How To Save $$ For Your Warehouse

Well, I’ve been gone for about 8 months but we’re just going to pretend like I never left. Just got back from paternity leave (baby #2) + some other life events, and I’m ready to write some more! Let’s just jump right into it - no fluff around here.

How to save some money for your warehouse

Let’s face it, margins are tough these days. Saving the pennies in multiple places can lead to big dollars on your bottom line. Remember the old “penny saved, penny earned” nonsense? Well, it might not be nonsense.

1. Packaging:

There are 2 main places we get packaging supplies for our warehouse: Uline, and eBay. Yes, eBay.

• Hard packaging (boxes) - Uline. They have the most consistent product. However you can always save money by simple calling and asking them for a discount. Pick your top 3 box sizes, and say “I order a lot of these, is there any discounts you can apply to my account?” Their customer service is amazing, and this whole process should take 5 minutes.

  • We got 1 box down from $1.10 to $0.97, and another box from $0.52 to $0.43. These savings certainly add up over thousands of units

• Soft packaging (polymailers, padded mailers) - eBay. This, surprisingly, is where you can get the best bang for your buck on bulk orders. There is ALWAYS free shipping, and the prices are cheaper that of Uline. There is even a bigger difference on polymailers. See below:

2. Thermal labels

People don’t talk about this a lot, but UPS will give you free thermal labels. Once you set up an account and begin pushing some volume through it, just email your rep asking for thermal labels. We moved away from Uline labels to only using the free ones (they’ll send us 30-40k at a time), which is saving us $0.04-.05 per package. That adds up a ton when you’re pushing large volume (+ a packing slip on each order)

3. Refurbished equipment from eBay

Don’t need to go into TONS of detail about this, but here is a couple examples:

1. Tape machine/cutter from Uline = $650. Same model without the “brand” name off eBay is $120. It might not last as long, but you can replace 5 of them before it costs you more for 1 Uline one.

2. Tape wetter/dispenser from Uline = $1,650. We ordered a refurbished one from eBay for $700…. $900 in savings

3. Label dispenser: Uline is $400, a new one from eBay (no name brand) is $140.

Before you place that equipment order, spend 5 minutes browsing eBay or other sites to see how much you can save! That stuff seriously adds up when you’re bootstrapping.

4. Use a refund-automation tool

There are tools out there that will audit your shipping accounts (primarily UPS and Fedex) to make sure you are getting fully refunded when they don’t hold their end of the deal - guaranteed deliveries, unauthorized surcharges, etc. Set them up, and they go on autopilot. They will scrape every package + charge on your account, file the claim, and only charge you for a % of what they get you back.

We just switched to Lojistic (they have great reporting, on top of automation), but Refund Retriever is also a great one. We onboarded with Lojistic last week, and they’ve already gotten us a whopping $5, with another $1,100 pending. Unfortunately they can’t audit DHL or USPS, which is the bulk of our volume, but it’s still helpful to recoup some of that $$.

5. Use an awesome 3PL that saves you a headache:)

I would be remiss if I didn’t shamelessly plug the 3PL I run, Tidalwave. We have a couple more opening for clients doing 1k+ orders a month, and (generally) have less than 10 SKU’s. If you feel like we’d be a good fit for your brand - or just want to chat about logistics, and are looking for feedback - shoot me an email. Always willing to chat.

[email protected] 

In summary:

• Call and ask Uline for a discount on the products you buy a lot

• Order your soft packaging off eBay

• Set up a UPS account and get free thermal labels via your rep

• Order refurbished equipment from eBay (tape dispensers, thermal printers, etc)

• Use a refund automation tool like Lojistic or Refund Retriever.

Tweet at me and let me know the savings you get from following the 5 steps above.

Thx for reading!!:)