Shipping from China has been cheap - very cheap.
And that will change to some extent with the new rules and cost, which you can read here
This will impact shipments to Europe and the US.
Some things that are most noteworthy:
- When the contents are undeclared, there's automatically a extra cost of 80% added to the shipping cost and " Any cross-border letter post containing goods or merchandise will be qualified as a “small packet” as of 1 January 2018"
- Packages up to 2 kg are affected (which make up the bulk of the volume of course)
- Package that used to cost €0,40 will now cost €0,70
- Packages will need to have a bar code ( UPU barcode (S10))
Will be interesting to see what will happen:
- if cost go up, it will either have an effect on the buyer (increased cost) , the seller (lower margins) or both. Depends on how the sellers will deal with this
- Will all sellers know about these new rules? And if not, will this lead to longer shipping times (if the bar code is missing for example)
If you're doing any volume, best to be aware and check with your suppliers.
Hmm, that sounds like it might have quite a major impact on dropshippers. I expect we'll hear more about this as the deadline closes on us.
Thanks for the heads-up, Pekadis!
Very interesting development to know of.
Acted as a friendly reminder to research alternative dropshippers located in the EU or the US. Not that this one change will make it necessary, but it made the risk of supplying all my products from one country apparent.
This is a pretty big change.
China Post ePacket + not charging VAT has ... up to now ... given the dropshipping business model quite a lot of advantages.
If this no longer holds, a lot of businesses will need to rethink their approach.
Sounds like they are making it harder or want to make it harder for the small dropshippers to cut into the big boxes or businesses that are shipping over from China. I may be wrong but it seems to favor more the big companies that can order larger supplies.
Hey Guys,
After reading the Ecommerce Europe article im still a little confused. Will this policy apply in GEOs Like SEA, Latin America, and Brazil, or is it just a matter of not yet.
Will this dropship model of ecomm work in 2 / 3 tier GEOS still going forward??
Cheers
dancnx