Shipping... pt2
Posted in Shipping , on
So yeah, pick and pack and post and... poop.
Quite a lot of hours and days this November went down the shipping and handling drain. This was our first encounter with the postage system, we knew it was gonna be hard. And indeed it waaaaas.
It started quite hunky dory with sourcing exterior packaging from Rajapack , designing and producing our own interior packaging, researching labeling requirements, as well as settling on a parcel service of choice. ( image: interior packaing iterations )
Of course, the first batch propelled out of the planned trajectory; we did a rookie mistake by not crossing out the «Sender’s address» (even though it said «Sender’s address»). For some reason, no postman seems to understand, this lead to DURRs spreading all over Oslo. Not back to us or to the other address on the packaging slip, but just random post offices around town. Which we then had to collect and ship over again.
This is just one example of a seemingly minor slip that screws the packaging and shipping process, if not the entire purchase and product experience.
At the time of writing it seems we have managed to surmount and perhaps even tamed the big scary postal being. So we're currently riding this fierce beast in a semi-controlled pace, waiting for it to try throwing us off. Or something.
Some other learning experiences:
-Damn! Imagine how much packaging the world could have saved if the postal system was just somewhat careful with the goods they were handling.
-Finding the correct
HS-codes
for the customs declaration sticker is not very obvious. Especially for new product categories.
-As with all other low-volume series, shipping is also more expensive than high-volume. You don't get good deals. We had to go for a service without parcel tracking, which would have increased the shipping cost of a DURR to the US to around 60-70$. That’s not far from the product price itself. (if you for some insane reason still would like to pay for this, please
contact
us)
-For posters, don’t buy
triangular «tubes»
(guess this also goes for square ones). All of our international shipments of posters have so far arrived smashed.
For our next product/ project we will definitely look into outsourcing some of these processes to services like fulfillment houses. But still, it’s been good learning experience on how packaging and postal systems work from the bottom, which is kind of our professional fetish.
Lastly - a big, big sorry to you guys who have been experiencing delays!
Kiss kiss, Lars Marcus
Shipping
Posted in Shipping , on
We just shipped our first batch of things to the world!
It will be a nice test for the durability of our homemade packaging, first thing the guy at the post office did was to throw the boxes into a container as if they were a basketball. Think it'll be allright though.
