Susan Wilson Solovic: Shipping cost can add up quickly for a small firm. Our guest today has some practical tips he learned as he built one of the country’s fastest growing companies. Andrew Field founded PrintingForLess.com an award winning company that has been recognized as one of the best on the web as a major shipper. Welcome to SBTV.com Andrew.
Andrew Field: Thank you Susan.
Susan Wilson Solovic: First of all, what should a small business owner think about when they are thinking about selecting a shipper for their products.
Andrew Field: One of the first thing you have to remember is that when UPS, Skye or Fedex guys shows up that often will be the first last impression that is left for you, so it’s important to go with the reputable name and those two UPS and Fedex are the ones that I will generally suggest people look at.
Susan Wilson Solovic: What about price? Because I’m getting confused when I look at those all different prices, rates and structures. How do you evaluate the best price for the product you’re shipping?
Andrew Field: Susan, I do make it hard to cost compare the big complicated contracts. And it’s hard to sometimes figure out exactly what the relative prices are so to do a true apples to apples at one point in the negotiation. We take an assortment of about a thousand real print jobs that we ship and include the weight and the address and the method, and we ask each of them to put was the actual of all the surcharges and discounts and everything applied before each of those and that gives as an opportunity to do a true cost compares and then an apple to apple basis.
Susan Wilson Solovic: What about packing? That’s always a challenge though we save bubble rat and those little peanuts around here, but do you have some tips on packing techniques that we should used?
Andrew Field: Packings are really important. I have the opportunity to go with the Fedex sort facility in Memphis, Tennessee recently, and it’s a very modern facility, but boy to those things move through there the high rate of speed particularly during a holiday session. It’s important to package anything you’re shipping really well. We tend to double box everything, and we actually find that some papers scrunch up from our little machine for void fillers is the best and most environmentally friendly way to package your materials.
Susan Wilson Solovic: That’s interesting. Now I know that you do ship a lot probably all around the world actually. Do you have any near disasters that maybe you could share that we might learn from?
Andrew Field: We think that we’ve actually had an airplane back up over one of our packages, and occasionally think we’ll just get crunch and what we tend to do when that happens is we’ll go right back on press and ship it our overnight because we’re very proud of our record of always getting the print job to our customers on time.
Susan Wilson Solovic: Great, well; that’s why you’re successful. Well, thank you for being here and sharing those tips. I’m going to keep those in mind.
Andrew Field: Thanks Susan.
Susan Wilson Solovic: And we’re talking of course to Andrew Field, the President and CEO of PrintingForLess.com. You can learn more about Andrew and his company by going to PrintingForLess.com. This is SBTV.com where small business is our only business. Thanks for watching.
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