One of the Shipwire company directives is to provide a logistics and fulfillment platform that guarantees the shipment of your order in a timely and accurate manner. When it comes to accuracy in shipping, one of the big requirements is to get the right address on the package.  The cost of getting the address wrong ranges from horrible (lost business and angry buyers) to the less horrible (address correction charges on packages). And it is usually avoidable – here is how Shipwire avoids it.

Avoiding incorrect addresses starts before the order ever gets processed for shipment.  One of the first steps in our order routing logic is to review the shipping address to ensure it is correct and conforms to the published guidelines of the carriers.  We integrate with a lot of carriers – over 12.

For U.S. orders this means the address conforms to comprehensive USPS addressing standards.  Shipments that comply with the USPS standards have the highest probability of being delivered  – keeping your buyers happy (and our merchants).

Shipwire also assures that the carrier being selected can deliver to the address given.  For example, confirming  you are not trying to ship to a U.S. Post Office Box via UPS.

We wanted to expose some of our address verification and order routing logic because if you use Shipwire you benefit from it, and may not even realize what it is or how it works.

How Address Verification works:

The Shipwire servers first perform detailed address verification to assure the address given is valid.  For example:

• The city being shipped to should have a ZIP code that matches.
• The street name should exist in that city.
• The street number should be valid within a certain range.

USPS maintains an extensive database that cross-references address information making this check possible. USPS has also has developed standards regarding how an address is written.  After verification the ship-to address is rewritten to conform to the USPS Postal Addressing standards.  You may have noticed that on occasion the address typed into the Shipwire interface might come out looking a bit different than what was originally entered.   Shipwire then does a final check to assure that the carriers available to use for shipment can ship to that address.

Keep reading to learn more about Address Verification and how it works with different Shopping Carts, plus Real Time Shipping Rating, Address Verification in Other Countries, and helpful tips.

Address Verification with Shopping Carts

Shipwire plugs into a growing number of e-commerce shopping carts and tools.   You should look at your particular shopping cart feature list to find out if address verification is implemented in your shopping cart or may be something you pay a service fee for.   Many self-hosted carts like Zen Cart, or Magento may have some rudimentary address verification or some type of third party module to help do this.  Some of the less well known scripted shopping carts probably have a big “goose egg” for this features.  More sophisticated hosted solutions have varying levels of verification for some of the shipping methods they have natively integrating.  If you are plugging in an additional shipping method, you can bet address verification will miss a lot of the edge cases.Yet a side effect of this is that your customer can place an order on your cart and provide an address that can not be shipped to or is otherwise suspect. When the order is pushed to Shipwire our system performs a default  address verification check.  Improper or impossible ship-to addresses are automatically put on hold for your review.  This let’s you contact the customer and correct the order before it ships, saving you and your customer time and money.

On the outside chance your customer insists the address is valid, you can force it past verification and it can be pushed to the warehouse.  However, our support team may be notified by our warehouse personnel that they can not create a shipping label or postage for the shipment since it is still not valid.

Real Time Shipping Rating and Address Verification

A powerful Shipwire feature is our Real Time Shipping Rating API.  This allows a shopping cart to pass to Shipwire key information about the order, such as the SKU’s and quantities as well as the ship-to address.   Shipwire then performs an address verification check to assure it is valid.  We then determine the optimal warehouse to ship your goods from.  Finally we rate the shipment only with those eligible carriers that can deliver to the address given.  This results in a rating that is guaranteed valid, and only with carriers that can deliver it.

When an address is provided that is not valid the API returns a code indicating that the address is not valid.  Some carts handle this better than others by letting the customer know the address they are entering is not valid. At worst the cart does not tell the customer what is wrong and simply does not show any carriers or cost. This may be the case for carts written by third-party developers like Uber Cart, or osCommerce.  If you have a customer notify you that they can not select a shipping method during checkout then this may very well be the case.  Instead, you can manually enter the address into the Shipwire UI to validate it.

Address Verification in Other Countries:

Address verification in other countries can be done but to a limited degree.  For Canadian and UK  address we can verify that postal cores are properly formed, and that provinces are correct.  At the other end of the spectrum some 3rd world countries provide no resources at all to allow reliable address verification.

Tips to verify US addresses:

For U.S. address the USPS database of valid addresses provides a powerful resource to assure addresses are correct.   If you have a customer address you are not sure of, a great resource to verify an address is the USPS.com website.   You can enter your address and press submit.  If there is an address issue USPS will tell you.

Some merchants try and use Google Maps or similar services to do verification.  Our support team has seen issues relying on these sources.   Even if you can look an address up using an online map services it may still not be valid as far as postal carriers are concerned.  For U.S. address the best authority is the USPS site.  For addresses in other countries you can consult the local carrier websites for similar tools.

More Resources

• USPS addressing standards
• Look up addresss on USPS
  

Today Shipwire is releasing some serious new functionality for how we manage package inserts.  To say that insert handling is getting a face-lift is an understatement.

An insert is something that gets put into the box with the product that is being ordered when it is shipped out of the warehouse.  If you have bought anything online, you have probably experienced an insert.  They can be a brochure or a piece of marketing collateral.  Popular marketing collateral that are types of inserts are postcards, stickers, photos, data sheets, brochures, pamphlets and increasingly promotional CD’s and DVD’s.

As the Christmas selling season approaches we wanted to make it easier for our merchants to handle inserts, as we know how important being able to cross-market to buyers can be.

For all details on the enhanced insert features please review our documentation on package inserts.

Insert management seems pretty simple at its most basic – pick up a flyer and throw it into a box whenever you ship an order.  We agree, that is simple.  In reality, today’s fast pace e-commerce marketer has needs that are no longer simple and cross-promotional insert management has gotten more complex.  Promotions have start and end dates.  Specific products get specific promotions.  Different inserts have to be used for different countries.  Some shopping carts have more functionality than others.  Knowing this, we built features that allow a retailer or manufacturer to actually manage inserts and marketing promotions.

Here are just a few of the preferences that can be defined per insert.

• Include the insert in all orders.
• Let the shopping cart tell Shipwire when to bundle an insert with the order.
• Only insert if certain conditions are met.
• Set up start and end times for which inserts will be active.
• Define inserts for products over a certain value.

This gives our sellers a whole new amount of control for marketing and promotional material.  As this holiday shopping season approaches we really hope these new insert and cross-promotional marketing features help you grow your business.

Here are a few screen-shots of what the new interfaces look like.

Details on Insert Management

Add Product Type "Insert"

After conversations with merchants and tips from our network of global shipping carriers, we are now recommending to our merchants that they think twice before shipping to private individuals in Russia.  One of the biggest issues we have seen is that the carrier gets the shipment to Russian customs only to have it stuck…for a long-time.   As anybody who sells online knows, some overseas buyers will say that is the shipper’s problem and will start canceling orders, initiating charge-backs,  or causing a large support hassle.

Currently Russian customs authorities have a restriction on dutiable shipments sent to private individuals.  What does this mean?   Almost any product subject to tax and duties being sent to a private individual in Russia will be held and inspected by customs.  This can take days and even weeks, where they are being looked at with extraordinary scrutiny in an effort to improve the accuracy of accompanying shipping documentation.  Why?  Foreign country, different laws.  Even after this process has taken place, there is still no guarantee that the package is going to be shipped out. In the event that it isn’t shipped out, it will often be returned to sender, forcing the merchant to pay for the return shipping – expensive and not fun.

This situation is so bad that some carriers, like UPS, have “suspended acceptance of dutiable shipments sent to private individuals in Russia until further notice.”

If you decide you would like to go ahead with your shipment to an individual in Russia; we would like you to consider a few options:

1)      Do not ship anything that is automatically dutiable or needs to be declared.  Here are a few USPS thoughts on their Russian country “conditions” help page.

2)      Make sure you know the 6 digit HS number (Harmonized Tariff Schedule number) to speed things through customs.

3)      Ensure the retail value is less than $100.00 USD  (Standard insurance).

4)      Do not include any prohibited items and it’s best to eliminate any questionable items per the Russian Federation (e.g printed matter may be prohibited, which would require a more detailed inspection).

5)      Send the package via USPS mail, which has simplified forms (but no tracking).

We don’t have a guaranteed solution for ensuring prompt accurate shipping to private individuals in Russia.

If you sell on eBay and value your eBay ratings, really think twice.  Same goes for any public marketplace allowing Russian buyers and has feedback forms.

And remember, even with all this it could get stuck in customs, sent back or both.  You and the buyer will be waiting for two weeks while the shipment clears customs, not having access to information and potentially in a losing situation. A good thought is to modify your returns policy and make explicit to Russian buyers that they take the risk of shipping. Get in in writing if you take credit cards (another concern).

