Holiday Shipping Deadlines

It's that time of year, holiday shopping season. Here are the holiday shipping deadlines for the 3 major US shipping companies:

• USPS Holiday Calendar
• FedEx Last Days to Ship
• UPS Holiday Calendar (.PDF)

Shipping Poll Results

As promised here are the results of last week's poll on shipping:

92% - 44 votes: Cheaper
8% - 4 votes: Faster

Those are pretty overwhelming results so I've decided to make changes in how I handle shipping for my jewelry. For single orders I'm now shipping first class but still using priority for multiple orders and my sculpture. The reason for this is that I feel more secure sending expensive orders ($60+) priority rather than first class.

Here are a few of the comments from last week's post that I found most insightful:

Sculptor?!? said...

That depends *entirely* upon what's being shipped. If it's fragile, I'd want it faster, so that it's more likely to arrive in one piece (less handling by the carrier). If it's a book, I might choose the cheaper option. Totally unhelpful, I know

molecula said...

I experimented with first class mail after the last priority mail price increase. I found that in most cases first class is as fast as priority mail. The folks at my post office said that priority used to be batched with express, but now it is batched with the first class.

abitabite said...

I choose slower and here is why: The items I make need to be shipped in a box, so I was shipping priority. Now, they don't weigh very much, they just need those sturdy walls to protect them. Last year, when priority just kept going up and up and up it started to become stupid to charge SO MUCH to be shipping something that eight 3oz. So i went on Uline, discovered I could purchase nice study boxes for about 50c a piece, and ship first class, including the weight of the box, for half the price i was paying for priority. Once i got these boxes I did a few tests. I shipped a few of these boxes to the same location, at the same time, one priority, one first class. They got there at exactly the same time. I did a survey like this before I changed shipping, and the overwhelming percentage cheaper/slower. I was nervous to do so at first, but I have noticed ZERO changes in the speed that my items are getting to the buyer. My etsy feedback has lots of "very fast shipping" type comments since the change. I do think it helps that i ship in boxes rather than envelopes, as I believe they are treated with a little more respect and priority than bubble mailers.

 Has this poll or the resent priority mail increases made you change your shipping? If so please share in the comments.

Questions About Shipping

I was talking with Amy from Surlyramics on Twitter last night about the new Priority Mail price increase. I'm not planning to change my shipping prices right away and she's lowering them and switching from Priority to First Class on a trial basis.

So I decided to throw the question out there for readers: As a customer (not as a seller), do you want faster but more expensive shipping or cheaper and slower? Please vote in the poll and/or weigh in with a comment.



Edit: I forgot to add that I'll be writing the results post for this poll next Wednesday, January 13, so please pass this post along so we can get a larger sample size.

Priority Mail Rate Increase

Just a quick note today, Priority Mail rates went up yesterday here's a link to the new rate chart. It caught me by surprise, I know I had heard about it when it was announced a while ago but totally forgot. Prices for flat rate packages stayed the same but non-flat rate has changed. In particular for those who ship small lightweight items the rate is now no longer the same for anything under 1lb but varies by zone.

So if I ship on the east coast where I live I'm not paying more for shipping but I'll be paying up to $0.65 more for shipments to the furthest zones like California and Alaska. I'm going to wait a few weeks before deciding if I should raise my shipping prices, with the new variable rate I need to see what the average cost works out to be before making any decisions.

Rates for First Class and Parcel Post have not gone up nor has there been an announcement yet of any planned increase.

Breaking Down Your Costs

Oops! This was supposed to be Wednesday's post but I accidentally published it early when I wanted to schedule it. There will be a short post on Wednesday instead.

How much are you really making from your work? Sometimes we don't honestly exaluate our costs by leaving off some of the costs.

A common pricing system that I see is Materials + Time = Wholesale x2 = Retail but I think this formula is flawed because it doesn't take into account other costs such as shipping materials, other costs, and fees.

I use a formula of Materials + Time + 15% = Base Wholesale x2 = Base Retail however because of shipping and fees from etsy and paypal it becomes more complicated after this. I add the total cost of shipping which is postage and shipping materials. Base Retail + Shipping Costs = Total Cost This number is what I WANT to receive after fees.

Note: I actually have a sliding scale for wholesale depending on order size but 200% is what I use for calculating the retail price.

Now Etsy and Paypal do fees different, Etsy doesn't charge fees on shipping while Paypal does but for simplicity I'm just going to assume they both charge on the total amount.

Etsy fees: $0.20 + 3.5%
Paypal fees: $0.30 + 2.9%

If you are interested in the math here it is (skip to the bottom if you're not)

Total Cost = C
Total price I need to charge = P
C+[$0.30+(2.9%P)]+[$0.20+(3.5%P)]=P
C+[$0.30+(.029P)]+[$0.20+(.035P)]=P
C+$0.50+.064P=P
C+$0.50=P-.064P
C+$0.50=.936P
(C+$0.50)/0.936=P

So if the amount I need to make is $28 I need to charge ($28+$0.50)/.936=30.45
Total Price - Shipping Costs = Online Retail

I've put this information into a spreadsheet on Google Docs with an imaginary item entered into it. You can download it in Excel or Open Office format and edit it with your own numbers.

Quick Tip #14 - Custom Orders

Do you take customer orders? Do you make it clear in your shop or on your website that you do?

I've made an extra $250 this month on custom orders. They can be a great way to bring in some extra revenue for your business. In particular you can usually a little charge more for a custom order because of the extra time them take out of your usual creating time. So for this vodka drinking cuttlefish I charged an extra $10 over the usual cost of one of my standard cuttlefish for the customization of adding the tiny bottle that I had to make.

