Is anyone else bothered by fw’s calculation of shipping costs? I bought a WiFi card from them. This thing is lterally about the size of a postage stamp. You can stick it between two pieces of cardboard and put it in a regular envelope and there it is. So it costs almost $10 to ship this?
It makes me look at the $9 extension cards and say “yeah, that sounds cheap, but…”.
It seems like fw is trying to do things differently than the average corporation, yes? But maybe not shipping?
My 2cents, I assume the higher costs are purely based on the fact it’s a smaller item and not a bulk order.
In reality, that is probably what it costs to:
Store it
Have somebody walk to it in the warehouse, pick it and pack it
Buy suitable packing materials
Have someone ready the parcel for shipping from the bulk warehouse
Pay the courier for said shipping
Add an allowance for lost parcels etc.
Lots of retailers absorb the costs of doing that, but in the case of Framework they’re a new company who probably don’t yet have anywhere close to the volume of transactions to be able to get volume discounts yet.
It’s very likely that Framework use a distribution company rather than pick and pack everything themselves, which of course does need to be paid for…And if that’s the case, ‘buy a postage stamp’ really isn’t an option - they will have standardise processes and standardised agreements with couriers like FedEx, most likely with standard prices for different volumetric sizes. And of course the distribution company need their profit margins as well…
I’m sure as Framework build up volume, then shipping costs will come down.
Yep. First clue, FW is based in CA, and the products ship from NJ.
They have clearly stated that they are using a dist. partner a long time ago. I don’t remember the name of the company but it has been mentioned as well.
Using a partner does add cost, but is critical for a new small company so that they don’t have to build up that infrastructure immediately. And they are stuck with the partners shipping company of choice and the pricing for shipping.