Business Wire, December 16, 2008.

Enhanced Program Presents Revenue Opportunity for E-commerce Software Developers and Shipping Affiliates Read more

Shipwire is conducting a series of online webinars for new users and merchants interested in learning how to configure your Shipwire account.
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Shipwire is happy to announce that we have released a module to connect Shipwire with ShopSite ecommerce.  Now you can completely automate orders from your ShopSite powered stores to Shipwire warehouses in the U.S., Canada and the U.K.  Shopsite order fulfillment Read more

UPDATE: Print valid USPS shipping labels from your Shipwire account.  Not a Shipwire member and just want to print Shipping labels you can Print Postage Online at Shipwire.

Shipwire merchants are now in full holiday swing.  One thing we are noticing is some merchants having intermittent problems with U.S. PS rate lookups and some label printing problems that rely on calls to the USPS rate lookup servers. Read more

Shipwire is happy to announce that there is now a module to connect Shipwire with osCommerce, one of the leading open-source ecommerce packages.  Now you can completely automate orders from oscommerce powered stores to Shipwire warehouses in the U.S., Canada and the U.K. osCommerce order fulfillment Read more

If you are a fan of Shipwire please nominate us for a 2008 TechCrunch “Crunchie” award.

Click the “Nominate us for the Crunchies” badge here:

If the badge above does not work, please do the following.

1. Go to the Crunchies 2008 site

2. type in “http://www.shipwire.com” in for the category “Best Enterprise”.

This only takes a moment to do (you don’t have to register) and you can vote EVERY day. Thank you from the whole Shipwire team.

As most of you know the holidays are approaching.  Below are the holiday schedules for Shipwire and some of the larger carriers.

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Parcel carrier rate increases have been announced.  The major small parcel carriers appear to be bracing for reduced volumes and potentially increased costs of doing business.  At this point it is unclear how these prices will be impacted by the recent crude oil price decreases. [Update on 11/25/08: There are reports of UPS and FedEx reducing Fuel Surcharges for the holidays.]
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As of January 30th, 2009 the small parcel shipping market just got a lot less competitive.  Logistics provider DHL plans to exit the ground and air express markets in the U.S. and focus all U.S. resources solely on the international market (import/export) business.
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RedRoller.com was an online shipping comparison site.  Plug in the address your shipping from and shipping to and Red Roller would present discounted shipping options and allow a small business retailer to buy postage and print shipping labels.  Redroller.com has ceased operations and as of this post is going through a chapter 7 bankruptcy.  (See financials).

Redroller.com had positioned itself as a shipping 2.0 company.   That said, Entrepreneur wrote a nice article on Shipwire being a Shipping 2.0 virtual warehouse company.

If you were a Red Roller user, please note that you can get shipping rate comparisons inside the Shipwire free trial.  If you want to compare and print postage Shipwire “Print from my desk” can do that for you as well.

If you are a developer that wants to integrate shipping rates into your shopping cart or build a rate comparison tool please check out our parcel shipping rate web services API and XML toolkits.

We hope this helps.

Shipwire offers merchants order fulfillment and international warehousing through the Store-Sell-Ship(tm) platform. We have broken down the entire fulfillment process to help merchants “Store” inventory in the warehouses,”Sell” the products and automate the fulfillment from common shopping carts and payment systems and “Ship” out of warehouses in the U.S., Canada and the U.K.

We know that users want to be able to quickly find relevant information when they needed it with minimal hunting. We recently modified our support interfaces to make it much easier to find information, build a library of helpful articles and make it easy to find order and shipping history when you need it. The new Help Center can be found by logging into Shipwire and clicking “Help” in the top right corner. New features include:

• Easier navigation
• Search box for common terms. You can also paste an order ID and search on it.
• Quick auto-populate search feature helps you find information fast.
• Bookmark “favorite” help articles to make them easy to find in the future.
• Submit a support ticket and view previous open and closed support tickets.

Let us know what you think by commenting on this blog post.
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Shipwire is powering merchant expansion throughout the U.S., Canada and the UK.

We are really excited for our customer RockGardn.com who was profiled in The Wall Street Journal today. We are proud to be helping merchants reach new markets, cut shipping costs and grow their sales. Our innovative ecommerce order fulfillment and warehouse logistics service is providing merchants a new tool for International success. You can read about how Shipwire is helping merchants like RockGard’n by visiting our news page.