I Create a Shipping Center

This article is being written as I do what I'm writing about. I'm tired of scrambling to gather all my shipping stuff when I get an order. It was all more or less in one place just as a big messy stack of stuff with no organization. So here we go.

I'm only working with what I currently have and it has to fit in a corner of the room.

Before
I'm a bit embarrassed to put this picture but we need a before.


Storage
So since I'm committed to doing this with what I already have I need to consider the storage I have available.

• 1 wide plastic set of drawers 24 inches wide 36 inches tall
• 1 narrow plastic set of drawers 12 inches wide and 36 inches tall
• plastic shoe boxes
• Various cardboard boxes
• Various other storage containers
  

What I Did
I'll spare you the horrendous photos of how messy my living room got during this process. Suffice to say you can't organize anything without first tearing everything apart to sort through it.

1. First of all I need a flat surface to construct the packages on and keep my scale. The top of the wide plastic drawers works great. The shipping area is directly across from my computer so I can just wheel the chair over when I need to pack things.
   
2. On the top of the drawers are my postal scale, box with gift bags, receipt book, calculator, packing tape, scotch tape, scissors, box cutter, business cards, box of brochures and promo packs. Also some packing paper that didn't fit anywhere else.
   
3. Small flattened boxes went in the bottom drawer. Larger flattened boxes tucked between drawers and wall.
4. Tissue paper saved from orders, gifts, etc. in a cardboard box. Box then went into the top drawer.
5. Bubble wrap in the top drawer.
6. Envelopes, extra packing tape, small box of saved packing peanuts, and other miscellaneous small items in the middle drawer.
7. Assembled boxes arranged in a neat stack. Larger boxes stored in downstairs closet until needed.
8. Less frequently used items stored in the smaller set of drawers that has been moved to where the larger one used to be. In it are gift boxes, ribbon, wrapping paper, etc.
9. Next to the small drawers are some more boxes.
10. Hung my t-square on the wall, I use it for cutting down over sized boxes.
11. Packed up the art paper, mat board, and other stuff that didn't belong in boxes and they're stored downstairs as well. Organizing my paper is for another day.
12. Threw out a lot of trash and broken boxes. The stool with my pasta machine went back where it belonged next to my art desk.
    

After
Here's the result of my efforts. It's not pretty but it's neat and functional. I hope it inspires you to consider how your shipping and studio is organized.

Some Links on Organization

• Home Office: Organization and Productivity
• Life Organizers: Home Office
  
• Office Organizing Tips

Packaging Large, Fragile, and Other Difficult Products

As I'm always saying packaging matters. It really makes a difference to your customers to open up a plain shipping box to see a beautifully packaged item. However not all handmade products are as easy to package as jewelry, soap, or other small items. Some may just be very large, or fragile so safety when shipping is a higher priority than pretty, or maybe you ship in an envelope so space is limited. How do you package a fragile lamp or vase and still be able to pack it securely for shipping? Here are a few ideas:

• Tags. Make or have printed some pretty tags and tie it on with a colorful ribbon or string.
• Tissue/wrapping paper. If you have to wrap an item with bubble wrap or packing paper use some colored tissue paper as the first wrapping layer. Then as they upwrap the packing materials they get to this final colorful layer right before their item.
• Colored bubblewrap. Yes, you can get bubble wrap in several colors. One place online that sells it is Fast-Pack.
• Stickers. Instead of plain tape securing bubblewrap or a box use a custom printed sticker.
• Boxes. A very secure way to pack some items is to double box them (pack the item in one box then nestle it in a larger box with packing peanuts cushioning). Boxes give you the option of decorating them with a label.
• Flat or rectangular items. If you make cards or anything rectangular an easy way to package is to cut a strip of colorful paper, wrap it around the item(s), tape the ends together on the bottom, then use a sticker or rubber stamp to add your label to the top. Soap makers often use this type of packaging so go check out Etsy's soap section to see some examples.
  

I hope this gives you a few ideas for sending out those harder to package items. I'm sure there are many ways to package that I haven't listed. Just be creative and have a little fun with your packaging. There's a great group of Etsy sellers on Flickr showing off their packaging.

Creative Packaging Ideas - The Basics

This will be an ongoing series because I really think having great packaging helps a handmade business stand out and be memorable to your customers (you want repeat business right?).

This post is on the basics of what I think is important for good packaging. Make sure you check out my Squidoo lens Make your Handmade Products Stand Out! Using Creative Packaging for even more ideas.

The photo to the right shows some of the packaging that I use. It's a mix of fabric gift bags and boxes but you can see that they have a consistent look to them. There are many ways to package your products depending on what you are selling. Small bags and boxes work well for small items like jewelry, paper strips wrapped around handmade soaps with a label are simple but look great, if your products come in a jar or bottle have custom label stickers printed up for them, custom tags for fabric items, the possibilities are endless. Wander around your favorite store looking at how products are packaged or check out the Die Line blog for ideas.

General Tips

• Include photos of your packaging in your shop, let your customer know how their items will arrive.
• Plan your packaging ahead of time and keep all your packaging materials organized in one place (I just use a large box).
• Keep things looking consistent, I don't mean everything has to be the same, but the style and theme of your packaging should all have a similar feel.
• Make the product and packaging match. If it's retro styled give the packaging a retro look. If it's Victorian don't put it in a tied-dyed box.
• Make it professional. Make sure glued items don't have edges sticking up, corners aren't ripped off tags, all text is correct and spell checked.