International Marketing Group (IMG) has spent more than 35 years in direct-to-consumer marketing and shipping space. The company’s flexible turnkey solutions address diverse client requirements—with a heavy emphasis on customer service.

IMG understands that every client has unique needs, so not every order or every project can fit so neatly into a standard 3PL model. Sometimes, they need a special label, and other times they might need pallets configured in a specific way. IMG is flexible with its partners in order to provide the best possible service. The goal is to have the order delivered to the customer in perfect condition and ahead of schedule. In order to help accomplish this, IMG assigns each of its partners a dedicated account manager. The company has many automated processes in its fulfillment center to help clients in the best possible way.

“When you call us, you won’t have to ‘dial 3 for customer service and have your account number ready’”. You’ll have an operations professional’s direct line and email address so that we may assist with any orders that require special attention or instructions,” mentions Sandy Etchason, the COO of IMG.

No wonder, IMG has been the prime force in supporting TV shopping retailers like QVC and HSN, both of whom are capable of taking over 100,000 orders per day. IMG is well-equipped to deliver faster. The company’s average delivery time across the U.S. is 2.5 days via ground shipping without taking expedited shipping charges. IMG is also at the top of its game in maintaining product conformity. One recent example was when a large shipment of products arrived, and most of them had the wrong UPC on the box. That would normally result in chargebacks from a retailer, but IMG was able to quickly diagnose the issue, print new UPC stickers on-site, and apply them to the individual boxes so that they were fit to be shipped to consumers.

In another example, one of IMG’s partners specializes in screen-printed apparel, and they are currently in a stage of fast growth. The client needed a better method for SKU entry and order management to support the influx of business. Their existing system required so much manual entry that they couldn’t support any more volume, so IMG had to take on more. Shortly after the beginning of the partnership, IMG went from carrying a few key items to tripling the number of SKUs it managed for them. As demand continued to grow, the company jointly decided that automation was the key to taking the business to the next level. As a result, a custom API was built by IMG’s development team, which automated SKU creation, ordering processing, order confirmation, and inventory management. IMG is actually close to putting this API into production and expects that this tool will save clients both time and effort while opening up numerous new revenue streams for them.

Another challenge for many brands today is customer returns. “Most retailers have implemented consumer-friendly return policies in order to provide a better overall customer experience. This puts enormous strain on the supply chain,” says Etchason. “At IMG, not only we have gone to great lengths to increase the speed, with which we process returns but we emphasize the recovery of assets as well.”