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Imagine that you’ve just finished setting up an eCommerce site to sell your groundbreaking product when all of a sudden you realize that you have no way to ship it out to your consumers.
Assuming you only need to periodically fulfill customer orders, you might be able to get away with using the post office. What if you need to send out a subscription box, however? Would regular postal mail be able to get your products out at the right time?
Women who are launching a business for the first time also need to consider the issue of logistics from a supply prospective. Many new firms end up in deep trouble because they’re never able to secure their supply chains.
Securing Transport To and From Your Place of Business
While you might be able to gather materials yourself at first, keep in mind that any growing company will have to secure increasingly larger supplies of raw goods in order to manufacture finished products.
Work with the same logistics brand to deliver everything across each link in the supply chain if at all possible. You’ll be able to monitor shipments from a single dashboard if you only work with a single logistics firm as opposed to several. This can help you spot potential problems before they become major issues.
Parcel forwarding is important to think about as well, especially once your firm starts to really pick up steam. Women who run a business in North America might want to expand to overseas markets, but they’re often unable to deal with the long lead times and addressing problems that come with sending packages to the United Kingdom or Ireland.
If you find yourself in this position, then you might want to work with a mailbox business service provider. These organizations make it easy to set up a proxy address in another country, which can then be used to fulfill orders.
Addressing is often important for tax reasons as well, so this can help to establish a tax presence in another country. The field of logistics is often more related to your tax bill than you might think.
Financial Considerations When Signing a Logistics Contract
Tax authorities will sometimes charge certain fees based on the current location of a parcel and where it’s addressed from. In general, tariffs are charged in order to permit the passage of a good from one area to another. While you could theoretically move your operations abroad, you generally don’t have to go through such a dramatic step to reduce the risk of incurring additional fees.
Start by picking a logistics firm that offers most things for free. You really only want to be paying for the actual shipping and handling of products.
While it’s a potentially good idea to purchase package insurance as well, some financial experts have suggested that you’re better off with a built-in insurance policy since insurance premiums can very quickly start to add up to a point where they’re more expensive than whatever it is that you’re shipping.
Avoid long-term contracts if at all possible. Most major logistics providers actually offer services on a per-shipment basis, which is usually much more affordable for most new business owners.
As your firm grows, you might want to consider inking something a little more permanent, but even established firms often work with large commercial-grade services that sell directly to end-users. Think about the last time you bought something off a site run by an ecommerce giant. Chances are that you either paid for shipping yourself or you had some sort of subscription that covered it.
Companies that offer these sorts of subscription deals are usually taking advantage of low-priced LTL plans or other logistical discounts, which are normally part of a freight-scale shipping operation.
Providing Free Shipping to Consumers
There might come a day when you’re ready to offer free shipping to everyone who buys into your brand. That’s certainly a big incentive for the consumers of business that is attempting to move into global markets.
However, you’ll want to make sure that you can afford to cover the costs of shipping. While it’s often not a good idea to go for those above mentioned big contracts, you might want to see if you can get some kind of volume discount for your company.
Taking the time to hammer out all of your logistics details now will help to cut down on any transportation-related issues you might run into in the future.
