Guest Posted June 30, 2005 Share Posted June 30, 2005 Hi all, Here is a 2 part question on using drop shippers to supply my orders from an E-commerce site. 1. Say you set up a site offering camping gear. A customer orders 1 tent, a cook set, and binoculars. How do I handle the shipping logistics of this order?? (the tent comes from drop shipper "A" in New York, and the cook set comes from drop shipper "B" in California, the binoculars come from shipper "C" in Texas) When I send the shippers the order info, the customers order will be coming from seperate locations and in seperate boxes, so how do I do this without killing my self with the shipping costs? My problem is that the many suppliers I can find only supply a few items from a niche market. I would want to buid my site to offer the a-z variety of associated items of that niche. 2. is Cube cart capable figuring the shipping costs of multiple "shipped from" and "shipped to" addresses? Thanks, Rob Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Earth Bizz Posted July 1, 2005 Share Posted July 1, 2005 No Thats why I use 3 separate stores .. I have a similar but not same problem as you. Or you could use the "Individual Shipping Price" mod HERE Scroll down to "qdpie" 's post .. he has it for download on his server. :D Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest twisted Posted July 4, 2005 Share Posted July 4, 2005 Using dropshippers has its advantages....it also has its dsadvantages, and you've just pointed out the biggest of those. No, Cubecart cannot handle multiple ship-to addresses as far as differing shipping prices go...much less ship-from addresses as well. Yes, you can specify individual shipping prices for each product, but that takes no account of shipping different products on the same order to different addresses. Personally, I don't know off-hand of any cart that CAN [which doesn;t mean they don't exist, just that I don't know of them...and I know of a LOT] Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Earth Bizz Posted July 5, 2005 Share Posted July 5, 2005 I saw this problem discussed somewhere on the net (some other cart I was sussing out) Their answer was to charge an averaqe shipping charge based on weight and dimensions for an individual product, hence .. the use of the individual shipping price mod. Enough of an average so as not to worry about distance. Also to build some of the shipping price into the product price. They reckoned that plenty of mail order and "seen on TV" ads all charge a flat rate postage and handling charge. Doesn't matter where you live. As the shipping charge is probably slightly inflated plus the adding of the "handlling" charge, this would cover them. If you want to ship locally AND internationally .. forget it, now it's getting really messy .. unless you want to make 3 sites like me. ... Just had a thought .. maybe you could use product options in combination with setting an amount to local and international rates in the Catagory.. Then to let the customer choose from options whether its a local, interstate or international delivery. Thats a bit bodgy though cos' a lot of customers are pretty dumb. Anyway all the amounts will still add up. Gotta think about this some more as it applies to me too... If I have a brainwave I'll come back and let you know. Well .. thats the best solution I can think of. I know its not perfect. You can always save your pennies and buy wholesale and ship yourself. :) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Earth Bizz Posted July 5, 2005 Share Posted July 5, 2005 Ok .. if there is no direct solution .. lets step out of the square and approach the problem sideways ??? Heres what I tried. You can try it yourself on my site if you want .. Its not live yet and only the Postal Gateway is active .. so use any old fake name/email to register. Don't worry about the amounts .. I'll sort that later .. its just the system I'm trying to work out. In Product Options I made an Option called "Location From Sydney Australia" For Values I made "Local .. $2.00" , "Interstate .. $ 3.00" and "International .. $6.00" ( I guess you could use a list of States/Countries instead .. but maybe thats too messy) On the test product .. "watches" .. I set an Individual Shipping Price of $3.00. In the Test Category of "Electronics" (I know watches dont belong there but I'm just experimenting here) .. I set the "Per Shipment" to $1.00 to pad out the local and interstate Shipments and the "Per International Shipment" to $2.00 to pad those out a bit. The watch price is $23.90 ($25.90 with the local option .. this is the fly in the ointment).. the Tax is 10% So if I lived in Sydney Australia (Local) the Total would be .. Watch .. $25.90 ($23.90 + the $2.00 local option) Tax... $2.59 (10% on 25.90 .. thats a problem tax on the $2 local as well) Shipping $4.00 ( 3.00 Individual + 1.00 Category Per Shipment) ------------- ----- Total ...... $ 32.49 The shipping is made up of $3.00 for the Individual Product Ship price of the watch. .......................................$2.00 for Options "Local" (added on to watch price) .......................................