Shipwire is excited to announce an update to the Bigcommerce and Shipwire integration tool developed by Shipiro. The Shipiro update rolled out late on November 6, allowing current users full access by early morning, November 7th.

This module updates the Bigcommerce fulfillment integration and works with the new Bigcommerce 2.0 API to sync with Shipwire.

The new features introduced by this update include:

• Shipment Status and Tracking Number Sync – Shipiro will now sync order status and tracking numbers from Shipwire back into Bigcommerce.
• Multi-Ship Support – Shipiro will automatically handle multiple shipping addresses per order, splitting them into multiple orders for Shipwire.
• Faster Sync Times and Manual Sync – Now Bigcommerce order sync will happen twice a day, and there is a new manual sync option.

Users of Shipiro will need to login to verify that the update has not interrupted any communication between Bigcommerce and Shipwire, so be sure to login on Wednesday and check your orders.

If you are interested in using the Shipiro integration tool for Bigcommerce, please visit Shipiro.

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The 2012 holiday season is expected to be the best in years and we have important dates and best practices to share with you from our many years of experience with holiday logistics. Be sure to download the calendar below and add the important dates to your calendar automatically here.

Pre-November 23rd

Land Your Inventory Early
Until November 23rd, your primary focus should be on getting your inventory into a Shipwire warehouse. Prior to the holiday rush, every merchant on the planet is working to get their inventory into local warehouses. The ports, customs offices, and transportation hubs are very busy managing all these pre-holiday inventory moves. This traffic may cause delays prior to your product arriving to the warehouse, so get your inventory in early!

Set Up Your Shipwire Account
Successful holiday sales require all of your systems to be configured and tested prior to orders starting to flow. Every year we meet new merchants who put this task off to the last minute and they always wish they had set everything up sooner. Don’t waste another minute and set up your free Shipwire account now.

Set Up Sales Channels Now is the time to be setting up new sales channels for the holiday season. Here are a few that we’re seeing successful merchants setting up now:

• Social Commerce – add a Payvment Facebook shopping cart to your Facebook page now so that holiday shoppers can both “Like” you and tell their friends to buy from you too.
• Flash Sales – more and more merchants are moving significant volumes of orders via 3rd party flash sales sites via Shipwire. Set up your flash sales relationships now so you can be the Deal of the Day during the buying season.
• eBay – every year we see a significant spike in orders from merchants that sell their products on eBay. Don’t ignore this growing sales channel to drive incremental sales this holiday season.
• Backorders – while this isn’t a sales channel, consider taking pre-orders for inventory that won’t be here until the holidays. By partnering with Shipwire, we can receive and ship your orders in time for them for be the hottest gift of the year!

Post-November 26th

After November 26th, our focus will be on providing an amazing buyer experience for our merchants’ customers. Our sales, operations, and warehouse teams will be completing projects, fulfilling large backorders, and making sure all shipments are processed correctly.

To keep you in the know on the most important dates, download and print the holiday calendar included in this article.

For additional documentation, see our Support Center or book a meeting by contacting our sales team at sales@shipwire.com or 1-888-SHIPWIRE.

We hope this helps you plan out your 2012 shipping and look forward to working with you to make this holiday sales season the best one yet!

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Each year, merchants gear up for the holiday season. For many, this is a make-or-break time, a time that really dictates the outcome of the entire year.

Shift in consumer buying behavior

Brands are seeing a shift in the behavior of buyers: More and more buyers are buying online. According to Deloitte, non-store holiday sales will increase by 15% over 2011, with 75% of those sales happening online. In addition, eMarketer predicts that US online shoppers will spend a combined $54.47 billion this holiday season, or about $287 each.

Selling online

There are generally two types of online merchants: Those who sell their own products and those who sell the goods of other brands. The strategy for those who sell their own product is to win on product design and branding while those who sell the goods of other brands primarily win on price, ease of platform use, and product selection.

A new breed

The recent ubiquity of plug-and-play online shopping carts like Magento and Volusion in addition to “traditional” stalwarts like eBay and Amazon have made it more easy than ever to create your own online store. For the first time ever, merchants can really solidify their brand online without hiring a team of web designers and developers. And with more and more tools designed to help online merchants, ecommerce businesses have more options when deciding what to do in-house.

