Is your business suffering because of the cost of order fulfillment? That isn’t surprising.
Reports show that 12% of merchants are unprofitable because of high shipping costs. The good thing is you can learn how to keep shipping costs low.
If you’re spending a fortune on shipping, you need to start optimizing your processes to save cash. Follow the five small business shipping tips below to learn how to reduce shipping costs.
1. Reduce Shipping Container Weight and Dimensions
Larger and heavier items will always cost more to ship. If you put no thought into packaging, you’ll waste money on shipping products that are poorly packaged. You can save money by reducing packaging size as much as you can.
If you send small items in the mail, try not to line the box with filler if you don’t need to. Reducing your package dimensions will drop your rates and allow you to fit more products in your shipping containers. It will also decrease your package weight and reduce costs associated with that.
2. Prepay for Shipping Labels
You’re always going to pay more for service when you pay for it on-demand. There’s no guarantee that you’ll send a shipping company your business in the future, so it doesn’t make sense to provide discounts. Things are different when you pay for shipping beforehand.
Ask your shipping departments to pay for shipping labels in bulk. Most shipping companies will provide you a discount when they know you’ll use their services.
3. Use Third-Party Insurance
If you want to learn how to save on shipping, one place people forget to look at is insurance. If you ship valuable items, it’s smart to buy insurance when shipping. The problem is that buying insurance for each item can cost a small fortune.
The good news is that carriers aren’t the only companies you can buy shipping insurance from. Third-party insurance companies will provide insurance for all your shipments and will often charge much lower rates.
4. Invest in Bulk Shipping
Do you order a lot of products and store them in a warehouse? If so, you likely see a huge loss when it comes to shipping to your warehouse. If you want to save money, you need to ship in bulk.
Bulk shipping gets cheaper as you add products to your purchase. You can either buy a shipping container and use freight forwarding companies to ship, or rent a container and have a service handle the process for you. Click here to learn more about buying a container to start using for bulk purchases.
5. Work With a Fulfillment Company
It takes a lot of money to build a reliable shipping network. You need to have contracts in place with vendors to provide discounts and ship quickly to anywhere in the world. The question is, do you have the resources to do it yourself?
A fulfillment company can handle the hard work for you. They won’t only save money on hiring staff but also save money on shipping because of the deep discounts they receive from shipping companies.
Use the Small Business Shipping Tips Above for Success
Order fulfillment is one of the hardest parts of running a product business and is easy to get wrong. Use the small business shipping tips above to refine your process and save money. There other ways to streamline the shipping process, so keep testing until you find what works best for your company.
Do you want to learn what else you can do to save money in business? Read our latest posts to discover our best business finance tips.