A great way to prevent your orders from shipping out to Russia without your approval or review, is to first look into your shopping cart and change your settings to hold all international orders for review. If you are a Shipwire user, there is a setting in shipping preferences to hold international orders.

The good news we found is that Russian customs says you can still send commercial shipments addressed to businesses.  Take that with a grain of salt and ship at your own risk.

You’re probably asking… who is this cute little kid? Meet Nathan, who may one day be giving his Oscar acceptance speech thanks to his parents dedication and newly found free time.  Nathan just won a competition at The Swan Hotel at Disney for an acting spot and is on his way to pursuing an acting career.

Why are we blogging about this?  Because, his chance for personal success came because his parents were able to spend more time pursuing the important things in their lives.  His parents created time by outsourcing their business shipping and warehouse headaches.

Nathan’s parents are Marc and Michelle Blaiwes, owners of SeatGlovers, and Shipwire customers.

The Blaiwes now have enough spare time in between running their business to take Nathan to auditions and help him build his resume for what appears to be a very bright future in acting. It’s a beautiful thing to follow your passions, and that’s exactly what all three Blaiwes are doing.

Marc and Michelle Blaiwes began their entrepreneurial lifestyle back in 2001 by creating an eBay liquidator business that then flourished into their own niche product for which they created their own brand, SeatGlovers.com. Like many other small businesses they went through some serious growing pains. As their business took off they needed more inventory and opened up a warehouse in Florida to manage their inventory.  Managing a warehouse brought  a logistical nightmare of lost shipments, warehouse employee problems and scaling their sales to continue growing their business.  They were also stuck in Florida, even when they were no longer interested in living there and wanted to live in the mountains.

“I was spending more time troubleshooting shipping problems and dealing with warehouse employee problems than I was spending in sales. We were just ’spinning our wheels’ with shipping and warehousing issues” says Marc. Clearly they could not keep “spinning their wheels” for much longer.

They went looking for a solution to help them automate and get more time back for their life and to focus on growing their business rather than being controlled by their business.  The Blaiwes found Shipwire and tested the free Free Trial.  They have not looked back since.  They outsourced their Florida facility to Shipwire locations in the U.S.  This means the Blaiwes can live anywhere and they can use their Shipwire account to manage their business from anywhere in the world.

What did they do with their free time and new found flexibility?  They moved to the mountains and focused on their family while continuing to grow their business and expand product lines.

Following your passions is a beautiful thing, if you are a small business owner that would like some of your precious time back why not do what the Blaiwes did, try Shipwire and realize that the sky’s the limit! And remember Nathan’s face… you may see it in a theater near you!

This blog post is in response to a great many blog posts I’ve seen over the years on how to bring a product to market or outsource your product manufacturing to a contract manufacturing firm. Right about now we’re likely to start seeing more of these posts because the timing is ideal for final manufacture work before the holiday shopping season.  I’ll keep a running list of some of these blogs at the bottom of this post.

Shipwire is pretty lucky in that there are many niche product manufactures that work with us because we take away the hassles of the storage and shipping as they scale their sales.  We also give them a “ship-to” address that can be given to a manufacture sending product from overseas, which can be a really nice alternative to your garage if you are just starting out.

Most of the blog posts out there talking about manufacturing products overseas, product design and manufacturing-on-demand focus on finding a manufacturer, working with the manufacturer to get the product built, getting samples and test products and then scaling up production.

That is all well and good; but, what most new product designers ignore (and even a few seasoned designers have missed) is the importance of packaging and specifically shipping packaging as part of the design process.  Here are a few critical mistakes that we see all the time from new product sellers:

• No thought to shipping
• No thought to packaging
• No thought to labeling for outsourcing distribution or a third-party fulfillment center.
• No thought to leveraging shipping as a sell point, much less offer free shipping options.

So lets dive into each of these and give them some thought.

1) Start with the end in mind – How will you sell?
If your plan is to drive trucks around and deliver every product, then you may have less concern here. However, if you choose to sell the product online or through multiple distributors, you will need to think about size, weight and packaging. If you’re selling to consumers online, your product had better fit the size requirements for UPS, USPS, FedEx or ___ (insert your regional postal carrier name).

However, if you decide to sell wholesale, you’ll need to learn a bit more about freight, container, and truck-load shipping. If you buy a container will you will want to know if your product can be floor-stacked in a container or if you need to put it on pallets.

If you have designed and are selling a heavy product (over or close to 150 lbs) you should consider whether the product should be split into different shippable components.  That way you can ship to buyers in multiple packages.

If you are planning to sell wholesale and retail, then case packs and master cartons are going to be important.  How many individual units you can fit into a case pack and how many cases will make up your master cartons will impact everything from your minimum order size to your fulfillment costs.  If 10 eaches are packed into a case, it makes little sense to have a minimum retail order size of 5 units; you will cause yourself a shipping nightmare trying to fulfill all those minimum orders.  Here is some information on master carton management.

2) Packaging for Savings and Maximum “Ship-ability”

As you work with suppliers and manufacturers, don’t ignore packaging.  “Inner” product display packaging or “outer” shipping packaging.  Both are important. Especially today when more and more companies are putting product into display packaging that can also survive shipping.  This is a favorite of eco-friendly companies, and I for one think it is a great movement.

The larger your items get the more important packaging can be; even little changes in small product packaging can have a huge impact on your products’ ship-ability, the end consumer costs, and the likelihood of the product getting broken during transit. Here are some general rules of thumb:

• Packaging is almost always cheaper when done closer to the point of manufacture.  This is especially the case if you need custom or die-cut packaging to fit your products.
• Once again, you should know the maximum shipping size and weight of your favored parcel carrier if you are selling directly to consumer.  A incredibly common mistake entrepreneurs will make is not taking into account the additional, protective packaging (outer) they’ll have to put around the product before it can be shipped if the display packing won’t survive transit.
• Package products as you would sell them in order to reduce labor costs. For instance, if you sell individual items and wholesale lots, create “master cartons” of wholesale amounts that easily can be broken down to individual units at the time of shipping.
• For large multi-part products, consider how you want to individually package and group the constituent pieces to reduce shipping costs and ensure easy replacement of parts for end buyers.  Components wear down, need to be replaced, are lost in transit, stuck in customs or need different versions to be released at different times.  Plan for it.   For goods that are close to/over 150 lbs or are oddly shaped are all ideal for attempting to break into multiple components.  We recommend working with your manufacturer to create multi-part assembled products that can be shipped individually.
• Talk to your warehouse provider to understand the impact to your freight and warehouse costs when deciding whether to palletize or floor-stack your products especially for container receiving.

3) Labeling
As with packaging, understanding labeling will help you close business or at least give you increased flexibility.

If you have a complex product assortment or you ever want to outsource your shipping to a third-party warehouse, labeling is especially critical. Barcodes are one thing; but, you still need to be able to identify the product. In today’s complex online sales world your product ID (SKU_ID) will be the “index id” that you push up to marketplaces like eBay and Amazon. It’s also the number that you’ll reference in your web store,  that will flow down to your warehouse, your outsourced warehouse or your drop-shipper. Better make sure your physical product has the same SKU/product_ID on it so whoever ships it doesn’t grab the wrong product!

If you plan on selling wholesale, then packaging your master cartons and labeling them separately from your individual units is CRITICAL.   If you forget this expect to pay time and material costs to correct your wholesale packaging and labeling. It is an expensive mistake. Here are some labeling requirements to send to a supplier. If you can satisfy the Shipwire requirements, then you are likely in good shape.

4) Fast and Free Shipping closes deals
If you’re selling online today, you better understand how to leverage shipping and how that impacts your margins. Buyers want products “Fast and Free”; here are 6 ways to make it happen.  6 Fast and Free Shipping Tips

5) Bonus Tip!! Learn about Drop Shipping!
We posted an article on demystifying drop shipping a while back. Here is the difference between drop shipping and order fulfillment

For more information on manufacturing and bringing your product to market, check out this post from the Shoestring Venture on bringing products to market.  Also there was a good series on Tech Crunch about going it alone in china, first of that series.

Your Shipwire account just got a whole lot easier to use. On your next account login, you should notice a number of changes, including:

Updated Dashboard - This re-designed dashboard makes it infinitely easier to find the key information you need to see in your account right when you login. Color coded “pods” break up the information into logical chunks that are easy to digest: covering account usage, alerts, and order activity. Your order activity is conveniently summarized in tables that provide quick visibility on shipping order activity, back-ordered inventory, etc. Click on the screen shots to zoom in and have a look.

