To Charge or Not to Charge?

“Can I charge my customer for a storefront?”

We get the question all the time. The answer? Yes, No, and Maybe.

By now you know the benefits of launching a private storefront for your customer:

• You become ‘sticky’ with your customer. The storefront further cements your partnership and reduces the chance of losing them to a competitor.
• Automation: Users place orders and fly through the supply chain with minimal touch points.
• Ability to sell and support the entire brand catalog, regardless of whether you handle the actual production.

But let’s be clear – there is a ton of value for your clients as well:

• Centralized home for all marketing collateral.
• Granular business rules to protect brand, budget, and inventory.
• Advanced reporting for visibility into inventory, spending, and marketing asset usage.

So back to the question – as a printer, should you charge your customer to create, launch, and manage a storefront? And if you do charge, how much?

Here are 3 ways printers are tackling this question:

1. Charge? YES. Your team is heavily invested in this process. You are dedicating resources to create the storefront and manage the day-to-day activity. This becomes even more time-consuming if your team is designing a lot of variable templates. As stated above, there is value there and it’s perfectly reasonable to pass some of your subscription fees on to your customer. In fact, this can be thought of as an additional revenue generator. Recommended charge – $2,500 for portal creation and $200-$500 per month based on your time investment.
2. Charge? NO. This is a cost of doing business. Maybe a customer is considering multiple producers? You have the storefront platform. The other producer does not. This gives you a competitive advantage and demonstrates your ability to better support the customer’s entire brand catalog. Sure, it would be nice to get some money for the service, but sometimes you must invest a little to get a bigger return.
3. Charge? MAYBE. Confused? Hear me out. Let’s say you have a customer spending $75,000 per year with you. The customer is interested in a private, branded storefront. And imagine this – you would like a larger percentage of their spend. Here’s your opportunity. You propose the following – increase your spend to $100,000 in the coming year and we will provide the storefront at no charge. Win-win.

In summary, there’s no right or wrong way to handle the situation. All 3 scenarios translate into more revenue. If you have another option that we haven’t considered, we’re always open to hearing about new ideas.