Inkthreadable's incredible evolution through 2018
Following a period of slow order turnaround from Black Friday 2017 that ran through and into the New Year, Inkthreadable has reconfigured business practices to prioritise efficiency and meeting customer expectations, without compromising on quality.
With the help of Amaya Inkthreadable secured its second Kornit machine, the Avalanche Hexa HD6, which has been running alongside their original Storm Hexa since February 2018. The Avalanche Hexa HD6 brought a welcomed boon to production capacity, but further investment in employees, training and software development have driven unprecedented change for the company.
Jodie Aldred, Inkthreadable’s Production Manager, said: “Our Kornit machines are unbeatable in terms of print quality and capacity, but the team we’ve built around the equipment is really what we owe our current success to.
“We’ve reorganised work spaces, optimised workflows and tightened operating procedures and the team has taken it in their stride, outperforming our high expectations at every step. This time last year our production times weren’t great and we made a promise to improve, and I think our customers will agree that that’s what we’ve done.”
Inkthreadable has also seen a shift in the way it handles customer service. The company has always offered genuine, accessible support through live chat, email and phone but it’s the approach to transparency that’s had the largest impact.
Ashley Grimshaw, Content & Support Manager at Inkthreadable said: “One of the biggest mistakes made last year was not communicating the issues we were having. We’ve changed our policy to one of complete transparency and it’s had a wonderful effect on the relationships we have with our customers.
“Lead times have dropped significantly, and we’ve been sharing weekly shipping time averages with our customers to remain as transparent as possible. We’ve had great feedback from this with customers sharing their experiences with recent orders - some being shipped within hours of placement!
The months of planning and preparation for peak trade periods was put to the test in November 2018 when a power outage to Inkthreadable’s industrial unit took the company’s equipment offline. Despite the MDs being away, production areas were back in action in less than 48 hours with minimal effect on lead times.
Following the outage and subsequent efforts to get production areas back in action Alex Cunliffe, Managing Director of Inkthreadable, shared his thoughts in a post on the company’s closed Facebook Group, the Inkthreadable Hub, whilst abroad: “This week we were hit with a huge challenge of unexpectedly losing power at our facility, which has been resolved in <48 hours, with very little negative impact on our service levels.
“Inkthreadable couldn’t have achieved this in our absence if we didn’t have a great team to rely on. Not just one that can do quality work in our usual office setting, but one that when the going gets tough, surprise you with their willingness to adapt and help to get the operation running smoothly again. We didn’t once look for an early return flight home, we’re that confident in the people we have!
“As we’ve mentioned a few times over the past 6 months, we’ve been working hard on implementing additional systems and contingencies at Inkthreadable HQ to prepare us for peak season and any challenges that are thrown at us. I’m sure you will agree that the benefit of this planning has showed it’s nose this week.”
This planning has been proven effective during peak trade through the 2018 Black Friday/Cyber Monday weekend. The same period in 2017 presented the perfect comparison for order data:
The data shows a significant improvement in all areas, with the percentage of orders shipping within 3 days rising from under 0.5% to almost 85%! One of the main areas of improvement was Clothing, which includes everything printed using our Kornit DTG printers.
Inkthreadable is planning further developments in 2019 to continue building on this success.
For more information about Inkthreadable please visit www.inkthreadable.co.uk. You can also find Inkthreadable on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.
About Inkthreadable: Inkthreadable is a print on demand drop shipping company based in Blackburn, Lancashire. Founded in 2013, Inkthreadable ships custom printed clothing and accessories worldwide and integrates with popular ecommerce platforms to automate order fulfilment.
### FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Media contact: Ashley Grimshaw
Email: Ashley.g@inkthreadable.co.uk
Phone: 01254 777070