LTT store EU shipping

[TheGeekno72]

Disclaimer : this is not a support ticket, don't worry

 

Hi there LTT Store... team, I guess ?

 

I know you guys have a company to run but I'm one of the many broke fan out there for which a 30 bucks purchase is still a decision requiring some thought but since we're at the end of the year I thought I'd gift myself, FINALLY, an LTT store product and what better choice than one of those insulated bottles ! The problem is, shipping to France, around the Paris area), almost DOUBLES the final pricing, with shipping costing two thirds of the bottle's price tag itself and I thought that Canadian websites included tax unlike the US but my bad I guess I got mistaken in that regard.

 

I definitely cannot afford what is, from my perspective, a 56$ thermos bottle (no the complimentary stickers aren't cutting it out for me) and am saddened that there is no real work around that pricing even if I know this isn't on LMG/LTT

 

Facing forward, I'd advise LMG/LTT to get an EU facing website (with tax included, thanks EU for that one I guess), I hope they do realize they have plenty of EU fans that are craving for access to their products but with bad news when they reach the checkout page and from what I heard here and there, extended delivery times from 2 to 6+ weeks in some instances so maybe the idea of an investment in an EU based warehouse could worm its way through over time ? (I am fully aware this is kind of a heavy business decision and they probably thought about it already but I think every disappointed EU fan that can't order or do so with heavy reluctance add weight to my argument)

 

Hopefully seeing positive changes for the next years,

Til next time,

TheGeekn°72

[TheGeekno72]

So, I'm an everyday guy and that's all the justification/excuse required to explain why I can't get a water bottle ?

[Isuck Assimov]

if you are broke dont buy LTT merch my man.

That's one of them disposable income purchases.

[Brrrrrr]

You are buying a product from across the ocean. It's a marvel of modern logistics you can move a box from Canada to your frontdoor in Europe for 20 bucks.

 

A EU warehouse is not going to solve your issue. Then maybe the shipping you pay is 10 or 15 bucks but then they have to increase the price cause they are suddenly present in two countries renting two warehouses and paying extra employees. Stocking that EU warehouse also isn't free for LTT.

[Middcore]

How many threads about this do we need? 

 

Cross-ocean shipping is expensive. If you need a water bottle, you can buy one just as good in France for less, it just won't have an LTT logo on it. And if $30 is an amount of money that requires chin-scratching thought for you, an LTT logo on your water bottle is the type of luxury I think you'll just have to forego. 

 

 

[Neroon]

The worst part is, is that thinking this would make it a lot cheaper, is pretty crazy. They would need to hire a whole bunch of people, space to store it, and then we would still be looking at a decent chunk of shipping costs, because it's not exactly cheap to ship things within Europe.

Not saying it wouldn't be cheaper, but it would not be an amount that would really make the difference

[Headword]

Make the products still, but make enough to ship in bulk to new EU warehouse. If things run out wait for International shipping again before being able to ship locally. Sounds sooo much more fun.

[TheGeekno72]

On 12/9/2022 at 9:45 AM, Assimov said:

if you are broke dont buy LTT merch my man.

That's one of them disposable income purchases.

If it was the thermos plus, let's say, 5 bucks of shipping, I'd get it because it'd be a reasonable purchase

[TheGeekno72]

On 12/9/2022 at 2:53 PM, Brrrrrr said:

You are buying a product from across the ocean. It's a marvel of modern logistics you can move a box from Canada to your frontdoor in Europe for 20 bucks.

 

A EU warehouse is not going to solve your issue. Then maybe the shipping you pay is 10 or 15 bucks but then they have to increase the price cause they are suddenly present in two countries renting two warehouses and paying extra employees. Stocking that EU warehouse also isn't free for LTT.

How come a buddy of mine got his dbrand order shipped when he lives literally next door for less than 10 bucks, taxes and customs included ? As far as I'm aware dbrand are Canadian as well, what makes up the difference ?

[TheGeekno72]

On 12/9/2022 at 11:03 PM, NastyFlytrap said:

You can, just not for a low price.
The shipping + LMG making halo products raises the price.

Shipping is expensive (and its price is going up and up year after year, because of increased demand). LMG isnt making things for everyday prices. They charge a premium on their things.

If there was an EU warehouse, it'd still have to be shipped there. Mass discounts wouldnt knock off more than 5$ at max.

They don't make the products in Canada, do they ? Why not redirect them directly to EU straight from the supplier ? It'd probably cost less actually, considering the sheer volume of products shipped from china straight to EU

[TheGeekno72]

On 12/9/2022 at 11:15 PM, Middcore said:

How many threads about this do we need? 

