This year we had a pretty good year. Our company is based online and most of our work is ecommerce or services done for ecommerce companies.  This allowed us to be very efficient and relevant during the COVID-19 pandemic.  Many companies moved into this area as well and it was a wonderful boost to us.  But even though our company does most of our work online we also benefited from some in person work.  The surprise for us was how much money we were able to save on our own shipping costs by buying the correct quantities of shipping supplies and from the right locations.

The first thing to know is that we ship different products out for our clients as a part of our company.  We even do it for our own marketing a little as well.  This is a small part of what we do but we found that it does take up a good amount of some budgets we have set aside and looking back on our previous purchases we learned a few things.

We learned that our company was spending more on letters, boxes, and especially tape then we ever thought we would.  The quantities were a bit sporadic and we decided to really focus on the quantity of each item we used and the cost involved.  We then took two months of data and planned out the amount of tape we would need.  We started to look at the amount we used per box and label.  The extra tape we used for each label was actually just as much as each box.  When it got down to the cost of sticky labels vs tape the labels were much cheaper.  We then looked at tape and saw that we were taping each box multiple times on each seam.  This showed us that the tape we were using was not effective on its own.  So we then found out that there are different thicknesses of tape which equates to strength.  This was interested because we talking to a shipping supplies store which told us the difference and the price of the thicker tape was not nearly as much as using twice as much of the thinner tape. Just this little tip alone saved us thousands off our marketing budget each month and that is a pretty penny over a year.  Then we found out another quantity which helped us.

The boxes that we were using were actually not the correct size or the thickness we needed.  Our products we were shipping were very light and the boxes we had were rated for much more than we needed.  Now since we had two months of data we took the number of boxes and bought a big bulk amount of a thinner less expensive corrugated box.  This allowed us to get a better looking package at a much discounted rate per box.

The big deal was knowing. The knowledge of cost of what we were doing and the reason why we were using each product really added up in the end and now our past q3 was much more lean and fiscally responsible.  Plus we took all that extra savings and gave a bonus to all those people involved. Yes it was our entire department, but it was still a big thank you to the people who took the extra time to learn why we were spending more.  Now for the next quarter that will all go to savings and be reinvested in our company.