From a business perspective, one of our objectives was to be able to compete with other national cabinet retailers by offering free shipping to our clients when transactions go over a certain amount.
At the start of 2021 when we were planning our launch we honestly couldn't make the math work - no matter how hard we tried.
On one hand we can price in the cost of shipping into each product. While this might seem like the fair thing to do, it actually has an opposing effect on clients that buy a full project that includes a full kitchen, bathrooms as well as cabinetry for their laundry/project rooms and/or bar areas. It unfairly penalizes these types of clients by over inflating their overall costs.
On the other side, by not pricing shipping into our product costs, it makes clients that buy single pieces (maybe a vanity cabinet, as an example) think that the price of shipping is too high (relative to the cost of the cabinet they are buying).
There's really no way to win here.
The costs of shipping have been driven up exponentially this year. And, they're not stopping either. On our side, we saw our LTL shipping costs drive up another 20% over the weekend of October 16th/17th, 2021. We don't make any money on our shipping. Also, we didn't pass on the shipping costs to our clients either. This is a really tough issue to manage!
The shipping costs on our website are calculated upon an average cost to ship items of a certain value by LTL (Less Than Truckload) carrier. Most of our items will only ship via LTL carriers due to the size and weights of our products. There are, however, a few cabinets that we can send via other methods like FedEx Ground. In these kind of cases, we urge you to contact us to see if we are able to offer you alternative shipping methods. We'll be happy to help with your enquiries.
Outlook:
- LTL volume is at peak and capacity will only get tighter over the upcoming holiday season.
- Diesel and gasoline prices continue to rise.
- Staffing challenges - both to drivers and logistical workers - will continue to affect service levels. Carriers are raising wages and offering incentives, and while hiring is occurring, vaccination requirements may slow the process.
- More carriers are assessing detention charges, often driven by congestion at distribution centers.
We hope that many of these challenges find a pathway through resolution... not just for our benefit, but for the benefit of all fellow consumers in all industries. We pray that our leaders can find ways to ease supply chain woes so that our economies can recover from the deep routed affects of the pandemic.
As always, please feel free to reach out to us when you are putting together the items for your orders. We will endeavor try to find ways where we can save you some money!