrate with pretty much any major eCommerce platform. Shopify, Squarespace, Amazon, Etsy, & eBay, BigCommerce, Magento, BigCartel, and WooCommerce to name a few. If you don’t see your platform listed, just ask! Odds are, we can make it work.

Yes! We can combine multiple items into a bundle (aka a “kit”), and you can sell/ship a bundle as 1 unit rather than shipping as all separate units.  We will pre-make these bundles/kits and store them in our inventory so they are ready to use when an order is ready to be shipped out.  We provide custom pricing for bundling and kitting based on your specific products.

Sure thing! If you have a unique request you’d like to make regarding fulfillment, let us know. Our platform is pretty customizable, and we want you to get exactly what you’re looking for.