Cheapest/best shipping solution for new ecommerce business?

Miller_K

My husband and I are planning to start a fitness equipment and accessories retailer (Miller Fitness Equipment), and sell across UK mainly, and possibly Europe/US.

Some items will be sold via a drop-shipping service from suppliers we’ve contacted (mainly the really big items), but for small to medium size products, we plan on buying these in which means that we’ll get a large discount, and we will send these ourselves.

We are looking into shipping solutions like Ship Station, Shippo and In Xpress. Does anyone have experience working with companies like these? (in a similar way to our planned venture)? What are the pros and cons? Any hidden charges? Easiest to use for someone just starting out? And/or does anyone know of a better company maybe we’re not aware of?

Thank you in advance for any help and advice you can offer us.

Karen.

Sandtree

What services are you wanting? Just a courier? Full warehousing and fulfillment? How about returns? 

What are your volumes (eg parcels per day)? How quickly do they ramp? Have you the marketing budget to realistically support the growth? What return rate will you have? Is it clothes where people may buy 3 sizes intending to return at least 2.

One thing to certainly check is minimum fees etc... some of these services are not intended for small start ups hoping to grow organically and only sending a few parcels a week for the first year or so

Savvy_Sue

Adding to Sandtree's useful questions, where are you storing your stock? If at home, check your insurance, AND your tenancy agreement / mortgage terms.

MattMattMattUK

Brexit has almost certainly screwed you for shipping to Europe, it has increased courier costs quite significantly, causes delays and regularly creates issues with customs clearance and fees. Selling from the UK to the US will almost certainly not work either, freight costs will mean you are just not competitive on anything you ship direct. Concentrate on the UK only, if you have a stable business and money to burn then you can consider going international, but it is not a good idea initially. 

Cheapest and Best are mutually incompatible. 

Look at the courier services you might use, even going direct to the likes of DPD can offer you great rates, stay away from Yodel and Hermes despite the cheap rates, they are not worth the delivery issues. Make sure you take account of any couriers who charge residential surcharges, UPS started it, but others are now doing the same. For low weight and low volume items Royal Mail works out the cheapest. It is worth considering using different couriers for different weights/sizes of shipments. Don't forget to factor in Norther Ireland, Highlands and Islands delays and additional costs so you can charge these on as applicable. Also factor in whether you are willing to pay for insurance, or if you are going to take loss/damage on the chin when it happens (and it will happen). 

For a website something like WIX or Shopify is probably more than capable of giving you what you need, but you will need to be on one of the paid tiers to get what you need from the site, they both offer integration with courier services if you go down that route. Have you already built a site and looked at what options they offer? Some platform providers offer discounts over the normal rates, so depending on your platform they are worth extra investigation. 

Sandtree

MattMattMattUK said:

Look at the courier services you might use, even going direct to the likes of DPD can offer you great rates, stay away from Yodel and Hermes despite the cheap rates, they are not worth the delivery issues. Make sure you take account of any couriers who charge residential surcharges, UPS started it, but others are now doing the same. For low weight and low volume items Royal Mail works out the cheapest. 

Some of the companies the OP linked to offer fully managed services (warehousing, packing, delivery, returns etc), wasnt aware that Royal Mail & co did @MattMattMattUK?

MattMattMattUK

Sandtree said:

MattMattMattUK said:

Look at the courier services you might use, even going direct to the likes of DPD can offer you great rates, stay away from Yodel and Hermes despite the cheap rates, they are not worth the delivery issues. Make sure you take account of any couriers who charge residential surcharges, UPS started it, but others are now doing the same. For low weight and low volume items Royal Mail works out the cheapest. 

Some of the companies the OP linked to offer fully managed services (warehousing, packing, delivery, returns etc), wasnt aware that Royal Mail & co did @MattMattMattUK?

Sorry for the confusion, nope RM don't offer fully managed, but they do offer site integration, batch processing etc. My business is B2B, but we do quite a lot of fulfilment for clients (20-2,000 deliveries, depending on the project) and for low weight (And low physical volume) RM are unbeatable on cost, they can be beaten at higher volumes, but I doubt that will come into play for the OP, at least at this stage. 

With costs I would stay away from fully managed, at least as a start-up, the costs will likely wipe out any margin as they only get close to optimal when you have a high turnover of high margin goods.  

DTucker1983

If starting an e-commerce business, it's best to start with Shopify and put your store page there. Then you can sign a contract with a supplier and a logistics company, so that they can e-commerce warehousing and transport the goods to customers. The only thing that remains is to advertise this very store to increase the number of customers and income.

[Deleted User]

This is a 14 month old thread you're both replying to -  perhaps @Miller_K can update it.