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Ina Steiner is co-founder and Editor of EcommerceBytes and has been reporting on ecommerce since 1999. She's a widely cited authority on marketplace selling and is author of "Turn eBay Data Into Dollars" (McGraw-Hill 2006). Her blog was featured in the book, "Blogging Heroes" (Wiley 2008). She is a member of the Online News Association (Sep 2005 - present) and Investigative Reporters and Editors (Mar 2006 - present). Follow her on Twitter at @ecommercebytes and send news tips to ina@ecommercebytes.com. See disclosure at EcommerceBytes.com/disclosure/.
Buying supplies is already expensive. Maybe I should go talk to the manager at my Office Depot to see if they’d start offering more shipping supplies in-store. I can get a large roll of bubble wrap there, but it doesn’t come in its own dispenser box.
That means I would have to reuse the one I got from U-Line — at least until it wears out. I guess I could also install a wooden rod in my attic to place the roll on. It really helps having a small attic in my office to store supplies and inventory, especially since it’s under the huge oak tree, insulating it from temperature changes.
Anywho, the types of things I can’t get there are a variety of box sizes in bulk and large bags of peanuts. While I do buy a large quantity of packing tape when I order boxes from U-Line, I can get them locally. U-Line offers large bags of peanuts, but they ship via freight services ($80 about 5 years ago).
There is a U-Line facility in Texas, but it’s several hours from here. I wish it were closer so I could just go pick up my supplies and do away with the shipping cost altogether. If I can’t source things locally, I may have to start making the trip.
Although, I should calculate the cost of gas, first. LOL One good thing about being on the Texas Gulf Coast is that our gas prices are lower than they are further north. I’ve driven a straight 14 hours to Kansas before, so I could certainly handle a long round trip within Texas.
“We have added an alternative product that is a paper-based bubble alternative and has a smaller shipping and storage footprint.”
What is the name of this product, please? I would like to check it out on the FastPack site. . . .
I was shipping some 5 lb. boots Sunday and found they just fit into a medium size flat rate box. However, eBay shipping no longer gave me the option of using that box, although Regional rate box A was offered (too small) and Regional rate box B was offered (more expensive than normal Priority). Large Flat Rate box was not offered either.
I thought this might be a programming error by eBay, so I logged into Paypal and shipped it there Medium Flat Rate Box, no problem, for $12.80.