Small-business owners think outside the mailbox
Flexible shipping options are crucial to entrepreneurs who work out of their homes
The digital age has been a boon for small-business owners. By using social media to promote your services and building online storefronts to sell your goods, it’s never been easier to reach audiences locally, across Canada and even around the world.
However, entrepreneurs who are selling physical goods still need to use traditional shipping methods to deliver them. Small retailers are at a disadvantage compared to chain stores for many reasons: they don’t sell at the volume that big chains do, which means higher postage and packaging costs. And because Canada is such a large land mass, shipping costs for small businesses are higher than for competitors in the U.S.
But independent sellers are a spirited group and many have discovered ways to deliver their goods while keeping costs down.
Susie Love is a Toronto-based, selftaught artist who has been selling her paintings for six years.
“I truly love painting,” she says. “My goal is to learn everything I can about my craft.”
Over time, Love has learned that finding ways to showcase her work and run a small business on a budget can also be a creative endeavour. Love’s artwork can be found in collections in Hong Kong, Vancouver, Nunavut, Costa Rica and Europe.
“I am currently working on a piece heading for a Florida beach house,” she says. A lot of her pieces are commissioned and her business has grown mostly through word-ofmouth.
Collaborating with clients — meaning good, clear communication — is key to keeping costs low.
“I always clarify everything, sometimes two or three times,” she says, ensuring collectors are happy before the package is even sent, which also reduces the risk of costly returns.
Thanks to the Internet, Love can keep clients informed of a painting’s progress in real time. But once it’s finished, artists like her must be vigilant about protecting their pieces for delivery. Even when clients come to her studio to pick up their pieces in person, she makes sure the work is swaddled with bubble wrap and outfitted with corner protectors. And she always sends packages with tracking and insurance.
For smaller artwork, such as a recent watercolour for a client in Vancouver, Love sends the piece sandwiched between layers of foam core, cardboard and bubble wrap through the regular mail. “I purchased the insurance and had no issues,” she says. “It got there safe and sound.”
As her business has grown, Love has had to master new ways to save time and money for her clients and herself. Shipping oversized items like paintings is a significant part of the cost of an artwork, and online tools such as shipping calculators help her reduce the risk of charging too much or too little.
“There is so much to learn,” says Love, “and I love it all.”
Bobbi Gunn’s company, Tangible Intangibles, was born in July 2015 when the multinational corporation she worked for closed down its head office in Kitchener, Ont., leaving Gunn with the option to relocate or start all over again.
“I didn’t want to face a three-hour commute,” says Gunn, who lives in a small town just outside Waterloo. “So I gave up my corporate job.”
Gunn settled on selling vintage and eclectic home decor. “I saw a demand from people who wanted an alternative to buying mass-manufactured things.”
Living in a rural area is a boon for her business because she can source much of her stock inexpensively from local auctions. Gunn also has the space to store inventory, which helps keep her overhead costs lower than in the city, where storage is at a premium.
Gunn sells her rustic and retro goods both online through her Tangible Intangibles Etsy shop and at a booth at the One of a Kind Antique Mall in Woodstock, Ont. Though her corporate background helped her come up with a solid business plan, the process of starting over has taught Gunn many important lessons about staying flexible in an everchanging digital economy.
The first difference she noted was the ability to reach a client base from all over the world.
“I was very surprised,” she says. “I thought my audience would be all Canadian. But most of my customers are in the U.S. I’ve also shipped things to Guam, Germany, Australia and France.” Though she specializes in eclectic decor, such as handmade pottery and industrial objects, “you can never figure out what people want,” she says.
“Quirky things sell the fastest.”
Gunn customizes her packaging, making her own shipping boxes from materials sourced from retailers.
“Recycling materials also saves customers on shipping fees,” she says. She uses biodegradable bubble wrap or packing peanuts to protect her customers’ purchases, and communicating her commitment to environmentally conscious shipping helps ease the postage-rate sticker shock that clients who are used to free shipping may experience.
Because Gunn is based in the coun- try, she keeps travel time and transportation costs down by buying postage online and driving into town to drop off packages twice a week. She has also discovered that the bigger your business, the more discounts are available. In fact many shippers offer small-business incentives.
“My goal is to build up to a bigger client base and to have people buy directly from me,” Gunn says. “That way I can save money on fees and commissions and build a loyal client base.”