If you follow this blog consistently it won’t be a surprise to you that Shipwire is a platform for entrepreneurial merchants to grow.  With multiple warehouses in the U.S., Canada and Europe Shipwire helps merchants grow their overseas sales, said another way “increase exports”.  As an outsourced platform for order management and order fulfillment Shipwire also helps merchants cut infrastructure costs (reduce infrastructure investment and focus capital on inventory and sales)  Keetsa saved 30% by outsourcng warehousing and shipping to Shipwire – rather than invest in their own warehouse (save warehouse costs).  Keetsa estimates that they save 80% of their time by having Shipwire handle their storage and shipping.

President Obama gave his 2010 State of the Union address this week and the economy was front and center.  Two points of the State of the Union were particularly compelling to the Shipwire team.  First, The President wants to grow U.S. export volume two fold in five years.  Second, The President identified small businesses as a catalyst for growth and wants TARP funds to be redirect to local banks and small business lending.

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The Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter Games will soon be upon us, and Shipwire’s Vancouver Canada warehouse is seeing more activity as merchants ready for the games.   For information on Shipwire Canada and how you can use the warehouse see “Import to Canada” our Canada warehouse guide.

Canada Post is also working hard to ensure that they are ready for the games.  In a recent e-mail to Shipwire they assured us that they are doing everything possible to meet our daily business needs with minimal disruption during this once-in-a-lifetime experience for Vancouver Canada.  The bulk of this activity will be centered around their downtown Vancouver facilities; however, Canada Post is making efforts because of the general increase in parcel, mail and freight that is anticipated surrounding the games.

Shipwire recommends to our Canada Vancouver merchants that they expect increased mail volume during the period of the games (February 12-28th), as such there could be some delays with tracking numbers going live on inbound shipments.  Service levels in the warehouse should be normal.

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The 2009 holiday season is over.  It’s a bit to early to start writing about next year’s; but, lets try not to by myopic.  The holiday season is only some people’s peak season.  Try telling the chocolate, flower and teddy bear market that the peak selling season is over; they will look at February 14th and Mother’s Day and hoping those “holidays” generate more sales.  Perhaps your writing the next great BBQ recipe book or you just re-invented the BBQ tong – don’t miss father’s day or the summer grill season.

As Shipwire adds more and more global warehouse locations, we’re constantly surprised by all the niche seasons that our sellers experience.  When are you expecting your peak shipping season in 2010? 

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Shipwire has offered a Zen-Cart shipping fulfillment module for quite some time.  It is one of our more used shopping cart shipping warehouse modules.  Shipwire is very proud to release an upgrade to the Shipwire Zen-Cart module that will stream real-time shipping rates from a Shipwire account into Zen-Cart checkout.  Now, rather than fussing with rate tables, Shipwire powered merchants can get accurate domestic and international shipping rates from 12 global parcel and freight carriers instantly integrated into their Zen-Cart shopping cart checkout.  We hope our Zen-Cart powered customers enjoy this. You can access the module in your Shipwire account via the Zen-Cart “Sell Tool” wizard.

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2010 has thus far been off to a rough start for the U.K. when it comes to weather. Heavy snow and wind have been causing mail delays. These rough weather days are particularly frustrating for Air shipment. Especially inbound freight and outbound parcel air deliveries. This will likely also cause some backups after the weather clears. Not only will shipments be backed up; but, the parcel delivery personal may also be getting delayed in daily tasks so tracking numbers may be slow to be issued and even ground shipments will face some delays as the mail systems back up. If you relay on a lot if inbound and outbound air shipments to sell into the UK, consider getting a local london warehouse.

To our UK warehouse team, please stay warm!  Here are some YouTube links to the weather link 1 and link 2.

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The U.K. VAT (Value Added Tax) changed on January 1, 2010 back to 17.5%.  The UK VAT rate had been set at 15% for 2009.  Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs have a page showing the change. This was a temporary reduction made by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Alastair Darling, after the global recession set in to help spur economic growth.  For more information check out Bloomberg. Many UK retailers used the last few weeks of 15% VAT rate to help add extra savings to promotions and discounts.

For more information on VAT and importing into the UK, see our guide -  import into the UK.

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