Sticker Mule goes to Italy

Today we officially launched [Sticker Mule Italy](https://www.stickermule.com/it) so it seemed fitting to explain how we got here. 5 years ago when we started Sticker Mule our vision didn’t reach beyond the United States. International business is complicated and we were a small startup. We thought it best to focus on growing at home and set out telling everyone we could about Sticker Mule. 

Our background made us inclined to engage with designers and developers so we tried our best to befriend these communities. It didn't take long to realize that that the Internet is international and many of the best developers and designers live outside the United States. 

To properly engage these communities we needed to ship internationally at a minimum. So, early on, we contacted UPS to get rates, added international ship methods to our web site and naively thought we were done. Shortly thereafter, the complaints came in: "my order is stuck in customs" "my order is late" "I got hit with an unexpected $80 charge to clear customs." It turns out selling internationally isn't as simple as adding international ship methods to your web site. 

We eventually developed our roadmap on [how to become an international ecommerce business](https://www.stickermule.com/blog/building-international-ecommerce-company). This guided our progress as we quietly made numerous improvements to help our international customers including:

1. Shipping worldwide quickly and with tracking. 
2. Ensuring orders clear customs without problems.
3. Eliminating import duties (we pay them for you).
4. Reducing shipping costs worldwide.
5. Introducing free shipping to Western Europe.
6. Supporting the metric system.
7. Supporting the Euro.

Along the way, our team grew to become international as well. More than 50% of our core team lives outside the United States. [David North](https://twitter.com/davidnorth) has been with us since our inception and lives in England. 

[Brian Quinn](https://twitter.com/bdq) works out of Ireland. [Lucas Húngaro](https://twitter.com/lucashungaro) is in Brazil. And, [Andrea Giannangelo](https://twitter.com/Facens) & [Stefano Di Luca](https://twitter.com/pennadl) are in Italy. Already, we've seen tremendous growth internationally, year over year we grow faster abroad than in our home country and that will accelerate as we execute our roadmap. 

If it seems as though we stumbled into becoming international that's because we did. We didn’t plan to have an international team or sell internationally. Our sole intention was to build an amazing customer experience and it turns out expanding beyond the U.S. and hiring the best people in the world were necessary to pursue that goal. 

Admittedly, we even stumbled into starting our international expansion in Italy. One night, I came across the [Unixstickers](https://www.stickermule.com/unixstickers) website and started a live chat session with Stefano Di Luca who happened to be Italian. You don’t have to chat for long with Stefano to realize you would love to work with him so we kept in touch. 

Eventually he introduced us to his partner Andrea Giannangelo who also left an amazing impression on us. We immediately knew we wanted Andrea & Stefano on our team and I’d like to think they knew right away they’d enjoy working with us. A few months later Sticker Mule Italy was born. We haven’t decided what country we’re headed to next, but if you’re interested in being a part of our journey [we’re hiring](https://www.stickermule.com/careers "Sticker Mule careers"). :-)

We recently launched an Italian version of our website. Here's a brief overview of how we stumbled into the Italian market. 

On phone support 

We discontinued phone support recently. Our rationale is explained below:

### Phone support is difficult to scale.
You can't easily put a new person on the phone since you have limited control over the difficulty of calls they take. By contrast, you can let newer support agents respond to easy emails until they are comfortable handling more difficult ones.

### Phone support is difficult to monitor.
It's time consuming to listen to calls, but scanning emails is quick and efficient. It takes me an hour per day to read all of our customer service communication, but it's incredibly useful. Our core team reads the majority of our emails as a source of ideas and to keep a pulse on how we're performing.

### Phone support increases head count.
Phone support is more human capital intensive than email support. It's difficult to maintain the quality of your organization when head count grows quickly. Erring on the side of needing fewer people makes it easier for us to ensure all of our people are top notch.

### Phone support is difficult to automate.
Email support can be automated by developing faqs, macros, videos and efficient routing systems. It's not possible to automate phone support to the same extent.

### Phone support is not concise.
We aim to be clear, concise and comprehensive in how we respond to your questions. Often that means taking a moment to research an answer and review our response with coworkers before replying. It's not possible to handle a difficult phone inquiry in this manner without putting you on hold or calling you back later.

### Phone support is not documented.
Special arrangements made on the phone must be documented by an agent who could record them inaccurately. By contrast, all email inquiries are associated to your account and can be viewed by our entire team so that we are all familiar with your needs.

