Nobody likes paying shipping. Not you, not that guy over there, not me. No one. Paying shipping sucks. That’s why a lot of places these days offer ‘free shipping’. Except they don’t… let me explain.
THE COST OF SHIPPING
It’s very easy to overlook, especially as a customer, just how much shipping a product costs. Even before thinking about how much it costs to actually transport the thing you have to consider the packaging. I ship my props in ‘Linen Boxes’ – a long box, designed to be stuffed full of linen when you move house and conveniently they are also big enough to fit 90% of the weapons I sell.
The trouble is, that box costs £6 plus shipping, the bubblewrap protecting your prop costs about £5, the brown paper is free, recycled and comes from Amazon boxes. So we’re already up to about £11 and it’s not even on the van yet.
Shipping to the States ranges wildy, apparently depending on the day, or the weather or goodness only knows what, and a lot couriers just flat out refuse to carry prop weapons. The ones who don’t mind carrying them don’t come cheap. When I started doing this 4 years ago it was about £40 to ship a chainsword to the States, now it’s almost twice that!
The price goes up and up, though the service doesn’t change.
It’s a well known fact that vendors who offer ‘free shipping’ see an increase in sales compared to those who don’t. For a small business that difference can be make or break. A fair while back Etsy introduced a free delivery guarantee programme, those sellers who offered free delivery to the US would receive preferential placement in internal search results. As a lot of my business comes from the States this seemed ideal so I looked further into it.
THE UPSIDE
On paper all I had to do was include the price of shipping in my product price and ‘Hey Presto!’ better placement. True enough, I saw a slight increase in sales, to the extent that at one point I thought I’d overreached myself. Things were great, my props were flying out to every corner of the States and the money was flying in to my pockets.
Great days, until Covid-19 came along and spoiled things.
THE DOWNSIDE
With people staying home the cons stopped, and when the cons stop the sales plummet. Now, my share of the UK market has never been great, cosplay is still very much an emergent thing over here and Covid took the wind right out of its sails. But that got me thinking, ‘I want a bigger share of the UK cosplay scene. I want more people wandering about with Peculiartifacts props in their costumes.”.
Unfortunately, by signing on to the free delivery guarantee programme and including the price of shipping to the States in my prices I’d totally eliminated any share of the UK market I’d previously had.
THE SOLUTION IS CLEAR
As beneficial as the free delivery guarantee had been, it was now hoisting me by my own petard. It had to go. So it did. I rewrote my pricing algorithm from scratch to calculate the prices without including shipping. I also made it more dynamic so I could change individual variables in one place and have that change reflected across the entire document (but that’s a story for another time, perhaps). With that done, all I had to do was update my prices in my Etsy store, and in the Peculiartifacts store and do away completely with the ‘free shipping’ lie.
IT FEELS GOOD
It’s too early to tell yet how this change is going to affect my business though I am seeing a slight uptick in items that had previously been ignored being favourited on Etsy. Fingers crossed.
It feels more honest this way, and that’s important.
Offering ‘free delivery’ and then hiding the cost of shipping in the price never sat well with me, it troubled me from day one and whatever happens, I’m not going to regret getting rid of it. I’d sooner be honest about what things cost, which is why I’ve always been careful say to ‘Shipping Included’ wherever I can. I do build the cost of shipping to the UK into my prices, and while Etsy might say it’s ‘free delivery’ it’s not, nor has it ever been. It’s ‘shipping included’, always has been, always will be.
I’m not out to make a quick buck and vanish into the night, I want to be doing this on a larger and larger scale until I can’t do it anymore. I want people to know that the Peculiartifacts name can be trusted, that it stands for quality and honesty and damn good props!
Now I’ve rambled on long enough, I think I’ve explained pretty well why my shipping costs are what they are. If you’ve made it all the way down here, thanks for sticking with this until the end.
Stay safe, and be excellent to each other.