Warehouses View - How many times have you wanted to have a quick look at your business activity by warehouse? The new Warehouses view now gives you that, providing you with a detailed breakdown of all open orders by warehouse – for example: it includes a quick snapshot of all orders on hold, by type of hold. It also provides a convenient point of access to other warehouse-related activities such as reviewing inventory levels, uploading orders, or sending more inventory. You can get to the Warehouses view right from your new Account Dashboard, or from the navigation under ‘My Accounts->Warehouses’.

Preferred Warehouses - One small change you’ll notice is that the new Dashboard and Warehouses interfaces (including where you send inventory to Shipwire) will now only show ‘active’ warehouses, and not all of the warehouses in the Shipwire global warehouse network.  If you want to see all warehouses, or activate a specific one, simply go into your Shipping Preferences(Ship->Preferences), and check additional Preferred Warehouses.

In addition to these very visible changes, we have introduced a number of smaller enhancements with this latest release. Please spend a few minutes and let us know how these changes look to you and where you’d like us to continue improving the platform.  Thank you in advance for taking a few minutes to share any feedback.

The Shipwire Team

Shipwire was nominated and became a finalist for the Stevie Awards; put on by the American Business Awards.

We’re nominated in the category for e-commerce; which makes total sense.  However, it appears that the ABA doesn’t do a platform award, like our Codie by SIIA (Software Industry Association of America).  The Stevie category is actually for advertising, who would have guessed.

You might ask, what the heck is a “Stevie” and why does the statue remind me of a Pink Floyd album cover?  From the Stevie Website  Stevie is taken from the name Stephen, which is derived from the Greek for “crowned.” Stevie is approximately 16 inches tall, and is hand-cast and finished in 24-karat gold.  The crystal pyramid held aloft by Stevie represents the hierarchy of human needs, a system often represented as a pyramid that was developed in the 1960s by psychologist Abraham Maslow, who observed that after their basic needs are met, human beings seek the esteem of their peers.

Updated on June 30th:  I guess it wasn’t a surprise that I wasn’t called to give an acceptance speech as GoLite won for best e-com advertising campaign.  Makes sense given that Shipwire is a software and services platform,  we power the global expansion of a bunch of e-commerce sites like GoLite, and we didn’t spend millions on a site redesign and relaunch; we did it ourselves.  I like to think we trounced AT&T who was also nominated in our category.  Congrats to GoLite and all the Stevie award winners.  Congrats to the Shipwire team for becoming a finalist (and for trouncing AT&T).

See online preso at http://www.scribd.com/doc/33747800

I gave a presentation at the E-commerce Merchants tradeshow in April of this year and have neglected to put it online.  The E-commerce Merchants had asked me to speak for a second time and update my recommendations, tips and tricks for e-commerce sellers to grow overseas.  You can see my presentation from 2009 at E-commerce International Shipping and Export Growth.

I used Scribd to put the file online.

If you flip through this slide show you will learn:

• Why all the fuss about Exports these days
• What are the big markets you should pay attention to
• How to figure out if your products are a good fit for Export
• 3 options for delivering the goods to international buyers:  International Shipping, Consolidated Shipping and Cross-border E-commerce with Shipwire
• Break down of the BIG export markets pros/cons and how to Import to  Canada, U.K., Australia, U.S.A (if you’re overseas). [I am now humbly revising my comment to wait on China in light of some recent export numbers I've been seeing.]
• How to sell into these markets
• How to build a business engine in these markets

Follow-up resources and links aren’t going to come through the PDF so here they are.

• Shipwire Global Growth Micro Website
• Shipwire Guide to Outsourcing Order Fulfillment

Comments welcome!!!

Special thanks to Brandon and the entire crew at P@SA and the Ecommerce Merchants.  If you are an e-Bay seller you should consider joining the Professional Ebay Sellers Alliance.  If you are an independent seller and eBay is just a channel for you then the E-commerce Merchants Trade Association is a really hard working group of people that have your interests at heart.  Consider joining both these groups or at least showing them some love.
Small Business E-commerce Export Roadmap 2010

The steady increase of Asian manufacturers - Looking for New Markets

Last week the Wall Street Journal posted a really interesting graph on the front page that shows the size of the China manufacturing sector.  WSJ subscribers can read the entire article here.  The graph speaks a thousand words.

I don’t think it comes as any big surprise that Chinese manufacturing is increasing at such a huge rate. A walk down a Walmart aisle or a trip to the Apple store is about all the proof that you need.  Add to that the ongoing TV, blog and news commentary related to China’s recent moves to allow the Yuan to appreciate against the dollar.  Will it lead to a surge in U.S. manufacturing or a decrease in the trade deficit with China?  (Yuan is a unit of the Chinese currency the Renminbi) Only time will tell.

Being a a global e-commerce and global logistics blog, I’m less interested in discussing the trade deficit and more interested at looking at the major trends for trade routes and where all these Chinese manufactured goods are going, who is buying them and where are they being sold.  I also think there are a few new trends developing that people should be aware of.

• Asia to LA/Long-beach trade route will continue to grow.
• Asian manufacturers will enter the U.S. market.
• The middleman will be redefined.
• The difference between International shipping and cross-border e-commerce.

The Asian marketplace has been steadily opening up since 2005.

Asia to U.S. Trade Route Growth

The silk road was a trade route.  Columbus was looking for a new trade route to Far East spices when he crash landed into the Dominican Republic.  As with everything, Wikipedia is the gospel of great definitions even for trade routes.

If you move goods along a trade route, you will rapidly find that your costs for container shipping will be much lower and you will have more container shipping options (increased frequency) if you are shipping along a well established trade route.  More volume of goods means lower costs for everybody because more ships are moving more frequently and the container companies want those ships full.  Just go down to the Long Beach port on any given day and you will see loads of ships and containers coming in from Asian ports; but, probably not too many from West Africa.

When it comes to consumer e-commerce (b2c), and international e-commerce, the trade route is still a factor.  I realize that there is air freight and consolidated shipping and express parcel.  All those still are driven by the most general rules of trade – The more goods that move, the cheaper you can get the transport.  (I’m going to have to come up with a snappier way to say that…comments welcome).  Trade Routes are an interesting thing when you apply it to e-commerce and especially consumer e-commerce.

When you look at the Port of Long Beach and Port of Los Angeles container volume as a whole, you get the number one port in America and its container volume is increasing (making up from low inventory in 2008-2009).  It’s no big surprise that it’s the closest port to the major Asian export markets.

Asian Manufacturers will enter new markets – Redefining the Middleman.

2010 has seen a large uptick in deal making for the major Asian marketplaces.  Particularly interesting is the interest in direct to consumer (B2c) e-commerce tools and deals that bring sales tools and marketplaces to the front door of Asian manufacturers.  Here are just a few deals that you may have noticed:

• There are new wholesale marketplaces popping up to make it easier for Asian manufacturers to sell goods in small wholesale amounts to U.S. buyers and importers.  AliExpress appears to be the most well backed and accelerating quickly.  Others include Light in a Box and DH Gate.  These are transaction platforms (like Amazon) and not just sourcing connection platforms.  All aim to simplify the process of buying from an overseas manufacture.
• Yahoo Japan and Alibaba’s Chinese auction site TaoBao tie the knot.
• Alibaba just bought Vendio – a U.S. Auction tool and e-commerce shopping cart provider.  Alibaba’s first U.S. acquisition to support their AliExpress marketplace.
• Rakuten, one of the largest Japanese marketplaces is on a global acquisition spree that started with the Buy.com purchase.

This is just a small sampling of a steady increase in deals in the E-commerce space.  Most point to a desire to help Asian manufacturers understand how to sell directly into online marketplaces and to help match-make Asian manufacturers with more importers and retailers and facilitate transactions of smaller amounts of wholesale goods.

What does this mean for the importer, retailer or middleman?  Today, it may just mean a new transaction platform to help source goods and understand what is being purchased.  However, as manufactures learn how to enter foreign markets more effectively, this may put the squeeze on importers and retailers who don’t offer a value add or it may simply offer retailers with skills at merchandising a more savvy manufacturer/supplier who can offer tools like drop ship and factory direct pricing.  At the current pace, this will take a while.  Read on to understand more why.

Cross-Border E-commerce is not defined as “International Shipping”

Take one look at any of the wholesale goods marketplaces above and you will quickly notice that while the product prices are low; in many cases the cost to ship the product may be more than the price of the goods.  Many products offer free shipping; but, its pretty obvious that the price of the good was rightly increased to cover the shipping cost.  Most of the shipments appear to be international parcel or air-freight shipments that will take over two weeks to get to their buyers if they clear customs quickly.