For many retailers the holiday shopping season starts right after last years holiday decorations are being taken down and most people are still trying to live up their New Years resolutions. Throughout this year, Shipwire has released how-to guides and checklists to help retailers prepare for the holiday season. Case in point, our Guide to Holiday Importing.

With the holidays fast approaching many businesses are now receiving inventory from domestic and international suppliers. Many merchants are looking for overflow storage and additional warehouse space in the U.S., Canada and Europe. If this is you, your first stop should be Shipwire. To make it easy, we have released a new offer to try Shipwire for no risk. 50 free orders fulfilled by Shipwire from any of our warehouses located in the U.S., Canada and Europe. Learn how to get 50 orders fulfilled for no cost. To see our press release announcing the offer visit Shipwire In the News.

There was an article in the Economist this week that discussed the challenges facing the U.S. housing market and it touched on the logistics market. It got a few of us over at Shipwire thinking about some recent trends in the global economy and how they may effect this year’s holiday shopping. Read more

Shipwire has released a lot of new features to merchants in the past 30 days.

Shipping Optimization
Shipwire is thrilled to release the Merchant Package Service. This is a button you select in your account telling Shipwire to show and then ship the cheapest shipping method available. There are some advanced options that you can configure to review, hold orders, see other shipping options and do thing like apply insurance and tracking methods.

One button simple so you can rest assured you are getting maximum savings.

Shipwire’s UK launch is attracting the right type of attention

With the low dollar and high European demand, the UK warehouse launch is proving timely. The UK warehouse is now included with all accounts. Just click “send to warehouse” address. Check out the news page. We put together a UK warehouse resource page for merchants interested in expanding into Europe.

(Keep Reading there is a lot more) Read more

The Shipwire team is really growing to love Chicago. Shipwire was out in force at the Stone Edge User Conference and Internet Retailer last week and Chicago really treated us well. The weather held up well and we even got to check out some of Chicago’s amazing architecture and cultural scene like Millennium Park. Fantastic city, great music, wonderful people and we made some great business connections. Read more

Shipwire went to Stoneedge User Con 2008 outside of Chicago this weekend to support the Shipwire Stoneedge Order Manager Shipping and Order Fulfillment Solution. It was a small but jam packed show that Barney and the whole Stoneedge team did a great job putting together. Read more

The Shipwire tradeshow team is going to have a very busy June in Chicago. We will be attending lots of tradeshows and user conferences to support our partners and merchants. Read more

A few weeks ago a few of our merchants submitted case studies to Alibaba’s eBusiness Champion Contest. I thought that they were actually very cool case studies of how entrepreneurs at various stages of business are using Shipwire to automate their ecommerce order fulfillment. What is particularly interesting is how these merchants sourced products internationally on Alibaba.com. Read more

If you ship USPS, your costs are going up for pretty much all USPS shipping services - Express Mail, Priority Mail, Parcel Select, Parcel Return Services, First Class Mail, Standard, Package Services. Read more

Shipwire order fulfillment now works with X-cart Gold. Read more

The Shipwire engineering, operations and development staff have been incredibly busy over the past couple months releasing new warehouse management, inventory management and order fulfillment features and service offerings.

There has been so many new features released in the past few weeks that I’m having trouble keeping up to date blogging all the details and uploading screenshots. Rather than cry about it, I’m going to celebrate it with a long blog post with lots of new features. If your interested in seeing it all and playing with the system functionality please create an account or free trial (no credit card, only an e-mail address). Read more

We are thrilled to be able to connect with Zen Cart and make it easy for Zen Powered merchants to quickly connect with Shipwire. Read more

WP e-Commerce is now integrated with Shipwire. Read more

Shipwire has partnered with AspDotNetStorefront to integrate the Shipwire solution into AspDotNetStorefront (beginning in version 7.0.2.5). Read more

This Procrastinators Guide to Holiday Importing was written by our executive team and marketing really thanks Saul Smith, Shipwire Chief Logistics Officer, for really giving us some great real-world data to help guide merchants.

If you are thinking about importing inventory, whether it be toys, electronics or apparel for Holiday sales in 2008 it is time to review your product sources, put in orders and start figuring out the most cost effective method of getting your inventory to the right warehouse.

