Otters Pool Studio

Introduction

We offer a Fulfilment Service whereby we will fulfil print orders, carrying out the postage and packing on your behalf.  

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Who can use this service?

This service is ONLY available to those customers for whom we provide a website AND fine art printing service.  We are not a packing and courier business, so do not offer this option as a stand alone service.  However, if we are managing your website, and we are producing the fine art prints that are for sale from that website, it makes sense for us to bridge the gap between the two and round off the whole service by fulfilling those orders for you too. 

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How are orders packed?

Generally, we ship prints flat in mounts.  There is no real advantage to rolling prints and sending in tubes until the prints get a bit bigger in size, and we then have the issue of them being curly once received at the other end. Prints would also incur packing costs if rolled as we have to buy the tubes, but we’ve always got flat cardboard to hand so will generally make the packaging from cardboard we recycle from our incoming materials.  Our speciality glass, for example, is always interleaved with big sheets of fresh clean cardboard, and we mostly use that.  We won't use anything messy or unprofessional looking - we have your reputation at stake and respect this.  Prints will be mounted and backed as usual, sealed into a cellophane sleeve (to keep the moisture out), placed between two sheets of corrugated cardboard (with the grain always at 90 degrees to each other to give the package more stiffness) and then wrapped in a plastic bag (we recycle our mountboard packaging for this). We can include your own marketing materials, thank you notes, business cards, etc. if you wish.

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How are orders posted?

An A4 print mounted to 40x30cm will be posted 1st class small parcel.  An A3 print mounted to 50x40cm will be posted 1st class medium parcel.  Both have £20 compensation for loss, but this can be upgraded if you wish at extra cost. Should an order be lost or damaged, you will be responsible for the refulfilment costs.  We can also use courier services offered through the Parcel2Go website. 

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What about signing and numbering the prints?

In most cases the original artwork would be signed so the signature would appear on the print.  In this case, we would just print, mount, pack and post.  If the print is a limited edition, we can add the edition number for you if you wish.  If you want to personally sign and/or number the prints, we would print and loosely pack, then you would collect the print from us to sign and/or number, complete the packaging and take to the post office yourself. 

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What is the sales commission?

We do not charge a sales commission for this service, as we are not actively selling - that's your job!  We are providing the website, printing and mounting service to you already, so we make our cut from that.  We do charge a small packing price relative to the postage price.  See below. 

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Is there a cost for the P&P?

The packing material doesn't cost us anything to buy (see above), so we don't charge you for it, and it helps with the recycling.  Postage costs we also pass on at cost price. However, it does take a little time to carry out the packing, and labelling, and the trip to the post office or courier drop-off point.  We cover this by simply doubling the postage cost - so if the postage costs £4, we add on another £4 for the whole packing and postage time. The bigger the parcel, the more time it takes, and whilst courier charges are even higher, we generally have to take them to a drop-off point, so this seems the fairest method of charging for our time. You always have the option of avoiding these costs by collecting the package from us and posting yourself - this will be subject to our normal booking process.

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Are there any other costs?

If your customer payments from your website come through our PayPal account, we will incur the fee, which we will pass back to you too. 

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So what will I make out of it?

Here is an example of an A3 print mounted to 50x40cm sold for £80 + £5 P&P​:

- Print sale £80 + £5 P&P = £85

- Print cost - £12

- Mount, back and sleeve cost - £14

- Royal Mail 1st class medium parcel - £5.80

- Postage and packing fee - £5.80

- PayPal fee (approx - varies) - £2.90

Net profit to come back to you - £44.50 (56% margin)

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Here is an example of an A4 print mounted to 40x30cm sold for £60 + £5 P&P​:

- Print sale £60 + £5 P&P = £65

- Print cost - £6

- Mount, back and sleeve cost - £10

- Royal Mail 1st class small parcel - £3.55

- Postage and packing fee - £3.55

- PayPal fee (approx - varies) - £2.00

Net profit to come back to you - £33.90 (57% margin)

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Please remember that this net profit of 57% (in the example above) have been made without your involvement!

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In the case of you carrying out the postage yourself, the postage and packing fees do not apply. 

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What happens to the balance?

The net profit from the sale will be added as a credit to your Otters Pool Studio account.  This can be held here for use against future orders, or we can immediately transfer it to your account by bank transfer.