This is pretty typical for most small and mid-sized overseas manufacturers today.  Put the product up for sale in a U.S. marketplace; but, keep the inventory in the home country until it is purchased.  This is overseas selling using International shipping.  This is not scalable cross-border e-commerce!

Why?  Because, asking a buyer to pay more than the cost of the goods in shipping, having to wait multiple weeks for a shipment and pushing the customs/duties and tax problem onto the buyer is just a new face on sourcing overseas.  The buyers that understand this process and know how to import will continue to import; but, new buyers will be slow to adopt.  None of the problems have really been solved for the buyer in a way that makes the buyer want to buy more product, more frequently.  There was a recent article in the E-commerce Times that didn’t separate “International shipping” from “cross-border e-commerce” and did a fantastic job of describing all the hassles and risks of international shipping.

Being able to ship a parcel Internationally will help close a few transactions; but, cross-border e-commerce, as practiced by the largest companies, is not International shipping.  Cross-border e-commerce is all about the supply chain and the location of inventory closer to buyers.  A manufacturer that takes a small amount of inventory and imports it into the U.S. (or any major market), stores it in a warehouse in the U.S. close to buyers has many more sales options available than the manufacturer that keeps all inventory in Asia.  Some sales options that open up:

• Truly enter a new market and be able to automate your sales growth
• Sell the product wholesale or retail in more online marketplaces (retail and wholesale marketplaces).
• Automate order fulfillment using a service like Shipwire
• Offer local buyers same day shipping, free shipping promotions and other proven conversion increasing offers
• Increase sales by removing the hassles of importing and clearing customs
• Be able to handle returns locally
• Offer the goods to retailers and give them drop ship terms

Please see our Global Growth micro-site for more information on entering an overseas market.

Clearly, cross-border e-commerce takes more time than shipping international; but, the benefits are huge for the companies that find partners that can help them do this.  Clearly Shipwire is one such cross border e-commerce partner I hope people consider and recommend to any seller that is wishing to enter into new markets and accelerate sales.

This blog post is getting way too long so expect me to flush out cross-border much more in upcoming blog posts.

"Source" "Wholesale Sales" "Consumer Sales"

Yesterday some big news was announced by Alibaba.com, an Asian B2B Supplier sourcing platform, and its wholesale marketplace arm (AliExpress).  They bought U.S. company Vendio.  (Personal note, congrats to our Bay Area friends at Vendio, looks like we’ll be seeing some interesting things from you guys in the future). Vendio is has been around in one form or another since the go-go Internet craze of the dot.com.  Today Vendio is a merchandising and online store platform that includes auction management tools that they picked up when they bought Andale (formerly Auction Watch) in 2006.

Auctionbytes covered the Vendio acquisition yesterday, as did the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg and bloggers of all shapes and sizes.  The Auctionbytes article by Ina Steiner is a great read and has some back of the envelope calculations on how much Vendio raised and how much was previously raised by Andale.  While most of the industry analysts and  many commentators are focusing on Alibaba’s core business as the rationale for the acquisition – Get Vendio merchants to source product on Alibaba or close the transaction for wholesale buying on AliExpress – Ina’s article looks at eBay data as one of the main points of the acquision.  Alibaba stated it was all about driving more transactions off Alibaba and AliExpress in the Alibaba press release.  I for one, think it’s part eBay data, part opportunity to drive transactions to AliExpress and mostly to help their core customer base of manufacturers and suppliers learn how to sell in major marketplaces in the U.S.

Some of the interesting tidbits I’ve gathered from various sources: (see trackbacks)

• AliExpress/Alibaba team is armed with a $100M war chest for acquisitions to beachhead AliExpress and make it a force in the Wholesale e-commerce transaction space.  Note, you can’t actually close the transactions on Alibaba.com, it’s a communication platform between wholesale sellers and interested buyers.  AliExpress is the transaction platform that includes an escrow service for buyer/seller protection during the complexity of a cross-border wholesale inventory purchase.
• Vendio mentioned they have 80K SMB sellers on their platform.  It looks like the bulk of the sellers are eBay auction sellers; although the Vendio store platform was very well positioned as price competitive and they had a pretty slick looking mobile e-commerce application.
• Rumblings on the internet are that Vendio was shopping for a buyer for a few months so I’m betting this is not secret to insiders.  I wonder if eBay was at the table given the amount of data that Vendio was holding from the Andale platform.  Perhaps Amazon had a seat too as Vendio was trying to grow their off e-bay business.  If so (I have no clue), this probably helped the Vendio team in their purchase price.  I’m wondering who is shaking their heads this am.
• Alibaba just picked up a pretty interesting merchandising software.  Vendio is all about selling and getting inventory in front of buyers and managing the complexity of the auction process.  Heck, even their name has the root of “sell” in the latin based languages.  So the branding specialists that masterminded the Alibaba brand are probably excited to get their hands on Vendio if they have Latin American intentions.  Is there an AliVend in the future (sorry couldn’t help but go there)?

A few other editorial opinions:

• The cross-border e-commerce trends are accelerating.  Few weeks we blogged that Buy.com got picked up by a Japanese firm that promptly went and bought another major European marketplace PriceMinister in a clear move to scale. The U.S. e-commerce market is one of the most mature in the world and the companies that have pushed the maturity envelope are sitting on a lot of expertise and merchant data that is looking pretty tasty to overseas buyers armed with large acquisition checkbooks.  Is this the harbinger of a big M&A summer?  Probably.
• Alibaba wanted 80,000 eBay merchants to pay attention to their sourcing platform and they wanted to give their millions of Alibaba Gold Suppliers access to sales tools to make them more powerful 3rd party sellers.  I’ve blogged about the attractiveness of 3rd party sellers to the big marketplaces and AliExpress is gearing up to be a big marketplace (why else would they direct $100M in investment at it).
• I’m loving my 2010 e-commerce predictions right about now.  The value of third-party sellers increases.  Cross-border e-commerce is going to be the big driver in 2011 too.  Shipwire released our Export Index that makes the point that overseas selling is accelerating.
• Has anybody seen a Vendio API that will plug into the Shipwire order notification, shipping rate and inventory API’s?  I surfed over to the Vendio Developers Corner; but, the focus is on web site templates and designs for their store front.  I’m betting we start seeing more requests for this integration soon.

Other links:

• Free eBay order fulfillment shipping tools by Shipwire
• Channel Advisor order fulfillment shipping
• Shipwire Order Fulfillment, real time shipping rate, real time inventory API

It’s summer time.  Time to get out of the warehouse.   If you find yourself stuck in a warehouse on the longest day of the year  it’s a great time to consider ways to get out of the warehouse and get outside or get back to growing your business.  Perhaps Shipwire can help you get your life back.

In one of the last rainstorms that passed through a few weeks past we had a rainbow over Shipwire.  Our VP of Products, Phil,  snapped an awesome camera phone image and put n a few Shipwire additions.  You may find the graphics familiar if you are a visitor to the Shipwire shipping blog.

Thanks to Phil for creating the great image!

When I think about business continuity I think about two things.  First, is dealing with unexpected surges in growth.  Second, dealing with an unforeseen disaster that takes your business offline for some amount of time.  These could be considered two sides of the same coin, dealing with success.

I recently posted a blog to Practical E-commerce that discusses how to deal with unexpected success.  Outsourced fulfillment and unexpected success.  I think the critical point that I wanted to get across, has to do with simple breakdowns in your supply chain that can cause major headaches.   The example of a large supplier shipment getting stuck in customs for a couple days and generating a massive back-order day is amazingly common and really needs to be planned for.  I won’t reiterate the entire article there; but, I recommend giving it a quick look to help you plan for success in your marketing and sales efforts.

Disaster Recovery  for your shipping infrastructure is probably not something you think about a lot.  Shipwire has had to.  Frequent readers of this blog will remember the multiple blog posts over the past few years about USPS API failures during the holiday season.  You can bet that after the first time we experienced that, we put in place some disaster recovery plans.

The Shipwire model allows merchants to place inventory in multiple global warehouses.  This has helped some of our UK merchants overcome natural and man-made disasters over the past year.  Here are a couple of examples:

1.  Royal mail (the UK national parcel carrier, think USPS in the UK) went on strike earlier this year.  I won’t bore you with details; but, Shipwire merchants were in better shape than most because we knew about the strike and were able to work out alternate plans.  (See here for our running blog on the Royal Mail Strike).  Additionally, many of our merchants had inventory in multiple warehouses.  We were able to re-route orders to non-UK facilities in a couple of limited cases where the buyers needed the packages and international shipping was an option.