$1.00 for "Category" Per Shipment Set amounts (Whatever you deceide them to be) to everything except for the Individual Product Shipping Price to all your Categories. Then all you have to worry about is when you add a product is add on an Individual Product Shipping Price .. taking into account the average of the other shipping charges being added to it ... (In this case it would be about $2.80 I think .. Whats the average of $14.00 with 5 factors ? .. my math is lousy) You'll have to think of the other charges as an average because you dont know where the watch will be shipped to yet .. or, in the case of drop shipping where the product in the category is being shipped FROM In this case .. for a local shipment you will actually get $6.00, but as an average it will be $5.80 .. which is good enough. With some orders you will gain a little on shipping and on others you will lose a little. The idea is that overall .. on "average" .. things will balance out. So .. after adding a new product and inserting the Individual Product Ship Price to it .. depending on its weight and dimensions .. just go to Product Options and bung on the "Location From Sydney Australia" Option. I guess this is the logic that mail order and TV infomercials use. In the case of drop shipping I suppose you could pinpoint all your drop shippers on a map and select the city/town thats in the middle of them all and use that as the "Location from " Option (averaging things out again) Well thats a first draft to the problem ... anyone got any ideas to fine tune it? .. Or maybe just rubibish the whole idea as a pain in the arse and go and join the Monastry. :P Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted July 5, 2005 Share Posted July 5, 2005 WOW Earth bizz, You sure put some thought into this. Thanks for the suggestion. I think the averaging shipping cost could be a great solution. Atleast it will be be as close to as you can get when you have to deal with the variables above. I was trying to think about this and the best I coud come up with is using the plain old "shipping based on total" idea. You know...like... Total of purchase $37.95 and the shipping might be like $10.00 (this would depend on what kind of merchendice the store is selling; big and heavy things would obviously be more.) I would have figured my margins first (make them slightly higher to account for an average shipping overage)...but say out of $37.95 I make a profit of $14...now this order is filled from two drop shippers, and my cost of shipping is $12.00...(my $14 profit + the $10.00 shipping carge would = $24) (now $24 - the actual shipping cost of $12 = $12) I still make a profit but the extra shipping fees would cut into my margins. Not a perfect business model... but doable for me to get started. I would be sinking all profits back into the business for the first couple years...I should be able to start buying wholesale and shipping myself after a while. Sometime in the future completely phasing out the drop shipping and becoming 99% independent. I still have a lot of planning to do before I open up a store. I'm just researching some problems that popped into my head. Thanks for all the help. Later, Rob PS- the second problem I see is...how unproffessional looking it would be to have a customer's order filled in seperate shipments. Sure I can say something like amazon..."your order may be shipped in seperate instances to better serve you with speed and lower shipping costs" You know...blow smoke up their ass and blind them from the fact that you are not a big established company with unlimited resources. :lol: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Earth Bizz Posted July 5, 2005 Share Posted July 5, 2005 I dont think getting deliveries in separate shipments/parcels is that much of a problem and you could insert that "smoke up the arse" stuff in your confirmation email thats sent after the order is placed ... where ever that is .. in English.inc.php I think. I might do that myself. l'll be using drop shippers too but also wholesalers a lot and doing my own shipping. Like you .. I'm just getting started in this too. On second thoughts .. using the product options is a bit messy .. Part of the shipping cost is added on to the product price and the rest of the shipping is displayed separatley This could be confusing to some customers. Also .. when checking out , if you forget to select an option you are forced to return and select one .. a hassle. Another thing .. if you have a product with REAL options (colour,size etc) it may get in the way of those. So forget about the options bit. The rest of the idea is OK though .. I think. Set a standard Category "Per Item" and "Per Shipment" instead. (to equal like 2/3rd's of the shipping price) and top it off with the Individual Product Ship Price. Ideally most of the products in a category will be roughly a similar size/weight .. if not, the differences can be adjusted in the "Individual Product Ship Price" when you add a new product. THE NEXT PROBLEM with drop shippers is having to check thier site every day to make sure they haven't run out of stock of any items you have listed on YOUR site. I've installed the "instock" mod and if .. when I check the drop shippers stock levels of a particular item .. and they have ,say 70 items ... I'll use the "instock" mod to say My site has 30 .. just to have a safety margin till I can check the drop shipper again. You will have more peace of mind knowing that some customer is not going to order something that your drop shipper has run out of. Twisted said that the shipping from multiple addresses was the biggest disadvantage to drop shipping .. I think it's only second place to the "Out of Stock" scenario. Well good luck on your venture .. I know where your at cos I'm trying to iron out all the same bugs myself. PS .. maybe there is a java or pearl form script that could handle the drop ship shipping problem .. thats my next task .. to find one and work out how to integrate it with the cart. May have to scrap the carts checkout process alltogether and replace it with the java/pearl form..... don't fancy my chances though ;) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest awinter Posted July 20, 2006 Share Posted July 20, 2006 There are a few new mods realated to drop shipping that you might find useful. They can be found on http://www.cubecart.org Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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