Teeing Up Your Shipping Costs - Harley Abrams

An often solitary game, played in the wide open spaces of spacious fields and breezy pastures, the popularity fo golf exploded over the past year and a half as Covid-19 brought nearly every other sport to a sudden halt, forcing many to delay games and restrict players. With at most four participants per group, spread out over hundreds of square feet at a time, golf is the perfect sport for the infectious-aware, and consumer buying habits have proven this. With traditional sporting-goods stores closed or heavily limited in how many customers could enter for so long, those same consumers have shifted away from relying on local brick & mortar stores and familiar retail brands, and towards buying directly from the distributer, skipping the middleman altogether to get what they want at a better price. 

This presents those wholesale distributers with a new set of problems, as suddenly their shipping costs for direct to customer sales have more than doubled, and consumers are beginning to expect a higher quality of engagement, both from the brand and in their deliverable products and packaging. Harley Abrams, Operations manager at SuperSpeed Golf knows these problems all too well, and shares with Pitstop some of his essential answers and easy fixes for shipping direct to your consumer.

• Partner up to solve problems: SuperSpeed Golf's flagship product, weighted training clubs, are roughly the same length as a typical golf club, which all share a similar shipping struggle in that they're an irregular shape & size, and require special processing. That special processing often costs extra, adding to already substantial delivery costs. Try leveraging any relationships you have in the industry, such as cutting a deal with a company that has already-established delivery services and contracts, and make a deal to ship like-with-like to your mutual profit. Leveraging the increased combined volume can lead you to an even sweeter delivery deal from your choice of shipping companies, allowing both you and your partner to pay less for a higher grade of shipping service.  You can also leverage this for packaging design companies, finding solutions for your similar products that otherwise don't fit traditional boxes or sealed packaging.
• Consider the unboxing experience: Customers demand more from their brands, and the packaging an item arrives in is not immune to this. Thanks to unboxing culture, consumers have expectations that the process of getting a product is itself gratifying, and the harder a company leans into it, the more engaged and excited your customers will be. Consider the careful presentation of Apple products, or the informative details included in some subscription boxes, or even making the box itself worth the order.
• Have a clear dialogue with your customers: Talk to you customers throughout the purchase and delivery process, with frequent updates, additional information, options for returns and feedback, and any delays in delivery. Simply offering proactive communication with your customers any errors or issues in filling an order can buy you more time if you are having packaging issues. This can also lead to additional purchases, which you can bundle to save on overall shipping costs while selling more product overall.
• Have a clear dialogue with your partners: In the case of returns, who is responsible for the various associated costs?  Where does the package go? Have these questioned clearly answered and agreed upon with your partners to avoid any unnecessary friction and headaches in the future. Know your costs before you ever pay a single penny.

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Mentioned in this episode:

Triple Whale - Whale Mail