Packaging “is now front and center and a glaring opportunity for improvement,” Kiessner said. retailers are using on-demand machines, and predicts a majority will do so within three years.
#Www endicia com software
Hanko Kiessner, CEO of Packsize International, which makes such machines and the software that drives them, estimates 16 percent of U.S. Many retailers have responded by procuring ‘on-demand’ packaging machines, which custom-tailor shipping boxes.
#Www endicia com free
“They’ve got the pressures of free shipping, which isn’t really free, and their costs are going up,” he said. “Amazon has forced everybody into free shipping,” said John Haber, head of logistics consultancy Spend Management Experts.Īmine Khechfe, co-founder of Endicia, which provides shipping services to e-commerce companies, said retailers are squeezed. The world’s largest online retailer offers free shipping to customers who pay a $99 annual fee to join its Amazon Prime program - a revenue stream most retailers have not been able to replicate. Retailers are hemmed in by their need to match Inc. Now they are focusing more on packaging, charging a fee for design services while also levying what they call ‘dimensional weight’ surcharges for boxes that take up too much room in relation their weight. UPS and FedEx have sought new ways to cut costs, such as dropping batches of packages at urban retailers, where customers can retrieve them. (See a graphic of UPS and FedEx's rates and margins here tmsnrt.rs/2h1ig9u) domestic business have stagnated or declined in recent years, in part because they have invested billions of dollars to handle rising volumes. Rates for a 5-pound (2.3-kg) box traveling up to 1,400 miles (2250 km) by UPS Ground or FedEx Home Delivery have nearly doubled since 2006, to $14.18, according to SJ Consulting Group.ĭespite the increases, profit margins at UPS and FedEx’s U.S. They also have levied surcharges on retailers for residential addresses and rural deliveries. To counter rising costs, UPS and FedEx have raised package rates by between 4.9 percent and 5.9 percent annually since 2009. UPS expects the e-commerce share to hit 51 percent by 2019. E-commerce shipments accounted for 46 percent of UPS’s total volume last year, up from 36 percent in 2009. “If the box can’t hold the weights, we’ll have to fail this one,” said Jonathon McWherter, a UPS engineer conducting the test. On a recent morning, the load was too much for a box containing a furniture shipment, spilling weights over the floor as it collapsed. The UPS lab puts new packaging through rigorous tests, piling weights on boxes, then simulating the jolts of a delivery truck traversing a bumpy road.
Main rival FedEx Corp has a similar facility in Memphis.
The average rate reduction is around 20 percent, he said.
“In most cases we are able to get retailers a better rate,” says Quint Marini, who runs the lab. Up to 60 percent of requests handled by UPS’s package laboratory are for smaller packages to cut shipping rates, the company told Reuters. This cuts costs for retailers and raises margins for shippers. The shared solution: design new, space-saving packages that can help improve package density on delivery trucks. And retailers cannot pass along the cost, because they must offer free shipping in order to compete. Shippers’ margins are falling or stagnating, despite steady price increases, because homes are roughly three times as expensive to deliver to as business addresses. consumers now demanding free shipping on most packages, shippers and retailers are facing a squeeze. Online retail sales are expected to reach $392.5 billion this year, according to research firm eMarketer, but with U.S. ADDISON, Ill., Dec 14 (Reuters) - In an unassuming building in the Chicago suburb of Addison, United Parcel Service Inc engineers design custom boxes for retailers as part of a joint effort to tackle a vexing issue: the high cost of delivering e-commerce packages.
0 kommentar(er)
