End-to-End Solutions: From Design to Doorstep
Getting promotional merchandise made for your company through the usual channels is a journey. Typically a long one. Sometimes a confusing one. Generally not an easy one.
Merchgirls’ motto is Merchandise That’s Twice As Nice. But it wasn’t enough for us to just have our merch be leagues ahead – every part of our process is twice as nice. From initial design through to delivery to your door, when we say our merch solutions are end-to-end, we mean we do it ALL – flipping the script on what you’d expect from a promotional merchandising company.
Design
Every merch journey a client takes with us begins with design. To end up with merch that lives up to our standards, we offer our complimentary, expert design service to all of our clients. Once we have a clear brief of what you are envisioning, we get to work. We include you in the creative process as much as you want – some like to see every step of the design process, whereas others like to be as hands-off as possible. It’s entirely up to you. At the end of this step, we end up with a perfectly designed piece of merch that you’re 100% happy with.
Production
After your design has been approved, it goes into production with our suppliers. We strive to work with suppliers who match our high standards in whichever country they operate in. Currently, these include China, Indonesia, Australia, and New Zealand. As a business that uses suppliers worldwide, we understand our responsibility to these people and ensure our actions create positive and productive impacts.
To validate the suppliers we partner with, we check their accredited certifications, have extensive meetings, conduct third-party audits and where possible, visit the factories ourselves. We’ve developed long-term relationships with our suppliers both offshore and locally to ensure not only that each part of our supply chain is ethical and aligns with our standards, but also to ensure the quality of the merch.
Open communication means we know exactly what’s happening with your merch every step of the way – who’s making it, the quality of the materials and how the finished product will turn out.
Warehousing
While any delivery under 20 cartons will come straight to Merchgirls HQ in inner city Melbourne, anything over this amount will go to our warehouse. Our highly-trained warehouse team quality checks (QCs) every single box of merch that arrives before it gets either stored or dispatched straight to the client.
The options for warehousing and storage with us are as varied as you need. Some clients don’t need their merchandise for a few months, so they choose to store it at our warehouse and have it dispatched in bulk later on. Other clients require long-term storage due to space constraints, so we hold their merch for as long as they need. We also provide pick-and-pack services, where we store the merch at the warehouse and dispatch it as orders come in. We’ll find a storage option that works for you, tailoring it to your company’s specific needs so you don’t have to stress about these logistics.
Delivery
For most of our orders, once the item is finished in production, it gets shipped to us here at the office. From here, we QC each and every box of merch before doing a bulk dispatch to the client. As we mentioned, larger orders (20+ boxes) will go to our warehouse, where we can hold thousands of pallets of stock. All our stock is QC’d by our warehouse team before being dispatched to your office door. For clients who need something different when it comes to delivery, we do that too.
Pick and Pack
Our pick-and-pack service involves storing your merch at our warehouse, where we pick, pack and ship the merch as orders come in. For clients who don’t have storage space, or are sending out merch regularly and don’t have the manpower or time to organise it themselves, it’s a great option.
Our client, the Australian Red Cross Lifeblood, is one of our big pick-and-pack clients. Their rewards program for regular blood donors means they can have tens of thousands of orders at any one time. Donors will go online and claim their rewards, whether it be a lanyard or a tote bag, so every week there will be plenty of orders for our warehouse to dispatch. This also goes for larger quantities that they want to be sent to donor centres, where we dispatch larger quantities of merch to centres across Australia.
Split Delivery
The split delivery service is a lot simpler than pick-and-pack – it’s where the stock arrives at our warehouse and we split up the delivery to multiple locations, often across the country, sometimes even across the globe. Our client, the Community Spirit Foundation (previously the Cathy Freeman Foundation) ordered tote bags from us, and wanted them sent to seven different Indigenous communities, with each receiving a different quantity. We regularly do split delivery for Bankwest too, sending boxes of stock to different offices across the country.
Online Portal
We’re able to build and manage an online store portal for your merch. Exactly what the portal looks like can be entirely tailored to what you need from it. For our client, Telstra Purple, staff members are given a login for the storefront, where they can purchase merch with an allotted credit amount. The order comes through to our warehouse, where the merch is picked, packed and dispatched. The portal system we use also provides you with a range of reports on your stock and sales.
What are the benefits to the client of Merchgirls’ end-to-end solutions?
A lot of our clients don’t have the time, space or manpower to deal with large quantities of merch. Like our client, Australian Red Cross Lifeblood, who didn’t have the warehousing space to store their merch nor the team to be able to dispatch it as orders came in. Put simply, the benefits to the client of end-to-end solutions are:
Saving on space by not having to store the merch yourself
You can be as hands-off as possible – we deal with everything and save you time and stress
Zero manpower required on your part – we dispatch everything ourselves
It’s just so EASY
When we say our solutions are end-to-end, we mean it. Ordering merchandise through Merchgirls is as easy as picking your item, approving the design and waiting for it to turn up on your doorstep.
So, does less work and better merch sound like a winning combo to you? Book a meeting with one of the team and let’s get your merch underway, pronto.