Shipping to Europe

[Zephtech]

Hi, i know its a niche thing and im sure its already been answered but is there any future plan to decrease shipping costs to Europe/UK as it feels a bit much to swallow a near 20 dollar shipping fee for a 20-30 dollar order? 

Love the merch and really want to get my hands on some soon!

[Lairlair]

Agreed, I don't know that LMG can afford a Europe based warehouse but if there were I'd get the desk pad

[ColinJ451]

Think that Canadian postal charges are higher than the US, GN for example charges for an equivalent mouse mat is $10 cheaper for postage and they have said that the postage costs are pretty much near to at cost

[No_dice]

I can say from experience that on top of the shipping you can add a import fee you will have to pay when your item(s) get to your country. I paid a good 25€ import tax and handeling costs for 3 Tshirts. I live in belgium

[An0maly_76]

On 2/19/2022 at 5:33 PM, Zephtech said:

Hi, i know its a niche thing and im sure its already been answered but is there any future plan to decrease shipping costs to Europe/UK as it feels a bit much to swallow a near 20 dollar shipping fee for a 20-30 dollar order? 

Love the merch and really want to get my hands on some soon!

With diesel fuel at $5.00 a gallon, container ships burning probably a gallon every 20 minutes, and the shipping industry hurting for people to work, I would count myself lucky to be paying that.

[IkeaGnome]

27 minutes ago, An0maly_76 said:

With diesel fuel at $5.00 a gallon, container ships burning probably a gallon every 20 minutes, and the shipping industry hurting for people to work, I would count myself lucky to be paying that.

Try tons of fuel per minute. Literally. 

https://transportgeography.org/contents/chapter4/transportation-and-energy/fuel-consumption-containerships/

Or roughly 43.75 gallons/hour (200 Lph for non Americans) at 63,000 gallons per day roughly for Panamax. That chart also doesn't go all the way up to Panamax ship size either. (65,000-80,000 tons)

[An0maly_76]

1 minute ago, IkeaGnome said:

Try tons of fuel per minute. Literally. 

https://transportgeography.org/contents/chapter4/transportation-and-energy/fuel-consumption-containerships/

Or roughly 43.75 gallons/hour (200 Lph for non Americans) at 63,000 gallons per day roughly for Panamax. That chart also doesn't go all the way up to Panamax ship size either. (65,000-80,000 tons)

I rest my case.

[IkeaGnome]

1 minute ago, An0maly_76 said:

I rest my case.

For what it's worth. I do quite a bit of shipping for work. Before the pandemic, if a part was under $3000 USD it wasn't cost effective to ship it out to get rebuilt. Currently, we're up to about $25,000. Everything on our site has to come in by barge though.

[An0maly_76]

35 minutes ago, James Evens said:

They have printed money over the last months meaning I don't see any issue neither do I feel sorry for them.

Shipping companies don't print money. And printing more money just lowers its buying power in the long run, which ultimately exacerbates inflation. Your argument is invalid.

Edited March 18, 2022 by An0maly_76

[An0maly_76]

2 minutes ago, James Evens said:

@An0maly_76 Take a look at the financial reports from Maersk, Hapag-Lloyd, etc. and tell me how they aren't making a lot of money.

Also they very likely won't feel the fuel prices as much as you. They probably already bought a fixed volume for a fixed price.

Making money is not the same as printing money. Printing money, I might add, has nothing to do with shipping costs. And they're not making as much as you think. There is no such thing as fixed price with fuel, trust me. I have experience in the shipping industry.

Edited March 18, 2022 by An0maly_76

[BiLKiNiS]

my issue with shipping to europe is not really the shipping cost but the fact that the price listed on the site don't include the canadian taxes witch is very strange for us europeen because our price always include the VAT

So for my order I pay 20% canadian taxe and then at arrival I pay 12% of custom fee and the 20% of VAT

 

In europe VAT is due in the country of the personne making the purchase, so if someone outside europe bought something he should not pay VAT on that

I don't know how it works in Canada but maybe We shouldn't be charge the 20% of canadian taxe that we have at checkout?

[HanZie82]

On 3/18/2022 at 4:03 PM, James Evens said:

Companies printing money is a synonym for creating a very high profit margin.

