Small businesses face a number of challenges when it comes to shipping. Unlike larger companies, small businesses often have limited resources to devote to shipping products and find it harder to scale up. Assembling all the elements of a package can be time-consuming, especially when processing paperwork like packing slips and keeping records for inventory. It can also be expensive to add professional touches like branding on packaging. 

To be effective, small businesses need a simple, easily replicated shipping process to cut down on turnaround time without investing too much money. Custom rubber stamps are one inexpensive way for small businesses to create a repeatable shipping process, from marking up paperwork to quality assurance and branding.

Inexpensive Branding

Using branded envelopes, gift bags, and other packaging looks professional, but it can also be expensive. Small businesses with limited budgets can use a custom logo stamp to brand these items at a significantly lower cost. 

Unlike other methods, a stamp can be used multiple times over and over again to leave a clear, crisp impression. A premium quality pre-inked rubber stamp, for example, will create 50,000 impressions before re-inking. Classic wood rubber stamps are also an economical choice and give you more size and ink options. You can even purchase special fabric ink to mark clothing, tote bags, and other fabrics without the need for heat-setting. 

Learn about designing a logo for small businesses here.

Quick Markups

The ability to quickly mark up or sign off on paperwork or packages is critical to the shipment process. There are a number of office stamps a small business can use to speed up shipping.

Signature stamps, for example, are useful for signing off on invoices and packing slips, especially if you have to process large volumes of paperwork at one time. It also allows the work to be delegated to other employees, which prevents costly bottlenecks. You can easily make a custom signature stamp by signing a white piece of paper with a black ballpoint or fine felt tip pen and uploading the artwork to our website. 

Similarly, address stamps can be used for marking outgoing mail and other envelopes, which saves you the hassle of handwriting each return address. Our custom stamp designer allows you to upload artwork and create custom stamps, including address stamps with your company logo.

Rounding out your options is a date stamp, which allows you to quickly mark up packing slips and other documents with the current date, without the hassle of changing your existing document templates for each order. Date stamps have movable bands for the month, day, and year, giving you years of use. You can customize your date stamp with text, or order a stock date stamp from top stamp brands like Trodat and XStamper.

All three of these stamp types have multiple options for the stamp body. For example, a self-inking stamp is better for heavy use because you don’t need to re-ink after each impression. A wood handle stamp, on the other hand, is more economical and gives you the option of choosing any color ink.

Easy Quality Assurance 

Quality assurance requires uniformity and accountability to be effective. This is especially true in manufacturing and pharmaceuticals, where quality is routinely tested. But any small business that does quality assurance can benefit from a simple, cost-effective solution. 

With inspection stamps, you can easily and clearly display what items, documents, or packages have been approved or otherwise checked over by an authority. Letters, numbers, or shapes on each stamp can be customized to each employee in your facility, making it easy to know who inspected each item at a glance. These codes or initials are a simple way to document your inspections and provide greater compliance.

There are also stock inspection stamps that allow you to mark documents or packages with clear, easy-to-read phrases like “OK” or a simple “X”. This is useful for simple pass/fail inspections. 

Inspection stamps come in a variety of stamp bodies to suit different applications. They are available in portable pencil cap and pocket versions, as well as convenient self-inking and quick dry options. Small businesses can also purchase an economical traditional stamp body with separate ink pad(s).

Straightforward Recordkeeping

Recordkeeping for a small business can take many forms. Whether you’re handling warranty paperwork or verifying an order, a rubber stamp can help streamline the process. 

A rotating alpha-numeric stamp can be used to mark products with numbers and to keep a record of your inventory. Marking your products or prints with a clean-cut number and text is essential for warranty and verification purposes. 

Our alpha-numeric stamps offer countless multi-digit combinations, and can be customized to include a text component that stays consistent as the numbers rotate. This gives you more flexibility in how the stamp can be used; for example, you can personalize the stamps to each employee and have it double as an inspection stamp. 

We carry stock number stamps as well as the number stamps with custom text, which can be easily designed in our band stamp designer tool.

Simplify Your Shipping with Stamps

Ready to simplify your shipping process? Shop our selection of rubber stamps here.