 

Cross-ocean shipping is expensive. If you need a water bottle, you can buy one just as good in France for less, it just won't have an LTT logo on it. And if $30 is an amount of money that requires chin-scratching thought for you, an LTT logo on your water bottle is the type of luxury I think you'll just have to forego. 

 

 

The whole point is to get a product from a store I get behind, if I wanted a thermos, I'd just go to the store next street but that would be a pointless gesture, especially since I wanted to gift myself something kind of special for Xmas

[TheGeekno72]

On 12/9/2022 at 11:41 PM, Neroon said:

The worst part is, is that thinking this would make it a lot cheaper, is pretty crazy. They would need to hire a whole bunch of people, space to store it, and then we would still be looking at a decent chunk of shipping costs, because it's not exactly cheap to ship things within Europe.

Not saying it wouldn't be cheaper, but it would not be an amount that would really make the difference

Y'know that logistics operator renting warehouse space and redirecting shipping orders are aplenty in EU, right ? If every company that needed to ship something two countries over had to finance warehouses in every country of Europe to have as much coverage as possible, no one would get anything 

[TheGeekno72]

3 hours ago, NastyFlytrap said:

Some of their things are made in canada. I believe their blank shirts are, and screwdrivers too. 

Yes, but companies that do that are just orders of magnitudes bigger than LMG. Im not saying LMG couldnt do it, but i doubt it would be sustainable.

A YouTuber that goes by the name of Boris was selling merch made in Eastern Europe, I got some in a package that's big and heavy like a toaster and paid about 10 euros and he wasn't a whole lot over 2.5 millions subs, if some solo dude and a few friends helping him in logistics and production can do it, I am very surprised LMG isn't sizable enough to do it

[Middcore]

6 hours ago, TheGeekno72 said:

They don't make the products in Canada, do they ? Why not redirect them directly to EU straight from the supplier ? It'd probably cost less actually, considering the sheer volume of products shipped from china straight to EU

I love Boris but from what I've seen of his stuff he's running a glorified CafePress store. Everything he sells is an existing generic product with a logo slapped on it.

[Neroon]

7 hours ago, TheGeekno72 said:

Y'know that logistics operator renting warehouse space and redirecting shipping orders are aplenty in EU, right ? If every company that needed to ship something two countries over had to finance warehouses in every country of Europe to have as much coverage as possible, no one would get anything 

And if he was selling absolutely massive amounts of merch, then sure it would be worth it. But I very much doubt he is selling enough to make it worth.

Remember, to ship from Europe he would need:

 

- A company in Europe

- Employees in Europe, under the laws where they operate from

- Would need to do all the paper work every year, like taxes etc

- Would need to ship lots of products from Canada to Europe (remember t-shirts, screwdrivers etc are all finished in Canada)

- And they would still need to ship internationally

 

Oh and it all would need to cost less for the customer, and make it worth the while for LMG, because if it doesn't cut the price enough, you are basically adding a whole load of extra work and stress, by operating a business from a different continent, which makes it that much harder to manage things properly, all this for a small price cut.

 

Now if LMG was interested in spreading to Europe, which I absolutely do not believe they are, because why would they, then it could make sense. But doing this for the amount of merch they are selling, no way that it would do much at all.

Also remember that while Europeans can be very vocal, by far the majority of views come from NA, so all those great sales numbers, are mostly for NA.

  

7 hours ago, TheGeekno72 said:

They don't make the products in Canada, do they ? Why not redirect them directly to EU straight from the supplier ? It'd probably cost less actually, considering the sheer volume of products shipped from china straight to EU

Yes they do. They print at least the t-shirts there, the screwdrivers are put together in Canada etc. Of course he could put their production stuff in Europe as well, but this would a ton of costs, and only make it even more expensive.

[Yoinkerman]

23 hours ago, TheGeekno72 said:

If it was the thermos plus, let's say, 5 bucks of shipping, I'd get it because it'd be a reasonable purchase

The short answer is because you'd be paying $50 for a water bottle with $5 shipping 

[Alex T88]

16 hours ago, Neroon said:

Remember, to ship from Europe he would need:

 

- A company in Europe

- Employees in Europe, under the laws where they operate from

- Would need to do all the paper work every year, like taxes etc

- Would need to ship lots of products from Canada to Europe (remember t-shirts, screwdrivers etc are all finished in Canada)

- And they would still need to ship internationally

Or maybe, he could cut some corners and partner up with somebody who already has the infrastructure. Like for instance Jerryrig is selling his knife via LTT. Not sure how a partnership can be feasible, because I don't know the specifics of the law. But I think it could be done more easily than setting up everything from scratch.