You’re probably saying, wait…its March…You have to be kidding me. Sorry to burst your bubble. If you import, getting over the ‘08 holiday bah-humbugs early is critical!

One of the dirty little secrets of logistics is that there is a glut of space available during the first 6 months of the year and more merchandise than space the second six months of the year. It doesn’t matter if your shipping by boat, train, plane, truck or your having Tom Tuttle from Tacoma Washington hand deliver it for you. The closer you get to September and October the more expensive rates get and the harder it is to meet your delivery time lines. Read more

The Google Checkout & Shipwire platform connection makes it incredibly easy to plug Checkout onto the Shipwire network of warehouses in Los Angeles, Chicago, Toronto and Vancouver. Automate Order Fulfillment for Google Checkout. Read more

The ProStores Shipwire platform connection makes it incredibly easy to plug your ProStore onto the Shipwire network of warehouses in Los Angeles, Chicago, Toronto and Vancouver. Read more

By popular request Shipwire now allows merchants to choose what Shipwire warehouse they would like to test as part of the Shipwire Free Trial. Read more

Shipwire is removing another barrier to retailers selling merchandise in Canada with the launch of its Vancouver warehouse. Vancouver joins Shipwire’s existing Canadian distribution center in Toronto.

With a few clicks on Shipwire.com, retailers and their customers can seamlessly place orders through the retailer’s existing e-commerce website. Shipwire then automatically determines the best warehouse to ship the order from — either Los Angeles or Chicago in the US or Vancouver or Toronto in Canada. Read more

If you are looking for an alternative to a credit card or bank wire to fund your Shipwire account, PayPal® is an alternative. Shipwire will pass along PayPal usage fees to Merchants that use PayPal to fund their Shipwire accounts. For many international merchants this can represent a substancial savings on the convenience of using PayPal. Read more

Shipwire offers warehouses in the U.S. and Canada. In Canada we offer warehouses in Toronto and Vancouver. There are many benefits gained by leveraging Shipwire’s Canadian warehouse network to power your business. Read more

Shipwire has implemented a new Shipping Preferences option that allows merchants to greatly improve the handling of their outbound shipping by applying rules and preferences to inbound orders. Now if you want to hold any order over $200 in value, so that you can approve it after reviewing it, you can. Read more

Shipwire Engineering has been very busy adding new features that have been requested by merchants. A few Shipwire merchants that manage hundreds of SKU’s across multiple warehouse requested that we make editing and managing characteristics of products easier. Shipwire software engineering has responded. Check out our new Product Wizard by logging into your shipwire Account -> Store -> Add Products -> Product Wizard Tab. Read more

Football playoffs are upon us, and the Superbowl is looming large for many sports fans. Every January we can rest assured that there will be big screen TVs tuned in across America trying to figure out what was more exciting, the games or the commercials. However, if you are not careful, you just may miss another annual tradition in shipping.

January marks the return of the annual shipping rate increases from FedEx, UPS and the other parcel carriers. The annual carrier rate hike typically gets very minimal press or analyst exposure outside the shipping and logistics industry. That said, forums and blogs with retail business readership tend to heat up, and many business owners take a second look at their carrier account “discounts”. At Shipwire, we see business discounts as a distraction at best and clearly the wrong place for retailers to be focusing their attention. True shipping cost savings are not found in a carrier discount – they are found by locating inventory closer to your customer and gaining economies of scale. Read more

January 18, 2008 Concerns about global warming and finite fuel sources have many consumers and business owners concerned about the impact of the products and services they consume. For retail merchants, the bottom line and the environmental impact are intertwined and directly correlate to product shipping costs. For purposes of this article we’ll ignore manufacturing, which should be evaluated on a case-by-case basis. Absent manufacture, a retail organizations’ major environmental impact is the carbon footprint of their storage (warehouse) and shipping (order fulfillment and delivery). This article seeks to call out a few relatively simple changes that will be better for the environment, customer relations and your businesses’ bottom line. Read more

Shipwire, Inc., the leading provider of Internet-based inventory storage and order shipping services, today released a complete set of “Real-Time” connection features for Yahoo! Merchant Services (formerly Yahoo! Store). Yahoo! Merchant Services customers can now fully integrate their Yahoo! Store with the Shipwire Store-Sell-Ship™ Platform. Read more

Shipwire’s goal is to let retail businesses focus on growth by removing the hassle of shipping and storage. It is time that cash-strapped Web retail businesses had a global network of warehouses that can be plugged into their Web sites with no up-front fees, no long-term contracts and straight-forward storage and shipping pricing.

