The Life Cycle Of An Order

So you've clicked the Paypal button and placed your order. What happens then? What exactly do we do to make sure your order gets to you?

Our day generally starts at 8:30 am, which is when Whitney rolls into the parking lot. Usually Kristen and one (or both) of the Hayleys too. The two of them open up the store and immediately get to work on orders. They check the Shopify queue to see how many new orders there are and then print out an invoice for each one.

Invoices in hand, Whitney goes through each, highlighting those orders that have a quantity of anything greater than one, along with any special notes. Then, starting with the first invoice, she goes through the store collecting the necessary bolts of fabric to fill the order. These get sorted into two stacks: Anything we need exactly one half-yard of, and everything else.

Kristen or Hayley or Hayley do the cutting while Whitney double checks the invoice to make sure the right fabrics and lengths were cut. This is the crucial part, with the largest margin of error; we depend on everyone involved to be quick and efficient. Accuracy and steady hands are a must!

Then it all gets packaged up and placed in a mail bin for shipping. Josh and Cale are our main shipping handlers and their job is harder than it looks. We handle all of our mail personally, inputting each order number and checking it against the name and address of each customer to ensure accuracy. Once that's done, it's essential that the proper label gets on the correct package.

Sometimes there are special requests that come through our email - maybe you saw something you'd like to add to your order, or you want to combine a new order with a previous one that hasn't shipped yet. That's where I come in! I get your email and if it's something we can help with, I write out a special ticket and hand it off to Whitney, who attaches it to your order. We can't always fulfill every request, but we like to try!

Finally our trusty postman arrives, usually right before we're about to close for the day. Steve scans the packages so the tracking will be accurate, then loads them into his truck and whisks them away on a journey to you.

All total, we like to have a turnaround on orders of 2-3 days, but really it's all about volume. On an average day, we can fulfill about 30-40 orders (depending upon how large the orders are), so during big sales or when there's something special going on (say, for example, a large shipment of pre-sale fabric arrives), we definitely have our work cut out for us. And that doesn't even include creating bundles for the store, or the cutting and fulfilling of our monthly clubs (which, again, is handled by Cale and Josh!). Everyone on the fulfillment team loves fabric and it makes our job a lot of fun, but it's a lot of work too!

Is there anything you're curious about? Ask away in the comments section!