cost increases due to shipping

SHIPPING COST INCREASES WILL CAUSE MY PRICES TO INCREASE

Yesterday Estella my head of shipping and my office manager Donna came to me disturbed by what they have learned about the shipping costs from the US Postal Service that will be going into effect January 1, 2020.

The basic cost increase will be 4.1 percent. Having heard this, I called my Federal Express representative and on Monday he will visit with me giving me their cost increase for next year. I do very little with UPS, but their increase will be in line with FX also the USPS.

Since I have been paying the shipping costs for, I think three years now and since in recent times I have lowered the price of most of my sleeping bags I will have to raise some of the prices to cover the cost of shipping. The increases may not only take place with sleeping bags, but other items as well.

About 85 percent of my shipping goes by Federal Express because I believe their service is better. Effective throughout 95 percent of the USA they deliver in 3 days and they also deliver on Saturday’s.

When it comes to the USPS, we do the bulk of the rest of our shipping so it will mostly apply to small packages that we mail. However, the big cost will be seen by people ordering from Alaska, Hawaii, and the rest of the world.

Therefore, if you want to avoid buying Wiggy products at a higher price do not wait until 2020 and order between now and December 31, 2019. This is not a scare tactic but realistically what I am faced with doing.

Here for the past two years I have tried to make my products more affordable for more people and my undeserved partner is saying we must raise our prices. Will we get better service? Much as I like to say yes to our USPS, I doubt it. However, according to my representative from Federal Express they will be delivering throughout the country in 3 days via ground service, and for that type of service the additional costs will probably be worth it.

As a guesstimate I think the prices for my sleeping bags in general will increase between 10 and 15 percent. But I will reserve judgement until I have also checked to see if my box supplier is having an increase in the cost of boxes.

When I must go through this process in order to keep my business in a black state, I always think about the politicians who have NEVER run a business so they haven’t a clue as to what business owners go though in order to stay in the black.

As this situation further develops with shipping costs, I can only imagine what the following mail order companies such as ll bean, rei, cabelas, bass pro, ralph loren, north face, arcteryx, columbia and a host of others will do. I can tell you they will all look at the costs of their products and look at inferior materials that are obviously cheaper than the trash they use now and make even cheaper quality garments or whatever that they currently make.

Their prices go up quality goes down.

NEVER forget these companies’ are all publicly traded, and they are obligated to show profits to the shareholders and the shareholders do not care about the products that they sell only the profits they make.

Once I was at a wedding in Washington, D.C. for a woman whose father was high up in the CIO/AFL union. I found that I was unable to communicate socially with anyone, and I am of the opinion if I was with a bunch of Wall Street financials types I couldn’t communicate with them socially either.

Even though my prices will rise probably not back to were they were a year ago, but the quality will not have changed. Isn’t it to good to know somethings never change? That is a line from a song from the 60’s I heard recently.