How to Successfully Process a Rush Etsy Order

A few days ago I received an Etsy convo: "I'd like 8 pairs of mittens... and I need them tomorrow!"

At first I was excited. An order for mittens in the summer? Awesome! My second thought was... do I even have enough inventory to fill this order? Obviously it wouldn't be possible to knit 8 pairs that quickly.

In this blog post I'll explain how I processed an order quickly, resulting in a happy customer and a nice off-season sale for me.

1. I check email regularly. If I hadn't checked my email, I wouldn't have seen this message, and by the time I did it might've been too late to fill the order. This is why I always check email regularly and respond promptly.
2. I know my inventory. I keep an updated spreadsheet detailing all of my inventory by item, size, color, and quantity. This makes it easy to see, at a glance, exactly what I have. I quickly determined I had more than 8 pairs and sent off a list of what was available.
3. I communicate with buyers. In order to move the transaction along quickly, I worked with the buyer via phone. I texted her a photo of the available colors and she told me which ones she wanted. She gave her payment info and address over the phone. In less than 10 minutes we were good to go!
4. I have a process for shipping orders. Even though it's the off-season for my Etsy shop I still know where all of my shipping supplies are. I quickly gathered a mailer, the items, wrapping supplies and promotional items, and a scale. Within minutes I purchased postage via my USPS account. Priority Mail Express guaranteed the item would be delivered the next day.

In these cases, I do charge a rush fee. Some up-front organization made it fairly easy to process this order. It did, however, cause an interruption to my day. About an hour of extra work, an unexpected trip to the Post Office (15 minutes each way), and phone expenses meant I charged a rush fee for my time and effort. 

In the end it feels great to help customers get what they need quickly. These mittens were NYC-bound for a movie set. How cool!