Orders Now Ship Quickly around the World by paid Long-term AIDS Survivors!

Recently, our shop’s success got way ahead of all our volunteer staffing levels and this had lead to our not being able to keep up with orders.

Fulfillment by Long-term AIDS Survivors

The good news is, that we’ve arranged with a local fulfillment company, Fulfillment by JournalsAndBooks.com, owned and fully staffed all by Long Term AIDS Survivors! Since then, we have gotten all out of stock inventory replenished and shipped out by these very capable and experienced, paid staff. Orders are now shipped internationally and quickly, which was not possible before! We could not manage international shipping and orders sometimes took months to fulfill. Plus, we could not accept returns or exchanges. Sorry about that!

In the Interest of Transparency

While our fulfillment service bureau, isn’t managing our store (we still do that), they do offer a great deal of services, all for a flat percent of each order—after all costs are deducted—that makes running and propelling the shop forward much easier. Because of this, we can now do things that we’ve wanted to do but haven’t yet been able to—for lack of experience, time and resources.

The fulfillment service has a Narrative Guide to their terms of service which explains all they do for a 25% of the Net fee (also explained). At the end of the day, not a penny of profit is made by them and as an ethical, employee owned and controlled company they likely align with the sentiments of many here at ACT UP.

Still, we aren’t locked into anything, we can leave at any time and we hope that this new relationship does work out!

Increased sales and Increased Funds Raised

Already, the relationship is paying off! Orders are up 2000%, complaints are down and folks are raving again about their official ACT UP Gear! While we keep a watchful eye, we are increasing happy that at the end of the day there are more funds to support the core mission of the organization!

Fair-trade, Union Made, Environmentally Conscious Merchandise

Just as we are happy with our fairly priced, union, employee owned T-shirt printers, worX printing cooperative, we endeavor that fair-trade, ethical relationships and sourcing always remain a cornerstone of the ACT UP Shop.

These relationships allow ACT UP volunteers to remain free to address our core mission without getting pulled down in the minutia of day-to-day store operation plus the many times a day tasks of customer service. We can now ship internationally, we can accept returns and exchanges, we can ship orders nearly, daily. Already, our fulfillment company has helped us to get much lower shipping rates with the USPS (something that we’ll have even if we part ways with them in the future).

We now have on tap, a great team, and with worX printing cooperative and Fulfillment by JournalsAndBooks.com at our side, we can continue to take steps forward in self managing our own fundraising efforts without having to sell out our principles or stress out our own volunteers.