Monthly Archives: June 2020

Online Shopping 2020

This year was a huge year for the entire economic environment of the world.  The Covid-19 pandemic took place this year and it legitimately changed the world and how we produce, ship, and shop.  The majority of the world ended up moving into its own version of social lockdowns and social distancing and it forced a good portion of the world to be on house arrest.  House arrest means that you are not able to leave your home without the fear of being arrested.  This was a worldwide acceptable compromise for health.  It did turn out to be the liberty killer that took away the freedom of much of the world for a virus that turned out to be not what we were told.  It was actually similar to the common flu and just like the flu people who have complicated health issues are susceptible to it.  Now we are still adjusting to the new normal of purchasing.

The change in shopping and purchasing has caused a rise in shipping supplies and use all across the world.  Deliver jobs have become one of the most essential and hired positions across the world.  Sales for online shopping almost doubled in the two month lockdown in the United States and Amazon profited like none other even after a 40% stock market drop. Companies that sell shipping supplies ended up selling more boxes, tape and supplies than ever before.  This is due to the change in how people were purchasing.

Brick and mortar stores changed to e-commerce stores overnight. People were not able to leave their house for fear of being arrested and they ended up purchasing through fear from their home for several months. This fundamentally changed a large majority of stores.  They had to move from the mindset that they would be able to sell face to face and change up to the fact that people would be searching online.  So signage marketing completely went caput.  SEO became one of the most sought after marketing products.

So SEO is now the most important marketing tool.  It is simply the fact that people cannot buy your new brick and mortar, turned ecommerce products if they cannot find you online.  This means you need to budget quickly for the change in order to stay ahead of competition.  If you are new to the game it costs money and takes time to hit the top of the search pages. So get on it fast!

The search for the perfect shipping department products

The retail market is a vast and complicated conglomerate of products and procedures that come together to create a business.  The thousands if not millions of things that have to come together for a single company to even sell a pencil is rather amazing.  Now imagine a new company selling thousands of items and need millions of things to go right every single day in order for them to be successful.  It is a profound and powerful thoughts and is one of the great marvels of modern society.  Today companies can start from nothing and begin the complicated process of being successful and have lots of options and opportunities in order to do it.  So I want to go over some of my favorite things that have allowed my shipping department to get the best shipping supplies for the job.

Trial and error.  This is one of the most important parts of the shipping process.  Lots of things can go wrong.  The wrong products can be sent or the worst retail error of all.  The security tags are still on products that were sent to a customer with no way of removing them.  So having processes in place to take care of this takes time and effort. 

It also usually takes mistakes.  So give yourself some room for error. Bad things will happen and you will have to deal with them. Plan ahead and prepare to also be able to replace things that go wrong.  So if for some reason you are using boxes instead of bags for your shipping supplies be prepared to switch them.  Sometimes it is better to use one medium over another and the reasons can be endless. 

Cost can be a big reason for making changes to items.  If you find out that shipping cost 4 dollars less to use a bag than a box then that is something to keep in mind.  But what if a bag is a dollar more per item than a box? Well there is still a three dollar difference between the two.  But then take into account the damage rate of products.  Have some arrived damaged in a bag vs a box and if so how many.  How much was the damage wand was that enough to offset the 3 dollar difference each time you ship an item out.  These calculations are very important and must be thought through in order to understand the actual cost and best supplies to get.