### Final thoughts...
Since implementing this change, we have been diligently reviewing every customer interaction, documenting problems and developing solutions to prevent common problems from recurring. Most support inquiries exist because we failed in some regard. Either our process had a hiccup or our ordering experience was confusing. Already we have fixed dozens of small problems and more improvements are coming soon.

### One small, related bonus...
We removed the phone number field from checkout for all US customers. Filling out forms isn't fun, but we hope cutting one needless field makes checkout a bit more pleasant.

Contemplating a similar decision? You may want to read [Wistia's](http://wistia.com/blog/scaling-support-why-we-removed-our-phone-number-from-our-website/) blog posts on this topic.


We discontinued phone support recently and explain why in this blog post. 

Shipping custom stickers worldwide 

Effective today, we're shipping [custom stickers](https://www.stickermule.com/custom-stickers) worldwide via USPS.  If you're an international customer, just enter your address during checkout and we'll provide you with an option to use USPS as your shipping provider.

Happy we finally added support for international shipments? Thoughts on how we can better handle international orders? Leave a comment or tweet [@stickermule](http://twitter.com/stickermule).  As always, your feedback is appreciated. ;-) 


We just updated the site and we're happily supporting customers worldwide.  All international orders for custom stickers ship via USPS. 

How to print high quality custom stickers 

There's no reason why every custom sticker can't be awesome. The cost difference between printing the best possible sticker versus something average is minimal. That's why we only use the highest quality material and printing methods.

Here's a quick overview of what Sticker Mule means by "high quality" stickers:

## High resolution printing

We print stickers at 1440 dpi. That means we can easily match every color and print even the most complex designs. Even highly detailed images always come out awesome. You can even send us your low-res artwork as is and we will redraw it from scratch to ensure optimal print quality. 

## Extra thick vinyl

We called a list of material vendors, including some large paper companies, and asked them a simple question: what's the best quality vinyl material we could use for custom stickers? Inevitably, we decided on an extra thick 6 mil vinyl. It provides a great look and feel and lays down nice. Combined with a sturdy paper backing and protective laminate, our stickers are made from the best materials you'll find. 

![Extra thick vinyl for high quality stickers](https://storage.googleapis.com/sm-content/blog/ad7d83a5d111a26cf6c3ef44763b6453ef7ebe85)

## Sturdy paper backing

We use a sturdy paper backing to boost the overall strength of the stickers so that they keep their quality when stored in your backpack or pocket. It also helps make them easier to peel whether your sticker is [die cut](https://www.stickermule.com/products/die-cut-stickers), [kiss cut](https://www.stickermule.com/products/kiss-cut-stickers) or another [style of sticker](https://www.stickermule.com/custom-stickers).

![Sturdy paper backing for high quality vinyl stickers](https://storage.googleapis.com/sm-content/blog/ef24eac7748df0cd34bf49380bdf38076789c820)

## Strong adhesive

We know that a sticker is only as good as its adhesive. Like the vinyl we use, we set out to find the best quality adhesive. All of our stickers have a very strong adhesive that still keeps the surface intact if it needs to be removed. 

We use a permanent adhesive for [die cut stickers](https://www.stickermule.com/products/die-cut-stickers) and [transfer stickers](https://www.stickermule.com/products/transfer-stickers). While [bumper stickers](https://www.stickermule.com/products/bumper-stickers) and [wall graphics](https://www.stickermule.com/products/wall-graphics) use a special removable adhesive. 

## Weatherproof

We make our stickers to withstand exposure to wind, rain and sunlight. In addition to premium vinyl, the stickers are coated with a high quality protective UV laminate that makes them super durable and resistant to fading, scratching, tearing, and water. Our stickers are fade resistant for 3 to 5 years, even in the toughest conditions. They can also be safely run through a dishwasher repeatedly. 

<WistiaVideo videoId="si3kckqeps" />

## Final thoughts...

Our philosophy is simple: only sell products that we are ridiculously proud of making. The steps above are how we know with certainty that we always turn out the highest quality stickers possible.

<ButtonCta text="Try the best stickers for $1" href="https://www.stickermule.com/samples?ref=blog" />

We only use the highest quality material and printing methods. Here's why. 

