CustomInk.com wins the 2006 eTail Award for eCommerce Fulfillment

Falls Church, VA – August 11, 2006 -- CustomInk.com won the 2006 eTail Award for eCommerce Fulfillment at the group's conference in Philadelphia on Wednesday.  The award was presented to the McLean, VA online custom apparel company in the fulfillment category for exhibiting Best Practices in Real Time Inventory & Successful Returns Management.   CustomInk.com was selected by an advisory panel of executives from Guess, Sears, Hallmark, Gap, LL Bean, Lane Bryan, Fossil and Ikea for its innovative order fulfillment operation that customizes millions of t-shirts and other items each year while keeping virtually no inventory.

As a result of this operation, CustomInk.com's real-time inventory system freed nearly $1 million a year that would otherwise have been caught in inventory and working capital.  The operation allows the company to increase throughput and efficiency and to be more responsive to market trends.  Based on this platform, CustomInk.com is able to custom decorate millions of t-shirts, hats & more for over 100k customers each year without having to stock the blank products.  Customers have a broad product selection from which to choose yet inventory is minimized courtesy of its proprietary system that synchronizes the shipment of blank products from supplier to printer with the preparation and proofing of the custom artwork.  The streamlined process enabled CustomInk.com to pioneer several industry innovations, such as guaranteed one-week delivery and micro-batch sizes of as few as six shirts, while earning a customer satisfaction rating of over 99.00%.
In addition to CustomInk.com, winners in other categories included Home Depot, Overstock.com, SmartBargains, Avon and Lillian Vernon.