Royal Mail

[flh801978]

Cobbs. Did i read that the device was costing you too much to produce now? From 25 to 90£
Let me know if i can help..i have an engineering co
Ian

 

[trvlr]

The Chinese involvement less there is in UK (and other countries) affairs - especially essential services - the better. The more outside agencies (European or otherwise - as well as Chinese) take over here the more money is drained out of the UK and into foregin interests and their bank accounts; and inevitably lead to even higher costs here. The energy companies and transport are good examples...

 

[TomGW]

I looked at the pad o vac website.
Clever idea. I can see why the automotive types like it. But free postage on all orders just isn't viable.
Take a few weeks and analyse your sales.
Group them into (say)
£0-5, £5-10, £10-20, £20-50, £50+
In each category, how many do you get, what is the total value of those size orders, what contribution are they making to your business (sales value less the cost of the product, packaging and postage)
Then count the time you spend assembling and posting out each size of order and assign a value to your time.

I'll bet when you do this, you find you are making little profit, or even a loss, on the very small orders.
It's universal in business. There is a minimum size that just isn't economical.
1. Change your policy first to free postage on orders over (say) £20 and add postage charge at cost below that.
2. Then consider setting a minimum order value, but there's probably no need if you do 1.

You will say "but if I charge for post on small orders, I'll lose business"
You will, but I bet not much, and if your sales £ go down, the profit won't go down as much. You may even get some of your time back not messing about with onesies and twosies....
HTH

I think the advice given here is very valid, particularly point #1. Postage at cost is totally transparent and your customers will fully understand even it they don't like it.
The alternative is to restructure your prices to ensure that the cost of postage is recovered with smaller unit/value orders. This may have the effect of losing some sales but increase the scale of other orders.
My brother's business has evolved to be largely on-line now and the next generation (nephews) are very adept at balancing the cost/scale/profit equation. As has already been said, there is a threshold below which you are actually better off without.

 

[Cobbs]

Cobbs. Did i read that the device was costing you too much to produce now? From 25 to 90£
Let me know if i can help..i have an engineering co
Ian

PM'd.