Traditional online solution providers have typically mirrored the methods of physical stores by buying fixed inventory and customizing the products before listing them on their platforms.
Although this approach offers few advantages, like the ability to ship items immediately after purchase, it comes with significant drawbacks and restrictions. If products don't sell, you may be stuck with unsold inventory and, in certain situations, unable to restock until the current stock is cleared or paid for.
In contrast to the traditional approach, our on-demand strategy offers distinct advantages. Our solution provides access to a wide selection of both apparel and non-apparel items for your online store. You're not restricted to just a few color options or limited to offering only a couple of logos, giving you much more flexibility than a conventional inventory-based solution.
To better understand the comparison, see a detailed comparison against the standard online store provider.
Intuitive Brand Solutions
Our solutions include only those where blanks are bought to share amongst all clients. Your inventory to an absolute minimum, since you only purchase as low as 1 at a time. Nothing is pre-decorated so there's virtually no inventory liability. You'll never have to worry about unsold merchandise or any holding fees.
Standard Online Solution Providers
With a traditional online solution provider, most merchandise is pre-decorated and stored in a warehouse, making you financially liable for these items, whether they sell or not. In some cases, you could also incur storage fees for unsold inventory, leading to a hefty bill and leftover items in various sizes.
Intuitive Brand Solutions
Our contracts are simple and straightforward. With zero inventory, there's virtually no risk to you with us. If you ever feel like our solution isn't the best fit for you, you're welcome to leave. We just ask that you provide us 90 days notice.
Standard Online Solution Providers
Traditional online solutions providers often require strict contracts. If you've committed to inventory, there's a significant financial risk for both you and the provider. This can make ending a partnership expensive, even if the service doesn't meet expectations.
Intuitive Brand Solutions
After signing a contract, you will be assigned an account maanger. They will be your sole point of contact with us and while there's a slew of people supporting them to complete tasks for you, they will be your direct line of contact. Whether it's a logo addition, want to do a special promotion, have a production question, or need help updating your site; your account manager is the person to ask.
Standard Online Solution Providers
Most companies require you to spend a high volume annually to receive an account manager (such as $100,000+), or you maybe not at all. This leads to smaller companies to work with multiple points of contact for various aspects of their program. This just screams confusion and miscommunication.
Intuitive Brand Solutions
Whether your annual spend is $10,000 or $3,000,000, you receive an entirely customized site. Setting up different user groups, designs/logos, product lines and login portals, it is very easy for us. You can even select different pricing structures each group on your site!
Standard Online Solution Providers
Most traditional online solution providers offer just a single portal or page for purchasing branded swag. While some may provide extra customization options for larger clients, this often leaves small and medium-sized businesses at a disadvantage.
Intuitive Brand Solutions
To ensure your brand is decorated at ONE FACILITY, we only partner with solutions that decorate everything in-house. It doesn't matter if you order an item that is embroidered, screen printed, laser engraved, dye-sublimated, inkjet, DTG, requires a decal, or is a custom stationery product; we're able to decorate it in house.
Standard Online Solution Providers
Many standard online solution providers outsource production, which reduces their control and flexibility over decoration methods and turn times. As a result, issues like a poorly printed logo using screen printing may not be noticed until after 100 shirts are finished. Furthermore, if the provider relies on multiple third-party companies, it could take days or even weeks to produce those same shirts using DTG printing.
Intuitive Brand Solutions
There's no maximum amount of logos that you can use. The technology solutions are built to handle multiple logos to offer as many as you'd like. Some programs only 1 logo while others offer over 100. Co-branding (two or more logos on a single piece) or personalized merchandise is also available on-demand for unlimited product options!
Standard Online Solution Providers
Standard online solution providers often restrict your logo choices. Adding new logos typically requires purchasing additional inventory, which can become costly. This leaves you with either excess, expensive stock or a very limited selection of products.
Intuitive Brand Solutions
With the brilliance of an on-demand production strategy, you're able to offer dozens of different apparel and promotional items in various colors. Think a variety of men's, women's, and youth clothing lines. Name brands like Nike, Adidas, Under Armour, Callaway, Columbia, Ogio, Johnnie O, and more. All offered in quantities of 1 with multiple logo and color options for each.
Standard Online Solution Providers
Merchandise availability is usually restricted because of the costs associated with holding inventory. Unless a company meets high pre-set annual spending targets, most will experience a limited product range with only a few color options available.
Intuitive Brand Solutions
By shortening the supply chain and leveraging all clients, vendors allow us to receive big discounts on blanks. Regardless of the quantity ordered, every client is being offered a leveraged price from volume across all our clients, not just one.
Standard Online Solution Providers
Setting the selling price for merchandise with traditional companies can be complicated. You'll need to account for warehousing, decoration, shipping, any outsourcing costs (which might include additional shipping fees), inventory, and their markup. As a result, the final price for a single shirt can become quite high. Especially when providers simply cannot do single units.
Intuitive Brand Solutions
While managing every aspect of our solution may seem excessive to some, it makes perfect sense to us. By handling warehousing, decoration, fulfillment, and technology all in-house, we maintain consistency across our services. This consistency ensures that both you and your customers receive the best possible experience.
Standard Online Solution Providers
Standard online solution providers vary in size, from small home-based businesses to large industrial corporations. Smaller businesses often face significant limitations in production and storage capacity, while larger companies, although capable of handling some aspects in-house, typically choose to outsource other components. When a company outsources any part of its online store solution, it relinquishes control over that part of the process.
Intuitive Brand Solutions
By partnering with us, you gain access to knowledge and support from in-house account managers, customer service representatives, operations experts, graphic designers, and production staff across our entire network. We invite you to leverage our resources, letting our teams handle the daily tasks so you can focus more on growing your business.
Standard Online Solution Providers
Although some companies provide a small team of account managers, few offer extra support, such as in-house artists or production specialists. Even fewer have a dedicated customer service team to handle minor inquiries or issues.