The upcoming plastic ban has forced us to revaluate every aspects of how we do things as the Plastic Tax has had a hugely negative effect on our industry and we are expecting the plastic ban to have an even bigger impact on our business.
One of the big issues that keeps coming up is delivery, whether that's price or delivery reliability.
We have tried all the major delivery companies ( all I really do mean all) and we have come to the conclusion that the old expression “buy cheap, buy twice” is absolutely true, but there is a maximum price people want to pay for delivery and we just can't keep subsidising our delivery to the same extent, so we really did have to find a middle ground.
The plastic tax meant we had to abandon our free delivery as unaffordable (as much as our customers loved it), and we then moved onto a subsidised delivery model ( UK Mainland orders over £74.99 will still be free delivery) but the Plastic Ban has meant that we have to limit the amount that we subsidise delivery, we will continue to part subsidies delivery but not at the 18 to 24% rate we were subsidising delivery.
So we think we have found the right solution, as we will now be using Royal Mail for all of our international orders under 5kg, and 95% of our UK orders, this has the benefit of allowing us to charge the same for Scottish Highland, NI and UK islands as the mainland, it does mean we now have a one day handling period, but you shouldn't notice any delays in receiving your order, with the exception of next day service, as we will now have a one day handling period for all orders.
So we believe we have found the perfect balance of price, reliability, convenient and consistent service ( our Scottish customers did tend to have a few issues with DX.
So we think we have found the perfect balance of low cost & reliable for our customers and to be completely honest cost effective for us, we all win.
As always I am here if you have any feedback as we would all love to hear your opinion
Thanks
Deb
Operation Director & Finance Director
