To Find a Box.

Our first website product inquiry! I was very excited to get the call! - Yay! We've been found on the internet. Of course, it was about our second most tricky items to ship, the rocking dory. (The viewing scope being of course the most difficult). We state on the website that this item has not been setup for shipping yet, so it will take some work.

A peek into the more mundane things I do: As a retailer I've found most vendors bubble and bulk box merchandise rather than individually carton everything to save money. That leaves the shop owner to figure out how to gift wrap or ship many varied sizes and shapes. In a small store you just can't afford the room or expense to buy and stock every possible size. I've spent the weekend trying to find the best, cheapest way to ship this hand crafted rocking dory... Not easy... At 40", it is oversized and won't fit in any of the boxes I've got here. My local wood crafter doesn't box them - too expensive. Most box companies don't carry anything close to this size so I don't have easy access to a supply. Then I found one company, boxes cost about $14-$20 each (for 4-10 boxes) that is crazy, but it is not a popular size and I don't want to have buy 150! Forget it anyway, they charge nearly $90 to ship just 4 flattened empty cartons to me! Good heavens.

So I scoop up the dory and cart it up the street to our local UPS pack & ship store, since they advertise that they can ship anything. But at a big price I come to find - well over $150! Who would buy a $195 boat that costs over $150 to ship? I can't tell this potential customer that. Sigh.... then I remembered the reproduction fire truck pedal car my DH got my son for Christmas - the box is still in the basement!! Mine!

Now we're down to $86 to pack and ship myself. Can I get it lower? The box is great, but larger than I actually need. So I poke around in the back room in search of heavy duty shorter boxes that I can cobble together with lots of tape. Found one! That is not my ideal way of course, but this box expense thing is not something I want to pass onto any customer, and the local wood crafter makes most of the money on this particular item. So now we're down to about $59 to ship a semi-disassembled boat in free boxes that I received with one of my own shipments and cobbled together. And the story continues... I am still working on getting this box shipped even cheaper... I am determined! This customer may not want the dory, but someone else will and I'd like to get it figured out and reasonable.