

Ask HN: Boost marketing and customer service efforts with a swag service + API? - route3

Idea bounce:<p>A swag fulfillment operation for companies of any size (startups, Fortune 500's) that want to outsource the physical mailing of swag and promotional items. The cool part? Having an API or web service to help automate the process!<p>3 Quick Examples:<p>- Customers with open tickets that haven't been resolved in 7 days? Automatically send them an iTunes gift card with a note.<p>- Heading to a conference in Boston and don't have to time/energy to bring 3 dozen t-shirts with you? Log in, request, we'll ship them to your hotel room.<p>- Automatically send users thank-you cards after 1 year of having a paid account or send branded fly swatters to users who've submitted bug reports<p>Here's How:<p>You ship in your promotional items (or have that order of t-shirts shipped right to us) and we would inventory it, give it an ID, securely store it and warn you when things run low.<p>You don't have to worry about storage, boxes, scales, labels, inventory, stamps, running to the Post Office or fumbling with a label printer and CSV file just to mail 25 survey responders their thank-you card and reward. You're running a startup, time is precious, but you know it's important to "wow" the customer (and we all know that something as simple as a gift card or branded styrofoam football is enough to give users the warm fuzzies)<p>Pricing could be done a few ways, but there are many variables to consider with packaging and shipping costs.<p>I've been thinking about this idea for a few days. Unlike most of my ideas that I let stew and eventually convince myself it's a poor idea, I thought I would bounce it off the HN for some healthy perspective.<p>What do you think?
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byoung2
Do you already have experience with warehousing and fulfillment? That would
seem like the hardest part to manage. You'll have to charge people a monthly
fee to store their items, so work that into your pricing. Also look at
Fulfillment by Amazon to see if that is cheaper or easier to manage.

I know companies who have looked for services like these so I know there is at
least a niche market. Another service you could offer is managing exhibit
pieces for trade shows, though the problem with those is the setup and
teardown, not so much storage.

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route3
I honestly have no experience with warehousing and fulfillment, but the inner
hacker in me loves to think of cool applications for barcode scanners,
sensors, some nifty Arduino/RFID projects, reporting and even "Smart Promo
Distribution" where you could warned that the ZIP code you're about to send
that Red Lobster gift card doesn't have a Red Lobster location within 50 miles

You're right through...cool hacks aside, the physical act of retrieving an
item from inventory, packaging, labeling and shipping has its own drawbacks.

Storage fees are fair, I think. Think of the value: before even paying the
cost to the carrier (USPS/UPS/FedEx) you've invested time and money in to that
label printer that never works right, consumables such as ink/paper/packaging,
your time packing these promotional items and God forbid you run out to get
coffee when the UPS guy swings around to pick up!

On a small, manageable scale, it sounds like an awesome operation for a
programmer/tinkerer.

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byoung2
It looks like Amazon has an API for their fulfillment service:
[http://www.amazon.com/gp/seller/fba/fulfillment-by-
amazon.ht...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/seller/fba/fulfillment-by-amazon.html)
and <http://aws.amazon.com/fws/> could work as the foundation for your
application. Your API could sit on top of Amazon's the way Crowdflower sits on
top of Amazon Mechanical Turk.