Not a smart thing to say in an INTERNATIONAL forum where sayings get lost in translation.
Just be clear and say what you want to say in a direct manner to avoid confusions like these.

 

24 minutes ago, BiLKiNiS said:

my issue with shipping to Europe is not really the shipping cost but the fact that the price listed on the site don't include the Canadian taxes witch is very strange for us European because our price always include the VAT

So for my order I pay 20% Canadian tax and then at arrival I pay 12% of custom fee and the 20% of VAT

 

In Europe VAT is to in the country of the person making the purchase, so if someone outside Europe bought something he should not pay VAT on that

I don't know how it works in Canada but maybe We shouldn't be charge the 20% of Canadian tax that we have at checkout?

It can be even more convoluted then that.
Our country would demand VAT taxes be payed in our country too.

With the current prices, and the shipping. I don't expect anyone to buy much from the LTT store.
Just a single T-shirt would be over 100 bucks.

[AIO H110I cool Dude]

Actually I think a warehouse option in Germany would be a great idea. Why Germany? The location is just smack in the middle of Europe, England would be the obvious choice, because of language, but geographically it still suck, Germany is better, and most people speak english. In fact a lot of US/UK citizen work in Germany, maybe a spouse need a part time job. I do not think it takes much to setup a European shop, 1 part time worker and a small warehouse or large basement or a ship container, would be enough.

Hell I live in Denmark, and have a large basement and I am a senior citizen on retirement, I could house/manage a LTT Europe store.

When all is said and done, I do not think 20USD shipping cost is too expensive, but you can't just order a bag of cable ties, you have to make a larger purchase to reduce shipping cost divided by all items you buy, but when a limited or exclusive item is launched in the store, you are screwed as a European customer.

So yes I think a European store would increase sales for LTT merchandise. But will the cost of running said store lower the cost of shipping, due to the price of fuel for any means of transportation, and the added cost of setting up shop and staff wage.

It's hard to find an optimal solution, that covers all aspects of the problem.

 

- The Danish Hobbit

[BiLKiNiS]

Since brexit, a warehouse in UK for managing all the country in the european union is not a good idea since at the moment product coming in the EU from UK are considered almost the same as coming from the US taxe wise.

So there is no advantage on that side and the administrative paperwork would most likely be the same

[Just that Mario]

At the prices of LTT merch, shipping cost isn't even significant. Bigger issue is the VAT and on bigger orders, import free.

[Flying-Dutchman]

On 3/17/2022 at 3:17 PM, No_dice said:

I can say from experience that on top of the shipping you can add a import fee you will have to pay when your item(s) get to your country. I paid a good 25€ import tax and handeling costs for 3 Tshirts. I live in belgium

I can second that. I life in Warsaw, Poland and the shipping takes about 30-50 days.... like... in the sense you already receive mails with "how do you like the products etc." before it even arrives. And I also had to pay import taxes. I think those import taxes are just something whole EU has to deal with when receiving from Canada, but the shipping is so slow... 

 

Then the extra problem. In Poland the government owned Poczta Polska (so the national mail) is the worst I've ever seen in a country. They are masters in loosing parcels, not delivering correctly, etc. etc. And they are extremely slow. They will also outright not deliver the parcel to your door, but just dump a pickup notification in your mailbox. Nothing as frustrating as such notif when you've been home whole day (working from home). 

 

As shipping is already 20-30 USD, why can't it be a courier service? I order many things online and most stuff from the USA etc. comes with 3-5 days with DHL or UPS and works perfect. Costs are also in that price-range.

 

Anyway, that experience is a bit underwhelming. Nevertheless I'm very happy with my WAN hoodie and deskpad!

 

@LinusTech iFixIt has a european depot maybe LTT can partner up?  (just saying)...

 

 

[LinusTech]

The bigger issues are the taxation implications of having a physical location in another country. It's crazy complicated and our accounting department has a really difficult time with Creator Warehouse orders as it is.

 

Otherwise we could just stock stuff at the Various Amazons around the world and call it a day.

[AndreiArgeanu]

6 hours ago, Flying-Dutchman said:

I can second that. I life in Warsaw, Poland and the shipping takes about 30-50 days.... like... in the sense you already receive mails with "how do you like the products etc." before it even arrives. And I also had to pay import taxes. I think those import taxes are just something whole EU has to deal with when receiving from Canada, but the shipping is so slow... 

