Whether you are creating an on-line business or simply shipping product to your store customers around the country you can sit back, relax and let Marshall Distributing inventory and drop ship products for your business. One of the biggest expenses involved in a product driven industry like ours is the time, energy and space involved in the physical inventory and shipment of that product. Marshall Distributing has been in the natural food and supplement shipping business for over 30 years and can help to facilitate inventory and shipping processes for you on many popular products so that you can focus your time on the other more important aspects of your business. Now the drop ship/internet fulfillment process is a fairly simple one, but we will need to exchange some information to make sure things go smoothly. For that purpose I have put together this information sheet that should help answer many common questions and get things quickly going in the right direction.

If you are creating a web-site you will be responsible for loading up the products and images that you would like to offer on your individual site. We have attempted to facilitate that for you by collecting images, detailed descriptions and pricing on over 3200 of our most popular products. These items can be accessed as a free download on our web-site www.marshalldc.com or by requesting a CD with this information sent directly to you from Marshall Distributing. Also, before we get too far and so there are no surprises Marshall Distributing does assess a $1.00 drop ship fee/order on each order along with charging your company actual shipping on each order based on weight, distance and carrier used.

All of your information kept here at Marshall’s will correspond to your newly assigned customer number. Please identify all orders/inquiries with that number. This will help us to keep things straight with your account. If at this point you do not have a customer number then we probably still need you to fill out a New Customer Account Application form or are still processing your account.

If you have any questions after reading the material below and definitely before sending any orders our way please give us a call so that we can make sure everything is ready to go. Call 800-453-7405 Monday – Friday from 8:30am to 5:30pm MST and ask for Amy or Ryan. You may also email either of us at amy@marshalldc.com or ryan@marshalldc.com

• You have given us a business name in the process of signing up as a new account but we will need to know exactly what name (web domain, DBA’s, etc.), you will want to appear on packing slips and shipping labels that will go in and on the boxes going out to your customers.
• We will need to know the best/most convenient way to communicate with you when there are concerns/issues with orders placed. We will communicate with each other and you will have the only contact with your customers.
• We will need an email address either for the above mentioned communication but also to be able to send automatic shipping verification and tracking information on each order we process.
• We would like for you to decide up front how you would like us to handle temporarily out-of-stock items that may be ordered by your customers. We can put them on an automatic backorder and ship them out as soon as they arrive without calling you for authorization or we simply let you know when they are back in-stock and let you tell us if we should then send them out or we can simply not backorder items, let you know they are out of stock and you can let customers know they will have to try to order again at a later date.
• You will need to pay for orders with a credit card or bank card and we will collect that information at some point before we process your first order.

• With our basic fulfillment set-up your web/drop ship orders will need to be sent/forwarded to orders@marshalldc.com where they will be processed.
• All orders will need to reference your information as well as the ship-to customer’s name and address. We will, of course, need an itemized list of all items to be included with Marshall item numbers referenced and clearly marked descriptions and quantities. We will also need the specific shipping method clearly identified on each order. All orders received by 3pm MST will be processed and shipped that same day.
• We ship all orders in plain, generic boxes with your name and address on the shipping label and have an option for generic packing slips to be placed in boxes at your request. We ship all orders by UPS or USPS Priority Mail (especially if going to PO Box, Alaska or Hawaii). We do charge you back the $1.00 drop ship fee and actual shipping based on weights and our reduced wholesale shipping rates. You will need to set shipping amounts for your clients in order to cover these costs as you see fit. We can help you with this process. We do offer USPS with confirmation, UPS Ground, UPS Second Day Air and UPS Next Day Air shipping if you would like to offer those shipping methods on your orders. You will, of course, need to increase your flat rate shipping to cover these more expensive methods if selected. We recommend that you charge at least the following: $5.95 on USPS with confirmation, $7.25 on UPS Ground, $16.50 on UPS Second Day, and $25.50 on UPS Overnight. These rates are not a guarantee but should help make sure that you are breaking even on your shipping.
• You may, of course, set any return policy that you would like for your web-site, but Marshall’s Return Policy is that we will accept any bad, damaged or expired product within 30 days of end user purchase and upon authorization from Marshall Distributing. Customer mis-ordered items will be accepted for return if reported within 3 business days of delivery provided they are in clean, resalable condition. Shipping on mis-ordered items will be your responsibility and a restocking fee of 5% will also be assessed.
• As your order volume increases Marshall Distributing Company maintains a system to allow you to automatically submit orders for fulfillment. This API system uses a database that external systems (your web site), can write and read from to communicate with Marshall’s fulfillment system. As your site(s) reach order levels of 3-4+ orders per day we may want to talk about implementation of this system that will allow for seamless order processing and real time inventory data for your site. There are some upfront fees associated with this process. Please let us know if/when you are interested in this feature and we will walk you through it. That should get things started. Please give me or my assistant Amy a call to talk through anything mentioned here, go over any additional questions or to get started. Thanks for considering Marshall Distributing Company for your drop ship/internet fulfillment needs. We will do everything possible to make this a successful opportunity for you and your business.

Thanks Again.

Ryan Nielsen
VP Sales & Marketing
Marshall Distributing Co.
800-453-7405
ryan@marshalldc.com