3 Tips For Taking Your Small Company's Shipping International
Posted on: 16 December 2016
Thanks to the rising popularity of online shopping, you may find that opening your small company's product sales to foreign countries can be a great way to boost your overall revenue. In order to ensure that selling goods and services internationally doesn't become a source of stress for your small company, you need to take the time to create a cohesive shipping plan.
Here are three tips that will help you avoid problems when shipping internationally in the future.
1. Limit your international offerings to a select group of products.
Choosing the products that international customers will have access to is vital when it comes to creating a successful international shipping plan. While it may be feasible to ship large items domestically, these same large items can product insanely expensive shipping costs when sent to a foreign country.
By limiting your international offerings to small, lightweight items, you will be able to easily package and send these items off to customers across the globe for a reasonable price.
2. Understand country-specific shipping regulations.
It's important that you take the time to become familiar with any special regulations that may affect the items you can ship into a foreign country. While an item might seem harmless enough, the destination country may have unique regulations that govern the import of this item.
For example, Vietnam makes it illegal for citizens to receive foreign calendars for commercial purposes. A calendar may seem harmless to you, but shipping more than 100 calendars to Vietnamese customers could get you into some trouble. Be sure that you look up the specific regulations for each country, then determine which countries you can ship your unique products to with ease.
3. Consider using a fulfillment service.
If you don't want to worry about the hassle of preparing products for shipment to foreign customers, you may find it beneficial to partner with a fulfillment service that can complete this process on your behalf.
All you have to do is send a supply of products to your fulfillment service, forward any orders to the service, and allow them to ship product directly from their warehouse. You will have to pay a small fee, but the benefit of having a third-party handle your international shipments makes partnering with a fulfillment service a worthwhile investment.
Don't be afraid to grow your small company by expanding your product availability to foreign markets. Just be sure that you are prepared to create a cohesive and effective international shipping plan that will eliminate the headaches associated with shipping to foreign customers.
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