 

36 minutes ago, Yoinkerman said:

The short answer is because you'd be paying $50 for a water bottle with $5 shipping 

I'd gladly pay the same amount and have it delivered in a timely fashion than waiting indefinitely and having to exchange 5 couriers before the parcel (hopefully) gets delivered to me. Improperly said, because the National Post Office does not deliver to your door step. Unless you pay a ridiculously high extra tax. I live in Eastern Europe.

17 hours ago, NastyFlytrap said:

Also, i can tell you for an absolute fact that things can be made in eastern europe for obscenely little by western standards. Trust me on this.

As someone who lives in Eastern Europe, in the EU, I 100% agree. For example, there are old people, pensioners who have been working their entire adult life in agriculture (40+ years) only to "benefit" from a monthly pension which in some cases is not even the equivalent of 15 USD. 

[Lomac]

On 12/11/2022 at 8:51 AM, TheGeekno72 said:

Y'know that logistics operator renting warehouse space and redirecting shipping orders are aplenty in EU, right ? If every company that needed to ship something two countries over had to finance warehouses in every country of Europe to have as much coverage as possible, no one would get anything 

Even simply hiring an existing logistics warehouse to ship out local orders has massive implications from a business perspective as it turns a company that operates solely in Canada into an international one, and that creates a lot of legal and financial headaches. Sure, you can try to do things under the radar to bypass it, but the CRA will come sniffing around sooner or later and they'll be hit with massive fines if they're lucky.

 

It's not as simple as hiring some space at a Rhenus Logistics warehouse in Berlin and saying you're done.

[Lomac]

On 12/11/2022 at 8:42 AM, TheGeekno72 said:

If it was the thermos plus, let's say, 5 bucks of shipping, I'd get it because it'd be a reasonable purchase

We don't even get $5 shipping within Canada for anything bigger than a letter, much less for an international parcel shipment...

[Ravendarat]

Just to put in perspective for me to get a bottle the shipping is $9.99 and I am about 1400 kms from Vancouver, so not that far. So for shipping to the middle of EU to only be double seems to me to be pretty reasonable. I think one of the problems is that there are minimums and you are ONLY ordering one bottle. Out of interest if you put 6 bottles in you cart how much is shipping? Might be worth it to see if you have any friends that want stuff and do a combined order and just split the shipping?

[Alex T88]

12 hours ago, Ravendarat said:

Might be worth it to see if you have any friends that want stuff and do a combined order and just split the shipping?

That is actually a great idea, as long as you have some friends or trustworthy people to split the bill with. Used to do that quite often, back when I was a university student, with a couple of very good friends, when buying stuff from China, in bulk.

[TheGeekno72]

On 12/12/2022 at 10:05 PM, Ravendarat said:

Just to put in perspective for me to get a bottle the shipping is $9.99 and I am about 1400 kms from Vancouver, so not that far. So for shipping to the middle of EU to only be double seems to me to be pretty reasonable. I think one of the problems is that there are minimums and you are ONLY ordering one bottle. Out of interest if you put 6 bottles in you cart how much is shipping? Might be worth it to see if you have any friends that want stuff and do a combined order and just split the shipping?

 

13 hours ago, Alex T88 said:

That is actually a great idea, as long as you have some friends or trustworthy people to split the bill with. Used to do that quite often, back when I was a university student, with a couple of very good friends, when buying stuff from China, in bulk.

Haaaaa sadly I'm the only one fo the few friends I have locally that is interested enough in tech and related YouTubers to want to buy their products so that's not an option

[AlTech]

Don't want to repeat what's already been said but this isn't actually about the cost of shipping goods to the EU. That cost is lower than what LMG is charging.

 

LMG works with a shipping company that is owned by a friend of Linus (source: a wan show from a really long time ago) and they happen to charge insane amounts for shipping to the EU.

 

Contrary to what has been said, LMG doesn't need to set up a company in the EU or hire employees in the EU to ship merch from the EU to EU customers. There are companies (in the EU but also elsewhere) that offer to rent warehouse space and ship items to customers for you, you just need to ship your products to them so they can then distribute them as needed.

 

I suspect LMG either:

1. don't know that companies offer the services I mentioned (I highly doubt this but it's possible)
2. don't believe they have enough of a following in Europe/the EU to justify doing this
3. don't believe enough people from Europe/the EU would be willing to buy LMG merch even if they do have a considerable following in the EU/Europe

[Brrrrrr]

On 12/11/2022 at 5:45 PM, TheGeekno72 said:

How come a buddy of mine got his dbrand order shipped when he lives literally next door for less than 10 bucks, taxes and customs included ? As far as I'm aware dbrand are Canadian as well, what makes up the difference ?

If you can't imagine why shipping an envelope is cheaper than a box you are maybe not the right individual to complain about shipping cost.

 

Taxes included just means the price is higher in the shop. Dbrand pays the same VAT %.