20$ shipping and 2 month wait time? I pay 3-4$ to get stuff shipped from China with import tax in a similar time frame and it's not like the distance is much different. You'd think paying so much extra would get you better shipping times

[jaypro]

On 4/6/2022 at 12:48 AM, LinusTech said:

The bigger issues are the taxation implications of having a physical location in another country. It's crazy complicated and our accounting department has a really difficult time with Creator Warehouse orders as it is.

 

Otherwise we could just stock stuff at the Various Amazons around the world and call it a day.

From a business perspective, it sounds like most of the complicated international taxes would be a fixed cost, like an additional accountant or tax expert, whose cost would be similar if you did $1,000 in merch sales versus $10 million.

 

From that perspective, at some point it would make sense to bite the bullet and hire someone to handle the complicated taxes.

 

Since the goal seems to be continuous scaling of the merchandise business, at some point shipping costs and delivery times would become a major issue.

Hard to measure the revenue/sale gains of offering faster and cheaper international shipping , even harder to speculate without knowing any of the numbers, but the way LTT store is trending, I would suspect that eventually LMG creator warehouse will store and ship from different countries.

 

I think the idea/plan of opening creator warehouse to other content creators merchandise would accelerate this, since it is a very nice to have "feature".

 

[ModProg]

This is especially interesting for me in the future, as with the addition of more expensive products like Backpack and Screwdriver the 150€ import duty-free border is necessarily broken, and you get the toll on top of the costs. (Plus the issue of shopify? not being able to correctly handle the case that they should not add the vat on these orders as you need to pay them locally yourself)

[Xwartu]

On 2/19/2022 at 5:33 PM, Zephtech said:

Hi, i know its a niche thing and im sure its already been answered but is there any future plan to decrease shipping costs to Europe/UK as it feels a bit much to swallow a near 20 dollar shipping fee for a 20-30 dollar order? 

Love the merch and really want to get my hands on some soon!

My shipping cost for just the backpack was $20 to the states. 

[Panito69]

Just looking at twitter and forum posts, it seems like it would be fiseable to have a warehouse in EU, just by the numbre of sales that are not beign donde bcs of shipping and taxes.

Personally i've allways wanted a watter bottle, t-shirsts and some plushies of ltts, but every time i see the shipping and calculate taxes, i steped back.

Now with the back pack release i checked again, but same history, now i've seen im not alone. And i realy want to get the merch and tools but...

So please consider like and subs the eu warehouse.

 

PS: Many british companies with a big base of eu customers make the same after brexit. Got a wareehouse on france or belgium and sell from there. No import fees, no expensive shipping, the wonders of the economic european area...

[ZaphodB]

I just started to make an order. The new backpack, a water bottle and the discounted WAN-hoodie. Total 350 $. Including tax and shipping it came down to 520 $. That’s way too much, I’m really sorry.

To start with, the backpack is *expensive*. I knew that. But add the taxes and the insane shipping costs… I’m, unfortunately, passing.

 

BTW, I live in the Netherlands.

[ouchie]

36 minutes ago, ZaphodB said:

The new backpack, a water bottle and the discounted WAN-hoodie. Total 350 $. Including tax and shipping it came down to 520 $.

Yeah that is why I only got the backpack. I want a water bottle too, but that is too much.

 

For the backpack I paid $362 and that is with tax and shipping. I still need to pay import tax and delivery company's handling costs

 

Same country.

[DeltaBruggemann]

4 hours ago, ZaphodB said:

I just started to make an order. The new backpack, a water bottle and the discounted WAN-hoodie. Total 350 $. Including tax and shipping it came down to 520 $. That’s way too much, I’m really sorry.

They clarified this on WAN yesterday. They had to decide either to hold orders until the backpack was ready to ship with the rest of the order or to send out the rest of the order and then send the backpack once it arrives. 
The former means only one shipping charge and the latter means two shipping charges (Rest of the order and backpack)

 

They decided on splitting the orders due to how many people will fill up the support que wondering why their order hasn’t shipped yet even though they are waiting for the backpack to arrive at their warehouse.

 

Its not an ideal situation but by adding other items it’s basically creating two separate orders.

 

If you want to watch the full breakdown as to why the situation is what it is. It’s at 1:21:48 on this weeks WAN Show.