Startups Stack Exchange Archive

Producer and consumers in Europe, how to avoid cost of passing goods through me in Japan?

My Japanese company has items manufactured on my specifications in a Baltic country (part of the EU), and shipped to Japan where they are sold to the Japanese market. But I am starting to have clients in the EU, so every month a half-dozen of the items travel back:

EU -> Japan -> EU

QUESTION: How to avoid this useless shipping-and-back?
It would be more ecological, and save time, shipping cost, taxes.

Are there European “warehouses” of sorts that could do the following?

A catch is that the items have to be repackaged nicely in plastic, with my own fabric string over it holding a branded tag. It may sound superficial, but nice branding is actually important for this market. If impossible I am open to solutions without that, though.

There are various models, but each item is 50~200 grams, non-breakable, and fits in a flexible C3 envelope (46cm*32cm), if that matters.

Items coming from factory Fabric string and brand tag Envelope to final customer

Answer 9299

Fulfillment services have become quite common over the last 15-20 years as e-commerce has exploded. There are many companies renting warehouse shelf space and then offering to pick, pack, and ship goods from those spaces. Pricing is often based on a formula that includes space consumed (cubic feet or cubic *meters, depending on region), processing orders, and shipping costs.

Large fulfillment warehouse operations are particularly good at taking advantage of economies of scale. Having a larger warehouse, more sophisticated picking/packing systems, and more volume in shipping all contribute to lower per-order costs. This powerful size advantage often allows fulfillment services the ability to offer a distributor lower costs compared to running fulfillment in-house.

Fulfillment warehouses may have minimums so it's important for you to realistically assess the costs of continuing your European distribution from Japan compared to the costs of hiring a fulfillment service. Generally, you will get better pricing as your rent more space and increase order volume.

One better known service is Amazon Fulfillment (European Site / American Site), but there are many others.

Now, the biggest problem with your needs is the custom packaging. Large warehouses (that give the best deals) will not do this sort of custom preparation without charging you significant fees as its simply not part of their core operation. Even though that's the case, you absolutely should not forego the branding of your packaging as it is a very important part of the customer experience that allows your business to succeed. What you should do instead is find a way to have the products fully-packaged when they go to a fulfillment warehouse for distribution. You can either look into having the packaging done by the original manufacturer, by a second provider, or in-house in Japan. Regardless of where it's done, the fulfillment warehouse will need to receive the goods ready-to-ship.

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