What Does Lab Fulfilment Mean?

Lab fulfilment is where orders are automatically processed by your chosen lab and delivered directly to the customer white-branded when the order is placed and paid for. Once you have uploaded the printable images for your client to proof you do not need to do anything further. This saves time and means that you can continue doing your job whilst print orders are managed for you. theimagefile does not charge any additional costs on top of the lab cost-of-goods. Theimagefile partners with the best print labs in business. You can see a complete list of our partner labs here.

 

The Details

The labs can create thousands of stunning products, however, you do not need to select all the products that they offer into your price plan. Generally, a small price plan generates more sales than an all-inclusive catalogue of products. When you're creating your price plan you can select which products you want to include and of course change the prices that you want to charge (we include a simple illustration of the profit you will earn from the sale of each product).

We can only sell what we can produce from the image that you upload. If you upload a small image only small products can be purchased by your client. When you save your price plan we display the minimum file size required to fulfil the products you have included. Generally, uploading the full-size jpg. is best practice. If for some reason you have uploaded a smaller image than required we will automatically hide the products that can't be produced when the customer is viewing that image.

If you're accepting Direct Payments from your customer, for example, PayPal, we cannot pay the lab for the cost-of-goods from the PayPal payment made to you, so we make a separate transaction on your FuturePay agreement to pay the lab's cost-of-goods. All of this happens automatically at the time of the sale so you don't need to do anything. 

Lab fulfilment is automated so orders cannot be cancelled once they have been placed. The images you upload are the images sent to the lab for printing. You should make all adjustments to the photos before uploading them to the client gallery. Do not upload images with a watermark as this is what the customer will receive. Theimagefile watermark tool only affects the thumbnails that are displayed on the screen and your original files are sent through to the lab for printing. 

Your selected lab will want the files to match the products in geometry. So, the customer will see an easy to use cropping tool if you upload images that don't match the geometry of the products you have selected to sell. 

In your online sales reports, we list the lab you selected to use for fulfilment and encourage you to contact the lab directly should you have any queries regarding their products.

When the lab dispatches your customer's order they trigger a courtesy email sent via your account on theimagefile to your customer to advise them of the pending delivery. This email contains your branding and you are able to edit the default text used. This helps to promote your branding to the customer and the customer will be unaware that the order has been sent directly from the partner lab. 

You cannot add products not offered by the lab into a lab fulfilled price plan, however, sales of downloads can be included in any lab fulfilled price plan.

 

Best Practices For Hassle-Free Lab Fulfilment

• Always upload jpgs.
• Always upload full-size images.
• Try to always match your images and products in aspect ratio. 

 

You Don't Want To You Use Our Partner Labs?

All the above relates to automated lab fulfilment. Whilst this is incredibly popular, we understand that it does not suit everyone. You have other options that enable you to send your orders to any lab of your choice, although this is more manual for the lab. If you would like your lab to become a partner lab, please ask the lab to contact theimagefile for further details.