Understand if Shipwire is a match for your business
To get an idea if Shipwire is a match for your business needs we recommend you spend a few minutes on our website. Feel free to contact sales anytime; but, most questions can be answered by our website or starting a free trial.
I. Get to know the Shipwire website
You can watch a video tour, schedule a 1-on-1 training, come to a webinar or just browse our website. Here are a few key places to pay attention to if you browse:
- Shipwire pricing is based on much storage and shipping you use. You can design your own volume based custom pricing plan.
- We have warehouses in the U.S., Canada and the U.K. with more on the way.
- All accounts benefit from Shipwire automated rate shopping – just tell us you want us to pick the lowest carrier when we ship. If you want to see our shipping rates, the best way to do this is to sign-up for a free trial, plug in the dimensions for your test product and then “get a quick shipping rate”. Our warehouse map also has a rough shipping calculator. Please contact sales if you have questions about rates or volume shipping discounts.
- The Help Center has guides to help you get started.
- We have established connections with leading shopping carts. Most are free!
- We have APIs if you need to custom program an integration to Shipwire.
II. Are your products a match for the Shipwire platform?
Signing up for an account and getting it set up is easy; but, lets make sure that we can service your product fulfillment needs.
- Shipwire can fulfill direct-to-consumer (B2C Shipping) and wholesale (B2B Shipping) orders.
- We do best with consumer packaged goods or bulk items that can fit on a pallet and can be shipped by a common carrier like UPS or FedEx. Review our shipping options.
- Shipwire is for bulk selling. We require a minimum of 3 items per SKU. Shipwire is not a good match for unique, antique or one-of-a-kind products that have no inventory depth.
- You can send us loose inventory or goods that are in shippable packages. “Pick and Pack” verses “Lick and Stick”.
- We’ll cover this more in the next section; but, take time to understand master cartons and bulk receiving to keep deposits low and give you maximum wholesale and retail shipping options.
- Are your products correctly labeled? Each shippable item needs to be labeled. More information on labeling, packaging and supplier instructions.
- Unfortunately we can’t ship everything such as perishables, live items, event tickets, or jewelry. Here is a complete list of forbidden products.
- For some products we can grant an exception based on your understanding and signature of a terms of service
- Do you have margin for your products so that you can afford to pay for outsourced fulfillment?
- You don’t have to outsource all your fulfillment if you have thousands of unique SKU’s, maybe consider just your best sellers.
- Shipwire can be used for promotional fulfillment.
- Lots of our customers offer fast and free shipping for best sellers by leveraging our warehouse network to drive down costs.
III. Is your business ready to send inventory to Shipwire?
- Do you have a business ID (Tax ID) in the country where you are placing inventory? If not, you need to get one.
- If you are using one of our warehouses in a country where you already do business and the inventory is already in that country you can skip this step
- USA – EIN number
- Import into Canada
- Import into the U.K.
- Do you have a customs broker or freight partner to move your inventory across the border? If not please review the Shipwire freight service and contact us if you need assistance.
- Do you have a Shipwire account and have you scheduled an ASN? If not, go onto the next section.