What Happens After I Place an Order?

Short answer: we pack it up and ship it as fast as possible.

Long answer: get comfy, 'cause it's pretty long!

Payment

When you place an order with us, your payment is processed automatically during checkout.

Packaging

Next up: packaging! Some of our IKS brand products are made (or at least packaged) to order.

• Glow Jumbo Braid: these are already bagged up, but we write the labels by hand and add them when we pack your order.
• Thermal Hair: this hair comes from the factory on big spools, so when you order a pack of our thermal hair, we cut it, bag it up, and label it all in house.
• Hair beads and cuffs: We also package up and label some styles of hair beads and cuffs. If you order a few different colors or styles that are easy to tell apart, sometimes we'll pack them into one bag to be a little more environmentally friendly. If that's the case, it'll be noted on the bottom of your receipt.
• Wig/weave clips: same deal as the hair beads. We bag them up to order and combine packaging whenever possible.

Hair beads packaged up by us.

Once your order's all packaged up, we finish it off by adding a sticker to the shipping label, because stickers are awesome. Sometimes they're seasonal or festive, and sometimes they're random. We usually change to a different sticker set once a month or so.

Some of our vast and mighty sticker collection.

Carrier Pick-Ups

We schedule USPS carrier pick-ups every business day, Monday through Friday. Carrier pick-up means that our mail carrier picks up our outgoing packages when they come by the deliver our regular mail. In theory, they can come any time between 8 AM and 5 PM. Usually our carrier gets here in the afternoon, and the earliest anyone has ever come for one of our pick-ups has been around 9 AM or so.

Because of the 8 AM-5 PM timeframe for pick-ups, our official cut-off for same day shipping is 8 AM. We generally try to package orders as quickly as possible right up until our mail carrier gets here, though, so oftentimes orders placed after 8 AM will still ship out the same day. There's no need to contact us and ask for faster processing; if it's possible for us to do it, we will!

Most days, we announce on Threads when our pick-up has been completed. If you see a post in our feed about outgoing packages having been shipped, that means our pick-up is done for the day and any other orders that come in will ship out the next business day.

Packages waiting to be picked up

Tracking

When we print the shipping label for your order, you'll receive an email from us with your tracking number. We print the labels immediately before or immediately after packing your order. If you receive a tracking number 5 minutes after ordering, YES, we really did package it up that fast!

You can use the tracking number to track your package at USPS.com or Stamps.com. We ship via USPS, so your tracking number will not work on sites like UPS, FedEx, or DHL. Those companies only provide tracking for packages shipped with them, not tracking for other services.

If you are outside the US, your package will usually be trackable through your country's postal service once it clears inbound customs. Sometimes, the local tracking will have more information than USPS or Stamps.com, so it's definitely worth checking. Canada Post's tracking, for example, is usually much more detailed than USPS once a package enters Canada.

Once the carrier picks up our outgoing packages, they finish their mail route and head back to the post office here in Pacifica. From there, packages are usually processed in San Francisco and then head out to their final destinations.

The processing center in San Francisco isn't always great about scanning the packages they process, so if your tracking shows a package being picked up in Pacifica and still says "package acceptance pending," don't worry, it's still on the way! The tracking will usually update within a day or two if they miss it in San Francisco.