2.  During the Icelandic volcano eruption a couple months back, air shipments were non-operational into and out of the UK.  Shipwire had a variety of foreign (non-UK) merchants with inventory in the UK that were able to continue selling in the UK because they were not reliant on international air shipments.

Having inventory in multiple warehouses is an amazing business continuity plan and gives your business lots of options in the event of a giant sales success or a business problem.

I wanted to share a really interesting e-mail that I got from one of our customers who runs the foremost Tenkara fly fishing website.  He is looking at Shipwire as a disaster recovery service because we can ship his inventory from multiple warehouses.

Hi Nate,

With the severity and frequency of earthquakes this year, as well as tsunamis and now volcanoes. And, based on the fact that my business is based
in San Francisco and I wanted to start working on a procedures guide, I wanted to share my thinking that Shipwire not only is a great fulfillment
company, but also a great BCP (Business Continuity Plan) tool.

Much of business these days is run “in the clouds” as they say, so in the event of business disruption, work can continue being performed from virtual
offices, or temporary locations. However, for businesses that depend on the flow of goods, and the sale of goods to their customers the so-called clouds
can only help to a certain extent. Should a warehouse be rendered inoperable, the existence of a backup, or multiple backup, locations can
save a business by ensuring customers can continue ordering and receiving their goods

I’d say Shipwire can also offer a great solution in the event a small business is disrupted by acts beyond their control. When an earthquake hits
San Francisco, knock-on-wood, I know my business will be okay because our business, while based in San Francisco, is not really located here. It’d be
a good suggestion to any business that they sign up for Shipwire to at least have an alternative inventory and fulfillment center.

Just some thoughts, in case you guys haven’t thought of it.

All the best,

Daniel at http://www.TenkaraUSA.com

Daniel, not only have we thought about it, keep a heads up for a few new features that we’ll be releasing soon to help merchants route orders to label print services or alternate inventory locations.

Last week the super search brains at Google pushed out a new version of their industry leading search engine.  Nicknamed “Caffeine”, the rational for it was that content is exploding with the advent of the real-time web (Twitter, microblogging, video and location based services to name a few).  Google’s old engine reindexed the web every few weeks; but, it wasn’t fast enough.  So they jacked up the Caffeine load and sent it spinning on its merry way.  I for one was a bit nervous about this release for Shipwire’s SEO and did test it in the test Sandbox a few months ago.  I think results may actually be better for us with it’s release; but, only time will tell.  You can bet we’ll be trying to get as many inbound links as possible over the next few months.

If you know anything about SEO, read this and spend a minute commenting on this post and tell online retailers how to stay current and quickly post fresh content.

What does this mean for the small business online retailers? Candidly, I’m not entirely sure; but, I’m willing to take a few guesses.  As with all things SEO the impact will be felt depending on your level of SEO intelligence and your website’s capabilities.  The big change to the search algorithms has everything to do with Google being able to index new content faster and faster and make sense of the proliferation of content being generated by micro-blogging and shortened links.  I ask myself almost daily, what is the value of this twitter feed that flows like a river.  Do I pay attention to any of it other than which is directed @shipwire?  Some people I’m sure manage their RSS or Twitter feeds much better than me, so it looks more like a babbling brook (bad analogy on purpose) and less like a unfiltered river of nonsense.   If I’m wondering of the value, think about Google, they need to find value in this real-time web data, make sense of it and provide it to searchers.  When an idea or webpage “goes viral” Google can’t wait two weeks to give it relevance; they want to give it relevance much sooner.

Retailers, its time to get fresh.  What this means is that fresh content is going to mean more and more.  So, blogging and micro-blogging will likely become more and more important to keeping your website fresh.  For some retailers that are constantly updating their product catalog, then they may be at an advantage.  If your product catalog doesn’t turn over much or you don’t update any pages of your website with much frequency; then perhaps it’s time to look for simple ways to do that.  If you really like all that free organic search traffic from the great Google water-hose, then it’s time to think of fast ways to get fresh.  Here are some thoughts.

• Product videos:  Google owns YouTube, you can bet that it will be indexing the bazillions of new user generated videos pretty often.  Even if your product videos are utter crud; probably good to get them up there.  One of my favorite e-commerce bloggers is John over at ColderICE (Internet Commerce Education).  He has a hilarious story of getting over 100K views on a video about folding a bandana.  The video is pretty bad; and he still got 100K views.  That to me is fantastic and proves the point that you need to be on the interwebs like YouTube
• Blog your deals. Blogging is easy and keeps your website fresh.  put your blog in a subdirectory (http://www.shipwire.com/blog) of your website not a subdomain (not http://blog.shipwire.com) to increase relevance.  Don’t have time to blog with a traditional blog like Google Blogger, Wordpress or TypePad, then set up a Tumbler account and just e-mail some content in once in a while.  Generate fresh content and link to your own products to keep them “fresh”
• Tweet already.  Set up a twitter account and just tweet your deals or your favorite website links.  Even if you don’t have followers, you can bet that Google is indexing Twitter more and more now that they spent something like $25M to get access to the Twitter post stream.
• Forums and community sites.  Find a few forums that discuss your product vertical, or put up a forum on your website.  In Internet years these may seem pretty old school; but, the Google release on Caffeine specifically mentioned forum content as something that is fresh, relevant and they want to index faster.  Before you go nuts in a forum though learn the etiquette of the community and just respond to a few recent forum posts.  Don’t embed lots of links in it; just give yourself a respectable link or two in your signature if the forum allows it.
• Photos.  Not sure about this one; but, I’m betting that if Google is indexing video then they will likely be trying to also index all the public photos on locations like Picassa (Google owned) or Flicker.  Maybe your products could use their own photo album with lots of links to your site?  I know that I for one do search for Images in Google about 5% of my searches.  (Where do you think all our snappy blog images come from).

Geek out on Caffeine.  The Google team put out some metrics on what Caffeine will index.  It’s pretty impressive.  “Caffeine lets us index web pages on an enormous scale. In fact, every second Caffeine processes hundreds of thousands of pages in parallel. If this were a pile of paper it would grow three miles taller every second. Caffeine takes up nearly 100 million gigabytes of storage in one database and adds new information at a rate of hundreds of thousands of gigabytes per day. You would need 625,000 of the largest iPods to store that much information; if these were stacked end-to-end they would go for more than 40 miles.”  Wow!  100Million GB in one database,  that is a lot of tweets.

What do you think? Add a comment if you have another quick thing that online retailers can do to quickly keep their website content fresh and stay up on Caffeine.

US Companies looking to export, consider checking out a U.S. Commercial Service – Dept of Commerce (DoC) trade event.

I went to one of the events in LA a few months ago and found the DoC Trade Reps  to be very well connected for their regional expertise.  That particular show was put on in conjunction with the LA Chamber of Commerce.  The trade directors for the America’s were there.  Lots of information on Latin America; but, I found the U.S. trade rep to Canada, Acting Senior Commercial Officer Janice Corbett to be a wealth of information.

In LA the Commercial Service reps seemed particularly knowledgeable about expanding vertical and regional projects for large construction, mining and natural resource exploration, aeronautics, logistics, and other modern commanding heights industries.  The DoC and trade embassy events I’ve gone to over the past few years have in many ways seemed a bit old-school.  Not Frank “The Tank” old school, more the heavy networking and setting up in-country road shows, meeting tours and trade show and import/export resources.  There is some assistance offered for online and e-commerce; but, only in the major markets.

For a firm with $5-10+ million in sales and looking to aggressively pursue an international market, give your local office a call or surf over to Export.org to check market research.  For the major markets odds are their market data is probably reasonably up to date.  Here is their search portal for market research:  U.S Trade data market research database.

Below are upcoming U.S. Commercial Service initiatives designed to connect you to business opportunities around the world. Please scroll down to learn more about each opportunity.

Are You Facing Barriers Exporting To Japan?

The U.S. Commercial Service – Your Global Business Partner. With offices across the United States and in more than 75 countries, the U.S. Commercial Service of the U.S. Department of Commerce’s International Trade Administration uses its global Network and international resources to connect U.S companies with international buyers worldwide. If you have any questions about these initiatives, please contact your local U.S. Commercial Service trade specialist. To find the trade specialist nearest you please visit http://www.buyusa.gov/home/us.html.

Shipwire is Booth #740

Please join us at the Internet Retailer 2010 Conference & Exhibition (IRCE) held at McCormick Place West in Chicago from June 8-11.

