I never imagined that some situations would happen in 2020.  The movement from brick and mortar business to eCommerce has taken the entire country by storm.  The reality is though that with all the lockdowns and regulations that it is much safer to be an eCommerce company in 2020 than any other.  This is simply due to the demand for shipping.  People are not going out of their homes nearly as much and in many cases, they are not allowed to by law.  This means that the demand for online shopping has skyrocketed.  It has also meant that the need for shipping has increased and the products that are needed to do it.

If you are getting into the shipping industry or your company is now finding that its most important department is shipping then there are some good lessons to learn and know.  The big thing to know is to make sure you are staying competitive in the market.  This is hard to due because technology is so vast and people can learn anything.  But having good relationships with companies is a big way to stay on top of the competitive nature of eCommerce. 

One major area that you need to be competitive in and can really crush competition is having a most efficient shipping supplies supplier.  It is more important to make sure you have good quality contact that can get you the gear you need and on time.  There is no way to ship without product and having a company fail on delivering the things you need is not good.  That is why having a great contact is a good thing and being able to buy products in bulk is a big part of having a great contact.

Shipping supplies are simply expensive and you need to be able to find a place to get them at a good discount.  I have to say that being competitive is more than shopping on Amazon versus going to your local store.  Yes, Amazon will be cheaper, but it will also be way higher than a major store that only sales these items and gives bulk discounts.  Bulk Discounts are a huge part of this industry and making sure you know what you need is part of it.

You need to know every amount of each item you use per shipment.  This is tedious and can end up saving you tons of money. My business found a big problem with spending when we were packing up boxes to ship.  Our packers were using about 10 strips of packing tape per box.  To all of us this seemed normal and was needed to hold the weight of all these items.  But when talking with a specialist in the industry from our supplier we found that our tape was thin and not capable of sustaining our competitive nature.  So he started to inform me and my company of thicker tape that could do the job in 3 strips of tape.  This was shocking but we figured that it would just cost more.  It did, but not relative to the project.  The tape costs 25% more, but also we would be using 200% less of it. The savings were incredible and once we trained our staff they were happy they didn’t have to tape nearly as much. So I hope this tip helps you and your company!