Posts Tagged ‘shipping supplies’

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4 Ways To Present Easter Treats With Discount Shipping Supplies

Tuesday, April 17th, 2012

Even if you don’t still believe in the Easter bunny, nobody can deny how much they enjoy the sweets, treats, and gifts that Easter brings. Easter is an exciting holiday. You get a new outfit, you get to celebrate the end of the cold and dreary winter, and most importantly you get to eat! Here are four ways to present Easter treats with discount shipping supplies.

1. Baskets
Baskets are the age-old standard for Easter, and definitely a hit with the kids. Crafting custom Easter baskets can be a great activity for your little ones. They will love getting to design and create their Easter basket to their exact preferences, and you can even design some to help you deliver gifts to your friends and family. You can use rubber stamps, acrylic paints, and especially gift bows and ribbons. Finally, with a little plastic gift basket wrap, you can make sure the contents are secure and fresh inside the basket.

2. Nests
Nests are another way to present Easter treats, particularly baked goods. You can find decorative nests at your local craft store, and with a little fake grass, tissue paper, and some plastic food wrap, have a beautifully presented lemon bread, cake, or other baked treat.

3. Decorated Boxes
Gift and cake boxes are perfect for mail-ready Easter baskets. After you have decorated the box with ribbons, stamps, and fake grass, you can simply attach a custom shipping label and postage and deposit it in the mail.

4. Paper Mache
Finally, we get to paper mache, a versatile tool in crafting. With strips of paper, a homemade paste, and the right mold, you can make a paper mache sculpture of nearly anything. Paper Mache Eggs, rabbits, and chickens, all make for great centerpiece decorations.

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How To Lower Your Shipping Costs With Wholesale Shipping Supplies, Part II

Monday, April 9th, 2012

In the last post on this subject, we talked about several things to consider in order to reduce your shipping materials budget. We discussed using blanket orders for volume discounts, how to decide if volume discounts are worth the extra investment, and ways to optimize your volume discounts over time.

Here are three more tips to help you lower your budget for wholesale shipping supplies:

1.     Try To Find Local Suppliers
Consult the yellow pages to find local vendors who can produce custom cartons in bulk orders. Since the vendor is local, the cost of transporting shipping supplies that will be passed on to you is reduced. The carton supplier can produce your cartons to your exact specifications, with any printing of logos and branding, and can often deliver directly to your production site or fulfillment house. Alternatively, some carton manufacturers might be willing to warehouse some of your production runs and can fulfill and release product in blanket quantities for fulfillment.

2.     Optimize Packaging To Reduce Infill Use
Optimize your packaging dimensions for the maximum necessary stability, but the minimal amount of dunnage or infill use. Infill, such as bubble wrap, sealing tap, foam peanuts, shipping paper and other infill material used to cushion and protect products, often costs far more than cardboard boxes. Keeping this in mind, if you can reduce the dimensions of your cartons to where the minimal amount of infill is used in each, you can stretch your shipping supplies budget and shave even more off of materials cost.

3.     Optimize Packaging to Reduce Dead Shipping Volume
While this factors in to the last tip, you also want to design cartons so that empty volume space within cartons is minimized. There is a hidden cost in shipping boxes with poorly utilized space. Also the smaller your cartons can be relative to your product, the more product you can ship at once, further reducing shipping costs, especially for expensive international shipping.

With these six tips in mind you should now have a solid plan of attack for whittling away your shipping supply budget! Stay tuned for more tips to help you reduce costs, and optimize your shipping operations.

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How To Lower Your Shipping Costs With Wholesale Shipping Supplies, Part I

Thursday, April 5th, 2012

Wholesale shipping supplies, such as bubble wrap, shipping paper, and corrugated boxes are among the top three highest overhead costs in fulfillment operations. If you run a fulfillment business, or perform your own fulfillment in-house, following these tips for reducing costs will help you reduce your shipping costs, and find the best quality wholesale shipping supplies.

Here is Part 1 of tips for reducing shipping costs:

1. Blanket Purchase Orders
While developing relationships with suppliers, most operations will buy small volumes of shipping supplies at advertised prices. As the need for volume increases, you will then want to contact your supplier’s sales department to negotiate a standard, blanket order with discounts for volume that you can submit monthly. Not only does this lower your cost for shipping materials, it also streamlines your materials ordering for better inventory management.

2. Carefully Weigh The ROI On Volume Discounts
While the unit cost of shipping supplies decreases as the volume of supplies ordered increases, ordering extra quantity requires an investment in extra units, as well as maintaining an inventory of supplies. In order for volume discounts to work, extra savings due to the discount must be divided by the additional investment. This quotient is then compared to the rate of return you can get from other investments.

3. Set Blanket Orders Subject To Batch Releases
Even if investing in extra units of shipping supplies yields a low ROI, you may be able to get around this by placing blanket orders subject to batch releases. This means that rather than ordering monthly, you only order new inventory of shipping supplies, when you need it. This results in a more efficient budget for shipping materials, and lower cost of maintaining inventory. It negates the cost of your investment for volume discounts by spreading it out over the maximum time window.

Stay tuned for more tips to help you lower your shipping costs in Part 2!

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How To Find The Best Shipping Supplies For Your Product

Wednesday, March 7th, 2012

If you’re a small business owner handling your own distribution, you know how hectic and stressful the shipping process can be. There’s never any guarantee that your packaged products will arrive on time, undamaged, or at all. But by selecting the appropriate shipping supplies for your product you can at least increase the odds that your product won’t get destroyed or otherwise tampered with during shipment.

There are a lot of questions to ask about your product. Is your product complicated (i.e. excessively large, excessively heavy, or with specific temperature requirements) to ship? How much volume and how often do you ship? How much material do you use in a shipment, and is it enough to necessitate buying supplies in bulk? How important is packaging to your company’s image?

Your first step is to consult with a supply specialist. For these guys, packaging is not just a means of transporting goods, it is an art. They can troubleshoot your existing packaging, provide solutions and optimization services, and in some cases even custom-design packaging. They can also provide instructions for best practices in packing for the greatest protection and greatest visual appearance to your customers.

Once you have an idea of the best possible packaging supply design for your company and products, your next step is to shop around for the best deal. Figure out how many units of packaging product you will order, and find the best deal for volume. Often you can get great deals if you are willing and able to order large quantities at a time.

Now start requesting quotes from a variety of suppliers. While price is extremely important, you should not neglect customer service and other factors that will make your dealings with suppliers, and the shipping process, much easier.

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