Now in its sixth year, Internet Retailer 2010 will probably be the world’s largest ecommerce conference.  It normally attracts more than 5,000 attendees.

The conference draws a ton of online retail experts and the exhibit hall is massive.  The conference is saying that there will be 400 exhibitors in all, including Shipwire.

Please visit us at Booth 740 so that we can show you what we can do to improve your business automation and shipping costs by leveraging outsourced product fulfillment and order management.  Book an appointment.

Shipwire will be launching new products, doing customer demos and lots of live blogging.  We always meet a ton of great people and we hope to see you at IRCE 2010!

If you would like to book time with Shipwire at IRCE please feel free to book time on Nate Gilmore’s Calendar.

First off, congrats to the hard working teams at Buy.com (a personal shout out to  Randy!)  While there will likely be a lot of changes, Buy.com is merging with an e-commerce juggernaut in Asia and based on what I’ve been reading the purchase was strategic (more below).  It’s great to see hard work and determination pay off, so hats off to the Buy.com team!

This is an acquisition that you should pay attention to for a number of reasons.

1.  Buy.com was in “co-opetition” with Amazon.com and eBay.com.  They were a major seller on Amazon and eBay, and Buy.com was a growing U.S. online shopping destination.

2.  Third party sellers were a major contributor to Buy.com and there is no doubt Rakuten is valuing this asset.  This will be the focus of this blog post.

3.  Rakuten is clearly looking at the U.S. marketplace.  Looks like the U.S. just got a major new participant in the B2C e-commerce space and with deep pockets of approximately $9.5B, a keen focus on B2C and a lot of interesting puzzle pieces like a Linkshare (the major affiliate exchange), Rakuten+Buy is looking to be a major player shortly.

Overall, this is going to be a good thing for the U.S. marketplace.

Here are a few links that you should check out for more info.

• The best is Scott Wingo’s blog over at eBay Strategies.  Rakuten acquires Buy.com This is the post to read if you want context and insight into this purchase as Scott Wingo has some great field vision into the players and the impact of this deal.   His insight into Rakuten’s business is a must read!
• Techcrunch coverage with good numbers  and a Techcrunch 2009 article comparing Rakuten to Amazon Japan calling it “the biggest e-commerce company you’ve never heard of.”
• Venturebeat coverage has numbers and a bit of history on Buy and Rakuten.

I’m not going to repeat Scott Wingo’s points; but, I will mention that I think it will take Rakuten quite a bit of time to really realize the synergies of this acquisition.  The fact that Rakuten has Linkshare is very interesting; but, the lack of investment in Linkshare over the years is grounds for concern.  That said, even though there have been a lot of innovations in the affiliate sphere – big traffic is still big traffic and Linkshare is a player.

Personally, I think the big value here is Buy.com’s back end for managing third-party sellers and their integrated checkout experience.

A major online marketplace today must have product depth.  Think about it, the marketplace spends countless millions to attract buyers, give the buyers great prices (Amazon is losing money on some e-books to drive that market) and give the buyer an amazing experience, all in an effort to make the buyer a repeat customer.  But, if the buyer searches for some random product and it’s not in the marketplace… bye-bye buyer!

The major marketplaces that carry inventory focus on top sellers.  No major marketplace will stock in their own warehouse ALL the millions of products that buyers want.  Most don’t move enough volume.  They are too niche, unique or just plain weird to turnover enough to merit taking up the warehouse space.  For the long-tail of product search, the marketplace must have niche third-party sellers (these can be manufacturers or niche suppliers).

A side benefit of the marketplace attracting lots of buyers is that the sellers want to be there!  And they will pay more and more and more to have a presence on the marketplaces with the most traffic.  Just like in the brick-and-mortar world it’s all “location – location – location”.   It’s a symbiotic relationship.  If your marketplace has buyers the sellers will want to come and they will bring their product depth.  If you have product depth, the buyers will be able to buy more in one location and not leave the marketplace.  Product depth just makes sense and as I’ve blogged before, the trend is that marketplaces are going to open up, cater to and make profits more and more off third-party sellers.

Which brings me back to Buy.com and what they have done reasonably well.  Make buyer checkout and post sale order management easy, even when the products are being sourced across multiple sellers.  This is huge!  This is the platform!  This is what eBay has kind of missed.  (Aside:  I’m reminded of a quote told to me by an eBay exec 12-13 years ago, “If we build the highest traffic block in the neighborhood then the sellers will come.”  That is only half of the equation, the traffic has to convert and the buyers have to be happy).  If you don’t make checkout easy, you built a bazaar and not a marketplace.  (Aside,  wonder if eBay was looking at buying Buy.com? According to Scott’s blog Buy.com appears to have been a pretty important customer.).

The Rakuten purchase of Buy.com was likely in major part a platform buy.  Look at the Buy.com Blog:

• The seller marketplace grew 150%: The CEO thanks the sellers for expanding their product listings.  “As we move into 2010 and beyond, Buy.com has transformed from an online retailer with marketplace functionality, to a multi-category retail marketplace platform,” said Buy.com CEO and President Neel Grover. “We firmly believe that our marketplace platform is the future of online retail.”
• On the blog post about the acquisition here:  “As we evaluated how to accelerate our global expansion, it became clear that a partnership with Buy.com made perfect sense,” said Hiroshi Mikitani, Founder, Chairman and CEO of Rakuten.  “As a company, Buy.com shares our vision for the future of ecommerce – as a platform to give consumers the best value no matter their location, and to merge shopping with entertainment, and to help retailers build deep and lasting consumer relationships.”

Expect more posts on this blog about marketplaces opening up and attracting more and more third party retailers.  They will continue to grow in influence as the marketplace wars rage.  I’m excited that Shipwire has a front row seat as our platform is already plugged into many marketplaces and e-commerce tools to help third-party sellers manage their orders.

Shipwire’s CEO Damon Schechter flew to New York to be interviewed by Fox’s Small Business Center on April 30, 2010.  Damon spoke on the state of e-commerce and specifically small businesses using Shipwire to increase export sales.  You can see that interview here at small business exports.

Later Fox taped another episode with the founders of a company called Dapple. Dapple was founded by two moms, Tamar Rosenthal and Dana Rubinstein, that noticed a need in the market for safe and green cleaning products for all those things babies put in their mouths; toys, bottles, and basically anything that isn’t out of reach or nailed down. As the interview was winding down the founders of Dapple were asked about sales.  Tamar mentioned they could use some help with some automation,to which the reporter said, “We need to hook you up with Shipwire!” “I agree!” Tamar said, “We were actually chatting with Shipwire so you never know…”

Well, Tamar, we are certainly glad you met our fearless leader, Damon, and we do know that Shipwire can absolutely help you further grow your business.

Everybody here at Shipwire was thrilled to be mentioned as a possible solution by a Fox Small Business Center anchor.  What we have noticed, after talking with thousands of people, that almost everybody has at least one friend that is involved with a business selling a widget online.  These entrepreneurs are stressed, out of time and could always use a helpful recommendation.  So please,

Gives us a try with our special Free Trial offer. We would love to take your small business to the next level by taking care of all your storage and fulfillment needs so you can focus on more important things, like doing more marketing and interviews!

Watch the entire Dapple interview here.

Damon Schechter @ Fox Broadcast Studios in NYC

Shipwire has been getting some opportunities to do TV and print interviews since we started our “Increase Exports Initiative” that we launched following the Obama State of the Union call to increase exports and help small businesses.

One of the really cool opportunities was to do a live interview at Fox in New York City.  The interview has already been released and you can find it here.

For our blog readers, here is a snapshot of Damon about to go on stage and the Fox backdrop behind him.

It’s amazing how much goes into 3-5 minutes of TV News.  These guys and girls are so professional that you definitely move through a well oiled machine; but, here is a bit of how the Shipwire story ended up on Fox.

First, story needs to be found and outlined.  In this case, we contacted Fox with details of our export report and some interesting customer examples.  The Fox team was interested so there was a number of back and forth e-mails while they outlined what we were capable of speaking about.  I won’t go into that here as you can read it at the export link above.

Once the conversation was understood the Fox production team got senior member buy off and we were off to the races.  Shipwire marketing worked with Fox to understand what part of the story they thought would be relevant for their audience, to conduct fact checking and make sure we had images and customer case studies.

We timed the interview with a press road tour that Damon was scheduled to do.  When he got to NYC and got into the studio he was in great hands.  Damon had a blast checking out the Fox studios and getting ready for the interview.  He got prettied up by the Fox make-up team and was off to the green room (rumor has it they gave him a bit more tan than he actually had… lol).  At which point you wait until it’s your turn to get into the hot seat.  Right before your turn you get to see the segment before you, and here is a quick iphone picture of Damon right before he got on stage.  See how it all turned out here.