Making Sticker Mule simpler 

Just pushed some changes to make life simpler.  Among them:

## 20% less header

![Comparison of the old and new Sticker Mule logos](https://cl.ly/2G2c2I0H3v2w/new-sticker-mule-logo.png)

We shaved 20 pixels off the header and we're sporting a new logo.  Logo design isn't exactly our expertise, but we felt the original logo had too much flair so we toned it down a bit.

## Clutter-free artwork uploads

![Screenshot of our new artwork upload screen](https://cl.ly/0V1r130R3U3k/simple-artwork-upload-screen.png)

A ton of pointless junk was removed from this screen.  All that's left is a large "select file" button and a new progress tracker.  A side benefit of the change is the page looks even better. :-)

## Send artwork later

There's a new experimental option to send your artwork after ordering.  We had a bit of a debate about this idea, but eventually decided to release it and see what people think.  If you want to buy and don't have your artwork handy,  you can email it to us at a more convenient time.

![Screencast of our send artwork later feature](https://cl.ly/2R3W2f2M3s23/Screen%2520Recording%25202016-05-31%2520at%252009.55%2520PM.gif)

## Checkout gets a facelift

![Screenshot of our new checkout screen](https://cl.ly/2p431J3g0n1j/new-checkout-screen.png)

Our checkout screens are prettier and simpler. It's not fun filling in forms; hopefully a little extra style and clarity make it more bearable.  You can checkout without creating an account now too.

## What's next

We're having a lot of fun building Sticker Mule.  The good news is, we're far from done.  As long as it's possible to make [sticker printing](https://www.stickermule.com/custom-stickers "Sticker Printing") simpler, faster and more fun we'll keep pushing updates.

Hopefully you like what we've done so far. Leave a comment or tweet [@stickermule](http://twitter.com/stickermule) with your thoughts.

A few design changes make Sticker Mule even simpler and more enjoyable. 

6 lessons we learned from freebie sites 

Yesterday, we announced our [sticker sample kits](https://www.stickermule.com/samples) were ready to ship. Little did we know of the Internet freebie world.    Within 2 hours of posting the 1st [freebie site](http://www.ilovefreethings.com/) caught us and at 2am the requests came pouring in.  I thought maybe they'd stop around the 100 - 200 mark and we'd be safe.  24 hours later and we're at 1,000+ requests.

This was a frustrating experience, but the best thing about being under pressure is it forces you to learn.  Here's what we learned from our encounter with the world of freebies.

## Lesson #1: Be careful with the word “free”

Marketers love the word “free”.  It attracts attention. What they neglect to realize is that it attracts attention from people that don't want to pay for your product. In retrospect, we could have just said "sticker sample kits are available" and omitted the f-word.

## Lesson #2: Automate creating sample kits

Up until today I was hand-packing sample kits at night.  That process was scrapped.  Instead we took 10 of our coolest stickers, fit them on 1 sheet of material and printed 1000 sheets in a row.  As we're cutting the 1000 sheets we're packing the kits; it's a much better  process.  The downside is, we're no longer able to browse Google Reader while the cutter is running.

## Lesson #3: Bulk mail

Shipping 1000 sample kits 1 at a time isn't going to be fun.  Luckily we can bulk mail and get them out fast and at a lower cost.  This wasn't high on our list of priorities, but this experience forced us to learn how to do that fast.  It was something we needed to learn anyway so it's good to have it down.

## Lesson #4: Wufoo is amazing.

[Wufoo](http://wufoo.com/) was a lifesaver throughout this process.  I was continually tweaking the sample request form and eventually added a $1.00 fee.  Without Wufoo this would have been a nightmare.  They made it effortless to integrate PayPal and all of our data is nicely formatted so we can easily download it.  We already started work on a sample management app that integrates with Wufoo too.

## Lesson #5: Charge, even if it's a small amount

After request 1,397 we finally decided to charge [$1.00 for a sample kit](https://www.stickermule.com/samples) and instantly people started actually paying us. The volume of requests went down and quality went up.  By the way, our samples are awesome too. Many of our customers spend $500+ on stickers. $1.00 isn't much in the scheme of things.

## Lesson #6: Look for the upside in everything

At first we were frustrated that 1000+ freebie requests might be drowning out our customers.  We wanted to let our genuine customers to know that they could ask for samples, but the volume of requests was overwhelming. It's just not feasible for us to ship 1000 samples every day; not to mention it's expensive.

