Crowdfunding shipping solution.
I’m sure by the time you’re reading this, your Kickstarter/Indiegogo crowdfunding project is probably about to end, or has already ended. Because most of the crowdfunding projects I’ve come across, in the early days, basically didn’t think about shipping. This is certainly not just the case for crowdfunding projects, but for many people who are ready to do Shopify or even cross-border e-commerce, logistics seems to be one of the last things on everyone’s mind. Although logistics is crucial and costly in the cross-border arena, it is understandable because it is important to get the orders done first.
Since, your Indiegogo\Kicstarter crowdfunding project has come to the stage where you have to consider shipping, or to ship immediately, let’s talk about this matter of crowdfunding shipping and how it works exactly.
From the experience of someone who has operated 5 crowdfunding projects from 2015-2018, your orders will come from all over the world, even from countries or regions you’ve never heard of, like the one we met – New Caledonia. Of course the most mainstream ones are definitely developed countries in Europe and America like USA, Canada, UK, Australia, France, Germany, but also countries and regions such as Singapore, Israel, Japan, Korea, Russia, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Malaysia, etc. The first ones are the mainstream and relatively easy to solve. The biggest headache is of course the orders from countries and regions where we have little contact and the number of orders is in single digits.
To sum up, Indiegogo/Kickstarter crowdfunding orders have the characteristics of dispersed shipping destinations and dispersed order volume. What kind of problems does this bring to you?
Trivial
You need to contact various suppliers because of the products and services that different logistics providers can offer, and you will find most of the time that there is no way for you to deliver everything to one of them. Even if you want to, they can’t do it.
High cost
Because orders are trivial, there is no scale advantage and no bargaining power with the logistics provider. Especially if you also deliver the order’s transportation to multiple logistics companies.
After-sales problems
In the process of international transportation, it is common for packages to be lost compared to domestic transportation. And choose different logistics products, due to the difference in the time limit, there will be a large number of users on your crowdfunding project after the delivery of the consultation or complaints, this you can go to refer to the comments on the home page of many projects. Lost packages and timing issues can cause you to spend a lot of time dealing with these problems.
So how to solve these problems?
Find a comprehensive logistics provider
What do you mean by an integrated logistics provider? In the field of international transportation, there are many different types of companies engaged in various types, such as sea freight, air freight, express delivery, postal parcel; or do cross-border e-commerce logistics or B2B bulk logistics. All kinds of logistics providers, to name a few. So what kind of company is called a comprehensive logistics provider?
Can help you solve the transportation problems of both individual parcels and bulk goods, or can help you solve the problems of B2C and B2B.
Logistics service providers that can help you solve different time requirements. That is, they have international express, such as UPS\DHL\Fedex such express service capability, such a time limit in 3-5 days; there are special line parcel service capability, such a time limit in 7-12 working days. There is the postal system, in the country is also ePackt such service capacity, such the time efficiency in 7-50 days ranging, unstable, especially in 2020 after the new crown epidemic.
Of course there is another problem is the problem of global regional coverage, this kind of has the ability of the previous 1 and 2, a variety of products with each other, basically solved the problem of global scattered distribution of orders.
Logistics providers with excellent IT system capabilities
The vast majority of international logistics service providers do not have excellent IT service capabilities. Then this IT capability, specifically what can have a benefit.
Batch processing capability, if the order is a few hundred this is okay, if the order to thousands or even tens of thousands, plus some of the above mentioned in the article, will make people more headache, time-consuming.
Good order tracking capabilities, through the IT system, you can quickly go to locate the status of each order. Great help in dealing with shipping after-sales issues.
Cost optimization capability, through a centralized system, can overview logistics costs, to review project profits, to do further optimization.
Of course an excellent IT system capability will help you even more after crowdfunding.For example, many projects that have done crowdfunding will start e-commerce operations, such as Amazon, or brand operations based on independent sites. And these e-commerce logistics operations, the follow-up or have begun to API, that is, logistics services docking, more is the various systems, such as ERP and logistics management system, and warehouse management system docking.
About this Kicstarter \ Indiegogo crowdfunding logistics, shipping things, there are many other factors to consider, such as the user’s destination country tariff issues, the problem of returns, product attributes lead to special logistics channels, many, many, many, different, also with each project’s specific circumstances are not the same.
At the end of writing, I hope you are actually reading this article before your crowdfunding project goes live, because you will have read this article and will have a new way of thinking about your project, which will involve you reconsidering the packaging, the sales area, and of course the product pricing.
Well, that’s all for now, feel free to correct me and share.