Feb. 4, 2010 - Photo by Pool/Getty Images North America http://bit.ly/covS4Q

Shipwire is a huge proponent of small businesses in general and we have been a champion of small business global expansion since we launched as a company!

Since February of this year we’ve been a major participant in a growing trend – the U.S. government focus on growing out of this volatile economy with the help of exports and small businesses.  This initiative was kicked off by President Obama in his State of the Union and the National Export Initiative.

Rather than wait for the President’s panel to come up with some recommendations for how to grow exports; Shipwire and our CEO Damon Schechter have put forth a roadmap to grow small business exports that we call “Export Vision 2010.”

“In order to answer Obama’s charge and double exports in five years, I  contend that we need open markets, empowered entrepreneurs, and a platform for global growth that eliminates the hassles of overseas product sales.”

• Learn the pitfalls of international shipping.
• The fortune 500 model for global expansion and how Small Businesses can participate
• Get a step-by-step roadmap to building an overseas sales engine.
• See this roadmap applied to actual shipwire customers.

You can download the entire Export Vision 2010 White Paper.  You can also download an abstract that has gotten some press coverage as well.

At the heart of our Export Vision is experience and our desire to build a platform that helps small businesses expand their global sales.  To prove this point, we have also released a “Shipwire Report:  SMB Export Numbers“.  This gives actual export growth numbers derived from Shipwire’s international experience with our merchants. There is some great data in it, including why shipments to locations outside the U.S. has grown.

Shipwire wants to continue to add our opinion to the question of how to grow small business exports.  So please check back to the blog often.

UK Bank Holiday – Monday 3rd May

Due to the Bank Holiday on Monday 3 May, there will be no collection or delivery services in any part of the UK on Monday. Normal deliveries and collections will be made in all areas on Tuesday 4 May.

Further details about collection and delivery services around the time of all UK public holidays can be found at www.royalmail.com/ukbankholidays.

There is a growing conversation online and in business meetings throughout America about increasing exports and thus American Jobs.   In all fairness, the business meetings are about growing business and foreign markets have always been on the agenda.  The marketplace discussion is being generated by President Obama.  As we blogged earlier in the year, Obama brought up export growth as a key driver for the U.S. economic recovery in the State of the Union.

Obama also established a National Export Initiative to “…to improve conditions that directly affect the private sector’s ability to export. The NEI will help meet my Administration’s goal of doubling exports over the next 5 years by working to remove trade barriers abroad, by helping firms — especially small businesses — overcome the hurdles to entering new export markets, by assisting with financing, and in general by pursuing a Government-wide approach to export advocacy abroad, among other steps.”

It’s all about helping small businesses (SMBs) increase exports.  That being said, traditionally export booms have not been driven by SMBs.  It has  traditionally been the very largest exporters that have most driven export growth.  As if to reiterate that point the U.S. Census Bureau recently released some U.S. export statistics for 2007 and 2008. Findings were relatively unchanged from prior years:

• SMBs ship only a fraction of the value of U.S. exports.
• SMBs were 97 percent of the number exporting companies in 2008, but accounted for only about a third of the value U.S. exports.
• Large-sized businesses are only 3 percent of all U.S. exporters, but generate almost 70 percent of U.S. export value.
• Large service exporters grew by 1%; but, their export volume grew by over 30%
• SMB’s increased the raw number of exporters by 5% and their value increased by 15%.

This is not a reflection of the National Export Initiative which was established after the time period being measured; but, they do represent a historically consistent benchmark.  Generally, while SMB’s represent a large number of exporters; their overall export value is small compared to the Fortune 500 companies.  That is now changing

Is this bad news?  Not at all.  Over the past 15 years there as been a small business retail revolution that has created a global e-commerce boom.  The marketplace is presently changing and new tools are now available to growing SMBs to help them drive export growth.  The U.S. Census numbers for 2011-14 will look fundamentally different as the long-tail of exporters (that 97 percent that is SMB) gets access to tools like Shipwire product fulfillment that will power an SMB Export Revolution.

Is this export centric thinking just happening in the U.S?  No way cowboy!  Most major market economies are looking for export growth.  Check out this export focus in Australia.  More links soon.

Alert: Due to the volcanic eruption in Iceland and the impact on air travel and shipments please note the following:

International Shipments
International shipments due to leave or enter the UK are affected by the closure of airspace, resulting in a likely delay in service. Shipments leaving the UK for Germany, France, Belgium and The Netherlands are being transferred to road services where possible. Shipments going to other parts of the world are being held until flights resume. There are no packages entering the UK by air at the present.

Shipment Deliveries & Collections
Shipment deliveries and collections are unaffected by this and will continue to take place today across the UK.

In Scotland, Northern Ireland as well as parts of South West and North East England, shipment deliveries may be lighter than usual as transporting packages to and from some parts of the UK will take longer than usual using alternatives to air transport. Additionally, in other areas of the UK, there may be small delays to deliveries as a result of this situation.

One of our merchants, Keetsa, is in the news again! We love to see our merchants being mentioned in the news, especially when it is good news. Kate Milani of the Wall Street Journal posted an article called “Three Best Ways to Export.” Milani says “International customers can be a source of growth that businesses can’t find on U.S. soil when domestic spending slows.” She highlights Keetsa and it’s phenomenal growth to their willingness to listen to their customers and begin exporting.  We couldn’t agree more!

Keetsa began doing business in August of 2007, one year later they began exporting, and today they have grown to “six locations, 15 employees and about 40 distributors,” per Milani’s article.  What has allowed Keetsa to grow their business so quickly and successfully? Their success is surely due to the talent within the company, but Keetsa also has something powerful behind their business model… the only thing that wasn’t mentioned in Milani’s article… Keetsa uses Shipwire to take care of all of their overseas storage and shipping needs. Joe Alexander, founder of Keetsa, tells us “Exporting might seem daunting at first, but it opens up an entire market… Don’t be intimidated.” He is certainly taking his own advice and smiling all the way to the bank. And we here at Shipwire are smiling with him.

Read Milani’s article here: “Three Best Ways to Export”

Read my previous post “Keetsa one of America’s Most Promising Startups”

Start exporting today…  Shipwire Free Trial

Next week is the annual eCommerce Merchant’s Summit, a place where hundreds of small business owners come together to share strategies on how to be successful in today’s e-commerce marketplace. If you are attending, or you are already in Vegas and perhaps lost all your money and are looking for something more constructive to do… swing by and visit the Summit. It starts Tuesday, April 13th and ends Thursday, April 15th.

You will be able to mingle and expand your network, get your questions answered, as well as see keynote speakers that are there to help you grow your business. Our very own Nate Gilmore, VP of Marketing & Business Development, will be a featured Speaker on Wednesday, April 14th at 2:15pm. Nate will talk about exporting and reaching overseas buyers.  He is speaking about international shipping methods, consolidated shipping and of course the benefits of using 3rd party shipping solutions to grow sales in international marketplaces.

I don’t think I’m giving anything away when I say that outsourcing your shipping needs can save you headaches, needless negotiations with carriers, and save you a bundle of time and cash. What would you do with all that extra time? How about expanding your business nationally or even globally? That extra time and hassle saved can free you to think about how to best market your business and make more money! Nate has the detailed road map to outsourcing your shipping needs and will be happily sharing that with folks that attend.  Nate spoke last year as well, here is his slide deck on international shipping product fulfillment.

Reserve your seat now!

April 13-15, 2010
Las Vegas – Flamingo Hotel & Casino
3555 Las Vegas Blvd S, Las Vegas, NV 89109

eCommerce Summit Brochure

Nate Gilmore, our VP of Marketing, has attended the Toy Fair in New York held at the Jarvis Center 2 years in a row and now he has twice the information to share with us! While attending the 2009 Toy Fair, Nate made sure to not only play with as many toys as possible, but also to get a feel for how the attending toy retailers were managing their business and what their concerns were when it comes to storage and shipping logistics.  Some important concerns to note from 2009 were (1) “Toy retailers buying smaller amounts, requesting more frequent resupply and not wanting to take on the risk of inventory, (2) Toy packaging and its impact on fulfillment, and (3) Manufacturer drop ship fulfillment options for Toy makers.”

We all know 2009 was a rough year for many due to the economy, so naturally toy retailers were focusing on keeping inventory levels in line with sales (rather than overstocking), optimum packaging options to save money, and also exploring different shipping options such as drop shipping. Read more about Nate’s adventures at the 2009 Toy Fair here.

