Blog Posts 5 Good Business Reasons to Personalize Your Products
Key Takeaways
- Product customization or personalization can give your business a competitive advantage.
- Value-added services like kitting, assembly or engraving can be used to create unique products from existing inventory and allow you to be more responsive to consumer demand.
- A third-party logistics provider (3PL) can help to deliver exactly what your customers are looking for.
Personalization can be a powerful differentiator in today’s competitive marketplace. Consumers are thirsty for a personal touch. Offering distinctive products that your customers cannot find elsewhere is a surefire way to keep them coming back.
Items can be personalized in a variety of ways. For example, you might embroider names on apparel, add custom labels to packages or assemble holiday gift sets.
Customizing products can allow you to realize five key benefits:
- Engage your customers
Who can resist a one-of-a-kind item? Providing custom products can help you to add value, create deeper relationships with your customers and, ultimately, drive customer loyalty. - Better manage inventory
Personalization allows you to meet customers’ needs while stocking fewer SKUs. By building “to order” instead of “to stock,” you can reduce production and inventory carrying costs. - Expand product offerings
You may even be able to expand your product line by customizing or reconfigure products. Consider creating variety packs or offering a unique pack size to give your customers more buying choices. - Get products shelf-ready
Value-added services like price marking, tagging and display building services help to streamline the process of getting products on store shelves – and to the cash register. - Improve responsiveness
If you handle customization functions at distribution facilities near your end customers, you can delay product configuration until the last possible moment. This allows you to respond more quickly and accurately to customer needs.
How Can a 3PL Help with Product Customization?
While there are many advantages to product personalization, it can be challenging to handle on your own. Typically, the biggest pain points are space and labor. However, it also can be difficult to manage unpredictable order volume, accommodate rapid turnaround times, maintain specialized equipment, and more.
In those situations, an experienced third-party partner can be a valuable ally. In addition to providing the value-added services you need, a 3PL with a shared-space environment will have scalable resources (think labor, space, technology, state-of-the-art equipment) to meet your needs without a major overhead investment.
An experienced 3PL will have the ability to tailor operations to support your specific business and may be willing to make capital investments to accommodate unique requirements. They also can custom engineer processes for increased efficiency and productivity.
Ready to put personalization to work to help your business stand out from the crowd? Talk to your 3PL today.
Related to: Customer Experience, Value-added ServicesProviding custom products can help you to add value, create deeper relationships with your customers and, ultimately, drive customer loyalty.