Shipping to Your Client's Door: How Direct Fulfillment Works

The preview is approved. The deposit is paid. Now someone has to answer a question that sinks more orders than price ever does: whose address goes on the box, and who tells the customer it is coming.

Direct fulfillment means the parcel goes from production to your client's door without passing through your shop. You never touch it. That saves you a shelf, a re-pack and a trip to the post office — and it moves every logistics mistake from your counter to somewhere you cannot see. So it is worth knowing exactly how the chain runs before you sell your first one.

The address is yours to collect

We ship to whatever address you give us. Which means the single most common cause of delay is not production, not customs, not the carrier — it is an address typed in a hurry at the point of sale.

The classics: an apartment number left off, a business name on the label for a residential porch, a work address the recipient no longer works at. None of these are recoverable at our end. A parcel addressed wrong is a parcel you chase.

So build one habit into your checkout: read the address back to the customer, out loud, before you confirm the order. Thirty seconds. It catches more problems than any tracking system ever will. If your point-of-sale software has a separate line for unit numbers, make it required rather than optional.

One more thing worth deciding early — whether the parcel arrives as a surprise. In this category it almost never should. The customer has picked the photo, approved the preview and paid. They know it exists. Tell them at checkout that it ships in roughly two to three weeks and lands directly at their door. A delivered surprise is a nice-to-have. A delivery the customer was not expecting is a parcel sitting unclaimed at a depot.

What the parcel looks like

The outer box is neutral. No supplier name, no invoice inside, nothing that points the customer anywhere but you. The arrangement itself is covered in the white label piece; the shipping version of it is simple — the box is quiet.

Inside is one piece, always the same one: 7.9″ / 200 mm across, 20 mm thick, standing on a solid wood base, a full-color photograph sealed inside high-clarity glass — not natural quartz crystal and visible from the front and the back. It is heavier than it looks — 1.8 kg (nearly 4 lb) with its base, before packaging — and the packing is built around that, because a keepsake that arrives chipped is a grief order handled badly.

If you want a card from your studio in the box, send us the wording with the order. That is the one chance to put your own voice inside the parcel, and studios that use it tend to use it on every order after the first.

Timing and tracking

Count from the approved preview, not from payment. It is 15–18 days from the moment the preview is signed off to the moment the parcel is delivered. Production does not start until the photo is approved, which is the whole point of the preview — nobody wants a finished piece made from the un-cropped shot.

The tracking number comes to you. Forward it to your customer with a one-line note — "your keepsake is on its way, here is the link" — and the delivery becomes your studio's work rather than a mystery box from nowhere. If your customer phones you about a tracking number they do not recognize, that usually means the forward got buried. Resend it with your studio name in the subject line.

If a customer wants it faster, say the honest number and stop there. Rushing a made-to-order piece is how the wrong details get approved. The honest number survives December much better than the friendly one — the seasonal version of this is worked through in the Q4 cutoff calendar.

Where we ship

Worldwide, and free within the United States. Most of our partners are US and Canada based, so for the typical order there is no shipping conversation at all — the price you quoted is the price the customer pays, door to door.

For deliveries outside the US, quote shipping before checkout rather than after. International parcels can also attract local handling fees or taxes on arrival that no sender controls. One sentence at the point of sale — "there can be a small local fee on delivery, it depends on your country" — prevents the only kind of review nobody recovers from.

When a delivery goes wrong

Sometimes it does. The box takes a knock in transit, or the piece comes out different from the preview your customer approved. This is the part of the chain where you should know your position before you need it.

Here it is: Arrives damaged or doesn't match your approved preview? We'll remake it free. One piece, remade, no charge, and the claim starts with a photo of the problem sent through you. You are the one voice the customer deals with; we deal with you.

That sentence is also a selling line, and it is a strong one at the counter. A customer hesitating over a made-to-order product is usually hesitating over exactly two fears — what if it arrives broken, and what if it looks wrong. You now have a one-sentence answer to both.

What this removes from your week

Run the math on the old way. You buy stock, you store it, you pack it, you drive it to the post office, you answer the "has it shipped" email because you genuinely do not know, and you eat the cost of the one that got damaged in your own car. Direct fulfillment deletes all of it. What stays with you is the part that actually earns the money: the conversation at the counter, the photo choice, the preview, the follow-up call a week after delivery.

That is the trade. We hold the logistics. You hold the relationship. Neither of us pretends to do the other's job.

To set up direct fulfillment on your account, send us your business type and expected volume. The full arrangement — minimums, packaging, previews, remakes — is laid out on the partnership overview, and aftercare providers have a dedicated version.