There was a temptation to just delete any mention of sample packs from our web site, but we didn't want to cave.  Instead we used the chaos to learn. We're faster, more efficient and showed 1000+ people that we're decent people too.

In a sense, "look for the good in everything" is becoming the modus operandi for Sticker Mule. It's worked well so far and we don't plan to break that formula.

1000+ requests for free sample packs in 24 hrs. 6 lessons we learned from freebie sites.

What's missing from Sticker Mule

We started building stickermule.com in February and made a goal to launch within 3 months - even if it was missing some features we'd like to have. So, we hope you'll excuse any noticeable omissions and keep in mind we're always improving.

Here's a list of features we put off building in order to go live quickly.

### International shipments
Although a few Chinese friends are eager to buy some stickers, international shipping isn't possible at this time. Canadian sticker lovers, don't fret. We can still take care of you.

__Update:__ [we now ship to all these lovely countries](https://www.stickermule.com/support/international-shipping-cost).

### Expedited production
Want to pay extra and have us ship in 5 days instead of 10? We contemplated offering expedited production, but 10 days isn't bad. Is it?

__Update:__ our production time is now just 4 days as standard. Plus, you can [rush your order](https://www.stickermule.com/support/can-you-rush-my-order).

### Faster shipments
We ship for free using UPS Ground service, although on occasion we use USPS if there is a large cost difference.  If you want 2 day delivery or overnight it's not possible.  This wouldn't be too hard to add, but if you're waiting 10 days for production, what's another 3 - 5 for shipping?

__Update:__ we now offer 2nd day air as standard, with a [next day air option](https://www.stickermule.com/support/do-you-offer-expedited-ship-methods) too.

### Design online
What's the likelihood we implement a design online system in 2010? < 1% We're not fond of design online systems.  Most are unresponsive and confusing to use.  However, the geek in us would like a slick design online app that puts all the crappy ones to shame.

### Larger quantity orders
Pricing on the site goes up to 10,000 units, but we're experts when it comes to massive orders too.  Like, 500,000 stickers massive.  We have high-speed equipment that's built to bang out these types of orders at a low cost. For now, contact us if you need pricing on a huge order.  Eventually we may add higher quantity pricing to the site.

__Update:__ [order stickers in bulk](https://www.stickermule.com/uses/bulk-stickers), up to 200,000 units per order.

### Templates
Our [sticker templates](https://www.stickermule.com/templates "Custom Sticker Templates") are going to be awesome.  They're also going to be live in the next few weeks.

__Update:__ [sticker templates and more are live!](https://www.stickermule.com/templates)

### Reviews
You can't review our products yet.  I'm guessing this will get done in the next few months.  We're still trying to decide how we want reviews to work.  For example, should you be able to attach a photo to your review? Should we use a 3rd party review system or build or own? 

__Update:__ [You can leave reviews now](https://www.stickermule.com/reviews). There are many.

### Contact form
We don't even have a proper contact us page with a web form.  Yes, it's embarrassing, but one will be added soon. 

__Update:__ [You can contact us here](https://www.stickermule.com/support/contact).

That's the short list.  Some of these you'll see added in the next few months.  Others may never see the light of day.  We're obsessive about making the site simple and acutely aware that many of these so-called features add complexity.  For example, rather than offer 5 day production for an upcharge, we'd rather find a way to make that the standard.

Anyways, hope you like what we created so far.  If you have feedback let us know in the comments or [@stickermule](http://twitter.com/stickermule) on Twitter.


Sticker Mule just launched. Find our what's on our agenda to do next.

Hello, need stickers? 

Welcome to Sticker Mule, I'm Herman Mule – which you may have noticed is spelled like "[He-Man](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/He-Man "Wikipedia entry on He-Man")", but with a little extra ARRRGH!

HEE HAW! HEE HAW!

Forgive me, I often laugh at my own jokes.

Anyway, the pack and I are really excited because today is our official launch; so *sticker*-round. We'd love to help you iron out any wrinkles you have in your artwork (on the barn... err, the house... err, for FREE!), address your printing questions, and get those adhesive pieces of joy to your doorstep like my wife and [adopted foals'](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foal "Mules, sadly, cannot reproduce.") lives depend on it.


Herman Mule thinks Sticker Mule is the easiest way to buy custom stickers. 

ब्लॉग