Usually, enterprises import goods from China for local sales, there are three major expenses: procurement cost, shipping cost, and tariff.
Sale price=procurement cost+shipping cost+ tariff+your profit
Procurement cost, we've talked about this for a long time in the previous article, find more suppliers and compare prices.
Tariff is usually charged according to the customs policy of the local country. The charging standard is different for different products, but the charge standard is the same for all customers.
So today we're going to talk about how to save shipping costs.
Shipping costs, including two parts of domestic and foreign costs, but the domestic will be much cheaper.
1. Gather purchasing in one area, not so far
Domestic cost, if you are a Yiwu buyer and have a Yiwu agent in China, it is recommended that you change all the suppliers to the periphery of the Yiwu agent as far as possible. In this way, factories around Yiwu can send goods to your Yiwu agent warehouse for free. Otherwise, if part of your goods suppliers is in Shenzhen or Shantou, then these goods need to be shipped to Yiwu for LCL, which will produce a very expensive shipping cost. You can also understand that by gathering nearby suppliers' goods in one place, like Ningbo, Yiwu, and Taizhou these suppliers, you can ship all the goods to Yiwu or Ningbo, and finally ship from Ningbo port. If you have suppliers in such areas as Shenzhen and Shantou, it is recommended to ship directly from the nearest port of the factory, do not ship to Zhejiang, the shipping cost will be very high.
Foreign costs, like sea freight, air freight, and train freight...
2. Reduce package size
For sea freight, they charge mainly by volume, so If your product's packaging is large, the average shipping cost will be high.
There are two states:
1. The unit price of the product is very expensive, and the volume of the product is very large, so a container may not load much. If this is the case, you can calculate the purchase cost + shipping cost. After deducting these two expenses, based on the market price and your estimated sales price, whether there is still profit to be made.
2. The unit price of the product is very cheap, the volume is very large, and it is not recommended to purchase.
The customer requires customized packaging, for example, the trash can. Generally, these products are overstow packaging to export from China. However, some customers want to change the packaging to opp bags or boxes due to a lack of transportation experience, which will not only increase the packaging cost but also increase the freight cost of a single product. (for example, for 40HQ, normally overstow packaging can load 20K pieces, but if after opp bag packaging, only can load 15K, so the shipping cost of 1pc product will increase.
3. Large volume and heavy products are recommended by sea or train
If you are not in a hurry to receive the goods, you can choose by sea and train transportation, which will be much cheaper than by air.
Air freight is usually 3-4 times as expensive as sea freight.
4. Plan to order, plan to ship
If these are products that you buy frequently and repeatedly, you can place an order in advance then we can make scheduled shipments according to your inventory.
For example, you can plan the purchase of holiday products 4-5 months in advance. The production time and transportation time will be just right when they arrive at your side.
I once met a customer. It was Christmas in December, and then the Christmas products and orders that needed to be purchased were confirmed in November. All the subsequent transportation was by air, which was very expensive.
5. The full container will be cheaper than LCL
If you buy goods in China frequently, it is recommended to gather all the goods together and ship directly by Full container.
Compared with LCL, the cost of the destination port of a full container will be much cheaper.
LCL, inland fees, documents fees, and destination port fees are very expensive.
