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As every online auctioneer soon learns, a great deal of your business success depends on how well and how inexpensively you can ship your merchandise. Every merchant has his or her special needs - breakables may require double boxing or tons of peanuts to insure safe delivery. Comparing costs and knowing where to find the supplies you need is essential to maintaining a healthy bottom line.
Thanks to Steamboat Bill's "Little Yellow Post" and Florida's "Big Blue Post" that are uploaded onto eBay's book chat board every day, a comparison of suppliers can be found. Just click on the small yellow rectangle or the shipping link to find a color-coded multi-part table. Here you'll find a list of suppliers from across the country. Some of them even have Web pages and links so you can do your shopping from home. You may be asking, why go through all this trouble? Can there really be that much of a saving by price shopping?
To see if it was possible to lower my shipping costs, I did my own little survey. I currently use a local distributor (Dumouchel in Waterbury, CT). My books are pretty standard size (8 vo.-approximately a little shy of an 8 1/2 X 11 sheet of paper and weighing just under 2 lbs.). Each book is usually wrapped in two feet of 3/16 bubble wrap, then popped into a padded envelope.
Recently I did a test run using b-flute instead of the envelope and discovered it produced good results with a reduced cost. (B-flute and A-flute wrapping is brown kraft paper on one side and corrugated cardboard on the other.)
For the test, I used a standard order of 5 rolls of bubble wrap and 5 rolls of b-flute and contacted the companies on Steamboat Bill's list that provided an online link. Here's what I found:
Argrov Box Co. in Dayton, Ohio, http://www.corrugatedboxes.com has a clean site with plenty of information except prices. The customer is told to call the company, thereby making Internet orders moot.
Anchor Box out of Houston, Texas, http://www.anchorbox.com has a handsome site that's easily navigated and shows images of its products. For my purposes, I found they offered rolls of bubble wrap in 300 ft. lengths for a cost of $24.58 each and 250 feet of b-flute at $9.37. This equates to a cost of $.17 and $.08 per book (total $.25). The glitch was that the size of the rolls being shipped meant getting a special shipping rate, forcing me to call the company for help. When I did, I encountered an unfriendly response from a woman who claimed to be too busy to figure out my shipping and who advised me to call at a better time.
Papermart.com in Los Angeles, California, http://www.papermart.com ships its bubble wrap boxed in 175 ft. rolls with a cost of $28.63 ($.33 per book) and b-flute in a standard 250 ft. roll for $12.87 each ($.10 per book). Estimated shipping is calculated by a zone chart, with my area being the farthest away. Since my order would contain bubble wrap, special ordering was required--another phone call. If the weight was for easily shipped items via UPS, the weight of my order, according to the chart, was $41.
Closer to my home is Fetpak.com in Commack, New York, http://www.fetpak.com. Alas, although this company can supply boxed bubble wrap (175 ft. rolls) for what amounts to 37 cents a book, B-flute was not on their inventory list. I moved on.
By far, the friendliest company to contact is A&M Tape in Sunrise, Florida. Their Web site (www.amtape-tylertape.com) has been replaced by a catchier title, MrBoxOnline.com http://www.mrboxonline.com. I found the site easy to navigate and informative. Again, the size of the shipping forced me to call the company, but my first encounter was a far cry from the receptionist in Houston.
A friendly woman immediately transferred me to customer service rep named David. I explained that I wanted to order 5 rolls of bubble wrap in 300 ft. lengths and 5 250 ft. rolls of b-flute. As their online catalog showed, the cost for these would bring my per-book shipping to $.17 for bubble wrap and $.08 for the b-flute. Low prices, great service. I was ready to go with David. He worked hard to find the least expensive way to ship the order, but recent rises in UPS rates prohibited the deal from going through. As he explained, "UPS hurt our Internet trade when it raised its rates on bulky items. Even if they don't weigh much, the customer is charged for a 70 lb. rate." My order, it turned out, would cost me as much as $150.
A new contender missing from the yellow and blue posts is a company that contacted me via the mail. Brasspack.com from Mansfield, Ohio, http://www.brasspack.com offers both large rolls and boxed rolls of bubble wrap as well as b-flute. Their 300 ft. rolls of bubble wrap costs $25 a box ($.17 per book) and b-flute for $13 ($.11 per book). Again, the order required special shipping and a call to the company was mandatory. I was impressed with the company's willingness and foresight in marketing to online sellers. In a move to attract more eBay accounts, their promotion packet includes 5 labels that bear an extra line to accommodate eBay item numbers.
If cost-cutting on shipping materials is your primary goal, USPS provides free materials via their Web site http://www.usps.com. Of course, this requires priority shipping, and my 2 lb. book would cost the customer nearly $4 to receive. With your own packaging, you can opt for media mail. This cost can run as little as $2 plus packaging.
My last move was to review my own supplier, Dumouchel. Since they were a mere mile away, delivery was free, though the cost of materials was higher. Bubble wrap in 175 ft. boxes is $35.95 and the b-flute $13.79. Together, the cost for the book's shipping reaches $.51. Their proximity means timely delivery and emergencies need not take longer than perhaps an hour to overcome.
As David of Sunrise bemoaned, the prohibitive costs that UPS is now charging has choked off the national market for many companies dealing in bulky items. This has forced auction sellers to look closer to home and not be dazzled by the cheaper prices being touted in catalogs. But, if you live in sunny Southern Florida, Dave's your man. His demeanor and willingness to work with customers are assets you can't overlook.
The lesson I learned was multi-fold.
1) Companies should make it easier for eBay sellers to order online.
2) There are small discrepancies in cost, but hidden shipping prices can drive the cost of your order into a prohibitive range, potentially wiping out all your small profits.
3) Most importantly, there are a lot of helpful people out there in the World Wide Web who take the time to make our jobs easier.
So I offer special kudos to Steamboat Bill and Florida for their unselfish efforts in providing shipping information on the eBay boards.
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