The concerns from 2009 were still prevalent in 2010, especially interest in Drop Shipping, but according to Nate (who apparently did not have as much time to play with as many toys this year for he talked to 100 toy retailers!) we also see a trend to want to automate processes more, make the shipping process easier for both merchant and consumer, and to grow sales by expanding overseas fulfillment. It’s clear that although there are hurdles to be faced, toy retailers want to address them as well as continue to grow their businesses in a more efficient and cost saving manner. The economy has taught all of us to be frugal again, waste less, and save more. Which is great… and will no doubt lead to more play time. To read Nate’s article on the 2010 Toy Fair go here. If you are a toy retailer and are interested in trying Shipwire out, sign up for a Free Trial here.

To read more from the man himself, go to Nate’s blogs on the 2009 Toy Fair and the 2010 Toy Fair.

Interested in meeting Nate next year? Click below to save the date for Toy Fair 2011:

Keywords:

Toy shipping, toy industry fulfillment, toy distribution, toy manufacturer fulfillment, toy product fulfillment, toy canada shipping, toy europe fulfillment

It’s revolutionary, it’s inspiring… it’s time to never forget sending another package again! No more belated anything.   As a matter of fact the word “belated” may go the way of the Dodo thanks to Shipwire.

Shipwire announced today new shipping services which will allow merchants to ship their products to customers before the customer has ordered them – launching the newest revolution in e-commerce since the on demand global warehouse network – Predictive Fulfillment™ and Second Day Before Yesterday™ shipping. This service is targeted to merchants who specialize in goods with limited shelf life such as bell-bottoms, Mondale/Ferraro ‘84 bumper stickers, and Pauly Shore “Weez” merchandise.

“In the past decade, the shipping industry has made great strides in next-day and even same-day shipping, but we believe the future of the industry to be in the past,” stated Nate Gilmore, Vice President of Former Marketing and Retroactive Business Development for Shipwire. “Never before have merchants been in the unique position to satisfy the needs of their customers before the customers even know they have needs. As many of our merchants will soon discover, and as many of their customers already have, shipping packages through time opens an entirely new can of wormholes. By partnering with Shipwire, merchants can leave it to us to get their product from Time B to Time A, every time.” More mind blowing details here.

Remember to remind yourself yesterday to visit http://www.shipwire.com. To begin a free trial (free is always free no matter “when” you are), please visit www.shipwire.com/trial. Please don’t expect to buy this product today; check back yesterday and it will be available.

Please note: the information in this article may contain backward-looking statements.

The Easter holiday is upon us and Shipwire would like to remind all of our Product Fulfillment customers of the various warehouse holidays and specifically the Easter closures.

Canada Warehouse customers - Both our Toronto and Vancouver warehouses will be closed on Friday, April 2.

UK Warehouse customers – The UK warehouse will be closed on Friday April 2, as well as Monday April 5th.  However the UK warehouse will be working with partial staff on  Saturday April 3rd to catch up with orders from both Friday and Saturday.

US Warehouses Only our Chicago warehouse will be closed on Friday April 2.   There are no other planned closures for US warehouse due to the Easter Holiday.

You want to make every penny spent on shipping worthwhile right? Of course you do… because knowing the costs of shipping your products can save you hundreds if not thousands of dollars when you choose the best carrier along with the appropriate shipping options. There are many carriers to choose from today as well as a plethora of shipping options, deciding which is best for your business is the first step in saving lots of money. But calculating shipping costs can be confusing.  What are the rules that carriers apply when they calculate the cost they pass on to you?

Carriers charge based on the “dimensional weight” of a package. Dimensional weight calculations reflect what it costs a carrier to ship an oversize, lighter-weight package and ensures that the carrier is getting paid appropriately for the space the packages take up on its planes or trucks. Dim weight calculations more precisely reflect what it costs a carrier to ship an oversize, lighter-weight package. To calculate the dimensional weight of a package, multiply (length in inches) x (width in inches) x (height in inches) to determine the cubic size of your package. For UPS and FedEx Ground shipments to the US, if the cubic inches exceed 5,184 inches or 3 cubic feet, dimensional weight rates will apply. If the total cubic inches measure less than 5,184 inches, then you typically use the actual rates for the weight of the package.

After you’ve calculated the cubic size of your package and determined that it’s 5,184 cubic inches or greater, you can calculate the dimensional weight by dividing the cubic size of your package by 194 for ground shipments within the U.S., rounding up to the nearest full pound. Keep in mind that dimensional weights are rounded up by the carriers.

Your billable weight will either be the actual weight or the dimensional weight of package–whichever is greater. That means if you ship lighter packages that are more than 3 cubic feet, you’ll pay more under the dimensional weight rate system.

For example say you have a box measuring 24” x 18” x 18” that weighs 50 lbs. and is to be shipped via UPS. The actual weight is 50 lbs.; dimensional weight = (24 x 18 x 18) /194 = 40.08 = 41 lbs. The dimensional factor = 194.  The actual weight exceeds the dimensional weight. So the actual weight (50 lbs.) will be used as the chargeable weight for the shipment.

Now let’s say you have a box measuring 24” x 18” x 12” box that weighs 10 lbs. and will be shipped by FedEx. The actual weight is 10 lbs., the dimensional weight = (24 x 18 x 12)/194 = 26.7 = 27 lbs., the dimensional factor = 194.  The dimensional weight exceeds the actual weight. So the dimensional weight (27 lbs.) will be used as the chargeable weight for the shipment.

For UPS and FedEx air-express shipments, the same dim calculation applies, but without the 3-cubic-ft. (5,184 inches) minimum.

What’s more, UPS and FedEx also add a $45 oversize charge for packages that measure more than 130 inches in length and circumference. (You can calculate this by adding the length of the package plus twice the height plus twice the width.)

If you can believe it, the dim rules for the Postal Service’s Priority Mail zones are a bit more complicated. For USPS zones 1 through 4, the minimum dim weight is 20 lbs. if the length plus the girth equals more than 84 inches, but less than 108 inches.

But there’s a different rule for Priority Mail zones 5 through 8. For those zones, if package volume is more than one cubic foot (1,728 cubic inches), divide the cubic inches (length x weight x height) by 194 to get the dim weight.  It’s important to note, however, that all the Priority Mail and Flat Rate cartons provided by the USPS are excluded from the dim rules. That can be key for volume shippers.

USPS’s Parcel Post packages have different rules as well. There’s a 20-lb. minimum for these packages if the length plus girth is more than 84 inches but less than 108 inches. If the length plus girth is more than 108 inches but less than 130 inches, you have to use the USPS oversized rates, which vary by zone.

One last thing about dim weight: For the USPS, UPS and FedEx international packages, including UPS and FedEx ground shipments to Canada, the dim factor is 166 rather than 194.

You can go to each individual carriers website to get their specific costs or you can get a Shipwire Free Trial that will tell you in real time exactly what your shipping costs will be. Take advantage of Shipwire’s  global network of warehouses – where you can move inventory closer to your buyers resulting in faster delivery times for your customers and LESS shipping cost to you and your business.  Shipwire will even give you real-time shipping API’s to install all our shipping rates in your shopping cart.

Shipwire has always made it easy to ship goods back and forth between the US and Canada, but it just got even easier.  For those merchants in the US or Canada that need to ship freight quantities across the border we made it much easier by upgrading our Shipwire Merchant Freight options.

Just key in any large freight order using our Ship from Warehouse tool and you will see “Merchant Freight” quoted.  When satisfied with the quote, select the option and your inventory will be prepped and shipped.   Shipwire will do the rest from booking with the carrier, to preparing your Bill of Lading.   And as an added bonus this even works via our API so your shopping cart can feature freight shipping quotes.

Couple limitations you should know about.  The freight quotes are for the transportation and not the customs and duties brokerages that you may be subject to.  It is recommended that you confirm your Canadian and/or US business registrations and Tax ID’s before using cross-border merchant freight to limit any delays.

Shopplugin.net  is a new e-commerce extension for Wordpress.  Great website, looks very feature rich…and has an integration to 4 (yes all 4) of Shipwire’s API’s.  Live Shipwire shipping rates in your Shopp checkout pages.  Orders are automatically sent from your Shopp store to your Shipwire account.  Inventory is synchronized between the entire Shipwire warehouse network and your store.  Tracking numbers are also synchronized for completed orders.  Sweet!

Couple things.  This is in beta.  We are looking for people who want to test the connection.  Here is the announcement.  Shopp Plugin Shipwire shipping order fulfillment.