The small business Web retail revolution has been evolving for 10 years.

• 1996 eBay® created a marketplace and spawned an industry of home eBay sellers.
• 2000 Yahoo!® Stores gave businesses an easy-to-use online store.
• 2002 PayPal®, experiencing record growth by solving the online payment problem, is acquired by eBay.
• 2003 Google Adwords® makes finding new customers easy and cost effective.
• 2005 Chinese trade barriers are loosened making it easy for importers to source manufacturing and bring product into the Los Angeles Port.

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Shipwire gives struggling drop shippers an easy path to business growth.

“Drop Shipping” is when a web retailer populates an online store full of another companies products. When the order is placed through the drop shipper’s website, the order is routed to the company with inventory which handles shipping and fulfillment. Drop Shippers are a “middle wo/man” who makes very small amounts of margin and often times have to handle the customer support when there are shipping problems.

If you are a struggling drop shipper. Here is an easy way to gain significantly more margin, leverage the online store you have struggled to develop and drive traffic to and still not experience the frustrations of inventory storage and shipping. Read more

A trend that we’re monitoring at Shipwire is the growing pattern of international customers buying from U.S. merchants and the frustrations merchants have fulfilling this demand. If you go to the eBay forums you’ll see all sorts of seller frustration for fulfilling orders to Canada and Europe.

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Today Shipwire announced the addition of our first International warehouse – Toronto, Canada. Our in-the-news section has a few links to some of the news outlets which covered and discussed the release.

At Shipwire, we are really excited about what this means for our merchants and their businesses. The addition of the Toronto warehouse allows Shipwire customers to fulfill Canadian orders locally, without sending orders through customs on a per-order basis. Shipwire merchants can now easily move product in bulk into Canada so that Canadian orders can be fulfilled faster, more accurately, with lower per-order shipping costs and without the risk of clearing the customs nightmare on a per order basis. The Toronto warehouse allows Shipwire powered merchants to introduce their products to a whole new market (Canada) without any up-front investment in expensive warehouse and employee infrastructure. We think that is pretty cool.

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Shipwire has expanded its warehouse network to include Toronto and Vancouver.

This should interest you, whether you are already selling in Canada or are ready to expand your business into Canada.

If you already sell in Canada, plug into Shipwire to reduce hassles, control costs and grow without significant capital investment. Don’t take our word for it check out what one of our customers says in the Wall Street Journal.  We have more success stories in our case studies page.

If you are not yet selling in Canada, plug into Shipwire and get:

• Instant access to a lucrative new market
• Class A warehouse space “on-tap” without the headaches of employees
• Assistance with product importing and freight forwarding. The Shipwire team becomes your supply chain.
• Import product in bulk and save yourself the headache of clearing customs on each order.

We offer a Free Trial. Sign-up without a credit card and look at our application.

If you would like to speak to a Shipwire representative please contact us.

IF you would like more information on moving product into Canada: See our recent blog posting; comment in our forum; or, see our helpful instructions on registering your business with the Canadian Revenue Agency in our help center under “Advanced Use”.

In 1997, then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General John Shalikashvili, issued a ground-breaking position paper. “Vision 2010,” as it was called, described the future of the military in the post-Cold War world. Regarded then and now as a landmark statement, the paper tried to enumerate the future of the armed services in a new world where, in contrast to the past, when there were a number of hard targets, including, principally, the Soviet Union, the enemy was now ambiguous and the need for mobile logistics and shipping capability greater than ever before.To be sure, General Shalikashvili and the other authors of that report devoted a considerable amount of attention to the vital role of logistics in the new post-Cold War world. Sounding like the logistically astute CEO that he was, Shalikashvili envisioned a future of “total visibility of all people and materiel, so as to instill confidence in the troops with definite information about when and where goods would be delivered [my italics].” The logistics guesswork and improvisation of the past was unacceptable. Read more