Choosing the right partners

How do you know when do manage something in-house and when it makes sense to partner with another company? Constraint optimization. In layman’s terms, you’ve got to make the most out of what you’ve got.

Boris Wertz recently wrote a piece on TechCrunch that highlighted the importance of vertical integration for brands who are strictly online.

Key takeaways from the article:

• Product differentiation is paramount to brand success
• Verticalization is great in areas where competitive advantage exists, but practices where scale is important like manufacturing and logistics are best done with partners

Regardless of whether you’re an online consumer, seller, or both, the holidays can be a great time for everyone. Just make sure your online experience isn’t a lump of coal. Happy ecommercing.

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At Shipwire we are excited to recognize individual members of our team when they accomplish something great. When a support team member garners praise, we might share an imported Cola (you know, the kind with the real sugar cane) or join them on a quick walk for some coffee.

Today, it’s our engineering team’s turn for a round of refreshing colas as they have pushed live yet another great upgrade. Shipwire is dedicated to continuously improving and adding to our merchant’s platform — check out the latest updates to see how we do that:

• Performance upgrades: You’ll now be able to choose shipping methods, process orders, and other application interactions faster than ever.
• Custom name 3rd party accounts for easier account selection: Now you can create custom names such as “My Fedex” or “Target” to better differentiate between your 3rd party accounts.
• Automated tracking on Canada Post and UPS Freight orders: When receiving or sending merchandise using Canada Post or UPS Freight, Shipwire will automatically update order status once shipment has been delivered for orders with a valid tracking number.
• Custom order filtering for Magento: Magento merchants operating multiple storefronts (on both Shipwire and non-Shipwire warehouses) will be able to apply custom order filters.

If you’re a customer, be sure to subscribe to the blog for the latest shipping news and upgrades from Shipwire. If you’re still exploring fulfillment solutions, sign up for a free trial to test drive the application. You can also find us on Facebook and Twitter!

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How often have you found yourself digging around for a bottle opener? Upon realizing that you had left it on the kitchen counter, the adventure usually ends with you trying to open your cola another way, damaging your hand, surroundings, and your pride.

For Chris Peters and Rob Ward, it was a big enough problem for them so they dreamed up an iPhone case that incorporated a bottle opener. In June of 2011, Chris and Rob turned to Kickstarter.com to launch Annex Products’ first product, the Opena® Case. Only 3 months later in September, Annex Products would ship 578 orders around the world using Shipwire as their order fulfillment provider.

“with hundreds of pre-orders to fill, Chris and Rob then madly went to work on sorting out tooling, manufacturing, packaging, fulfilment and shipping. They used Shopify (an online e-commerce platform) to sell and Shipwire to distribute” – Aspire Magazine, 2012

Aspire Magazine, which recently wrote about Annex story, featured their journey from Kickstarter.com project to completed iPhone accessory company. Aspire also documents Annex’s latest product, the Playa™ Case which has a hidden compartment for carrying personal affects. Checkout Aspire for free in the iTunes store, or on their website to get the latest issue.

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If you have a smart phone chances are you have fallen in love with Halfbrick‘s Fruit Ninja game. Fruit Ninja challenges you to cut up fruit by slicing your finger across the screen of your smart phone. Its charming characters and awesome gameplay have made it a staple in every app store it’s sold in.

ToyFoundry is the manufacturer and distributor behind leading digital brands – including Halfbrick – and uses Shipwire to distribute toys and plushies of the Fruit Ninja game world-wide. With ToyFoundry, you don’t have to go farther than your browser or smartphone to get these characters into your home.

ToyFoundry’s co-founder Mark Verstege was recently featured in one of our case studies describing how they use Shipwire to distribute Fruit Ninja throughout Asia-Pacific, and other markets the world over.

“We are always going to need to distribute stock and we need to rely on our partner for this. Having this means ToyFoundry can concentrate on everything else. That’s the biggest benefit: knowing that we can give our partner that problem – shipping and distribution – and we know they’ll get it right.” — Mark Verstege, Co-Founder, ToyFoundry

View the entire case study here and learn how Shipwire can help expand your brand globally.

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