What happens to your order between checkout and your doorbell

Most delivery anxiety comes from not knowing what is supposed to be happening on day six. A quiet tracking page looks like a lost parcel if you do not know that there is a stage in the middle where nothing scans for days. So here is the whole chain in order, with the two routes separated out, and the points at which something can be changed or cancelled. None of it is unusual. It is just normally hidden behind a progress bar with four steps in it.

Payment does not start a dispatch. It starts an order.

At a shop with a warehouse, payment triggers a pick from a shelf. Here it triggers us placing an order, because nothing exists yet. There is no shelf, no box with your name on it and no stockroom, which is a structural choice rather than a stage we are passing through.

That means the clock you care about begins a little after the card is charged. On a made to order item there is a short gap before production starts, and on an object there is a gap before the supplier picks it.

It is also the only point at which an order can be stopped cleanly. If an item has not gone into production or been ordered from the supplier, we can cancel and refund in full. After that we cannot, because the money has already been spent on making or moving the thing.

The two routes separate immediately

Printed goods, which means the prints, the garments and the paper, are made to order in the United States. Printing takes 2 to 5 business days, and then normal domestic transit on top of it.

Objects, which means the cast iron, the brass and the ceramic, come from our supplier overseas and are quoted at 10 to 18 business days door to door. That is not one slow aeroplane. It is a chain with five or six handoffs in it, which is covered below.

A basket with one of each in it becomes two shipments with two tracking numbers and two arrival dates. The bag tells you that before you pay, and shipping is still charged once: a flat 9.95 dollars per order, free over 85.

Production, or picking and packing

On the printed route this is the real work. A print is produced on the paper and at the size you chose, which is why there is nothing to pick from: the thing is manufactured because you asked for it. Garments are printed direct to the fabric in the same way.

On the object route, picking happens at the supplier. Our products each have one supplier rather than a pool of interchangeable ones, which is slower to set up and means nothing gets quietly substituted halfway through a season.

This is also the stage where an error is cheap to fix and after which it is not. If you chose the wrong size, tell us now rather than on arrival, because before production we can change it and after production we cannot.

Consolidation, which is the first quiet stretch

A single small parcel does not fly on its own. It waits to be grouped with others going the same way, and that wait is one of the two slowest links in the whole chain.

Tracking usually shows nothing during it. There may be one scan at the origin and then several days of silence, and the silence is the system working normally rather than a parcel sitting in a corner forgotten.

This is the main reason a long window is a range rather than a number. Where your order lands between 10 and 18 business days is mostly decided here, by how soon after packing a consignment happens to leave.

The flight and the border

Then it moves, and then it stops again. Customs clearance is fast most of the time and occasionally not, and inspection time is not included in any courier estimate because nobody can predict it.

Anything crossing a border can also attract duty or an import charge, which is set by your country rather than by us and is not included in what you paid. We ship to the United States and Canada, and that is a point worth checking for a Canadian address.

If the border pushes a delivery past the window on the product page, that is our problem rather than yours. An order that arrives later than its stated window is replaced or refunded in full, and you send nothing back.

The handoff to the last carrier

The final leg is a domestic carrier, and the handoff to it is the second quiet stretch. Tracking often jumps from an international scan straight to out for delivery with nothing in between, and sometimes a new tracking number appears for the domestic leg.

From that point it behaves like any ordinary parcel. The useful signal is the first domestic scan: once that exists, the long part is over and the remaining time is measured in days rather than weeks.

Tracking is emailed when each package leaves, so an order that ships in two parts generates two emails. A heavy object like a cast iron teapot and a printed tee bought together will not arrive on the same day, and neither of them has gone wrong.

Where you can intervene, and when it is too late

Before production or the supplier order: anything. Cancel, change a size, change an address. Email as soon as you know, because the window for this is short and it is measured in business days.

After it: nothing on the order itself, but plenty afterwards. If what arrives is damaged, not what you ordered, or later than the stated window, tell us within 30 days of delivery and we will replace it or refund you in full with no return postage. A photograph is worth more than a description for anything damaged, and we will ask for one.

What we cannot do is take something back because it was not to taste or because a size was chosen wrongly, since there is nowhere for it to go. That is the real cost of the model, and it is why a set like two prints in one tube, which has one fixed size of each and no choice to get wrong, is a lower risk order than a garment.

Questions people actually ask

Why does my tracking not update for days?

There are two quiet stretches in a long route: consolidation at the origin, where a parcel waits to be grouped with others, and the handoff to the final domestic carrier. Several days of silence in either is normal.

Can I cancel an order after I have paid?

Only before it has gone into production or been ordered from the supplier. Up to that point we refund in full. After it, the money has already been spent on making or moving the item, so we cannot.

Why did one order arrive as two parcels?

Printed goods are made to order in the United States and objects come from a supplier overseas, so they ship separately with separate tracking. Shipping is still charged once per order, not once per parcel.

Who pays import duty on an object?

You do, and the amount is set by your country rather than by us. It is not included in the price you pay here. We ship to the United States and Canada.