Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Shipping $36000 worth of Japanese candy

bemmu.posterous.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 131 posts

Re: Shipping $36000 worth of Japanese candy

#41

Post by bemmu »

BadCookie wrote: post #37
bemmu wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do get a bit of discount from them (5%). Mostly it's just really convenient since they save me a lot of time by doing the packaging on site. Maybe if I reached really big volume then it would start making sense. The price of product is only 23% of the cost even now. Shipping is the biggest one at 33%.

Would it reduce your shipping costs if you shipped all candy to your US subscribers to one person in the US, who would then mail out the individual packages? Just a thought.

Then I would become the importer and would need to pay for customs clearance of my bulk package too. I would need to start cooperating with the manufacturers to get them to help me with the necessary paperwork.

At the scale I am in, I doubt anyone wants to talk with me since I'm only buying $1000 worth of their product (I cycle through different candy so don't buy that much from single manufacturers) as it is. Also not all of my subscribers are in the US, I have many in Canada, Germany and all over the place.

Re: Shipping $36000 worth of Japanese candy

#42

Post by tstegart »

bemmu wrote: post #16
dotBen wrote: post #10

Candy, coffee, cigars, women's shoes/accessories... There seems like a ton of subscription businesses around and I almost feel there might be room to create a white/gray-label platform that can handle the website, subscription management, payment and shipping labels to potential operators of these kinds of services. Wondering how big the addressable market is. UPDATE: http://member.ly already does this according the…

Yes, that could be useful and I could consider switching to such a service if it was available. I would worry though about giving total control over my subscribers to some outer service that might hike up their prices suddenly. It would be nice though if someone else dealt with all the different payment buttons, subscription management and just wired me a lump sum monthly and sent the PDF for address labels that I ne…

Do you have any more options to reduce shipping costs? If its your largest expense, you can do more profit with less customers.

Re: Shipping $36000 worth of Japanese candy

#43

Post by tstegart »

bemmu wrote: post #32
huxley wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you thought about adding a candy "rewards" program? If someone starts a subscription from a referral maybe they and the referrer can each get a bonus candy package when they start? That would probably be much cheaper than trying to do advertising with only a marginal increase in packaging complexity.

Yes, that's been on my mind, especially since I keep having candy left over because there is a difference between the bulk amounts I buy (which have to be divisible by 60 generally) and the amount of subscribers I have. I have to be careful though, since it does actually cost a bit to send a package. Another thing I considered was starting some page similar to http://duckduckgo.com/spread.html and reward the most hel…

What kind of marketing are you doing to increase subscribers? Do you send out press releases to bloggers, magazines and news sites?

Re: Shipping $36000 worth of Japanese candy

#45

Post by irondavycole »

nwest wrote: post #23
dotBen wrote: post #10

Candy, coffee, cigars, women's shoes/accessories... There seems like a ton of subscription businesses around and I almost feel there might be room to create a white/gray-label platform that can handle the website, subscription management, payment and shipping labels to potential operators of these kinds of services. Wondering how big the addressable market is. UPDATE: http://member.ly already does this according the…

http://member.ly/ (no affiliation)

I'm a designer at Memberly — this is precisely what we do. If anyone has any questions/interest, feel free to contact me (email in profile)!

Re: Shipping $36000 worth of Japanese candy

#46

Post by BadCookie »

bemmu wrote: post #41
BadCookie wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would it reduce your shipping costs if you shipped all candy to your US subscribers to one person in the US, who would then mail out the individual packages? Just a thought.

Then I would become the importer and would need to pay for customs clearance of my bulk package too. I would need to start cooperating with the manufacturers to get them to help me with the necessary paperwork. At the scale I am in, I doubt anyone wants to talk with me since I'm only buying $1000 worth of their product (I cycle through different candy so don't buy that much from single manufacturers) as it is. Also n…

Ah, I didn't realize that about needing customs clearance. I know that not all of your subscribers are in the US. I was just using the US as an example.

In that case, how about partnering with people in each country who live in large enough cities that they can acquire Japanese candy themselves (at the Japanese mall or whatever), and then ship to the subscribers in that country? As I think a few people have pointed out, the real benefit to a subscriber is if they live in a rural place with no access to Japanese candy.

Again, I have no idea if this would reduce your shipping costs in the end, but I'm curious if it would. I think that there are not a lot of people who both (a) don't have access to Japanese candy themselves, and (b) are willing to pay $24 a month for it (since high earners tend to live in larger cities).

Re: Shipping $36000 worth of Japanese candy

#47

Post by bemmu »

karl11 wrote: post #36

You should be targeting tech startup's kitchen staff with this. Imagine if the people who stock Google or Facebook's food pantries bought a bunch of subscriptions. You could also target campus stores at universities with a large Asian population.

I don't know how to navigate the regulations to get a bulk amount of edible product into the US. Any ideas?

Re: Shipping $36000 worth of Japanese candy

#48

Post by bemmu »

giberson wrote: post #40

Have you considered the possibility of starting distribution branches? For example, might you save on shipping if you shipped via a single shipment to a central location (country) where your primary subscription base is. From there, mailing them from the central hub to the clients. For example, if you set up a US branch and then sent them via UPS or FEDEX to the customers. Obviously the shelf life of the candy is fig…

I'd like to try this, but not sure how to proceed with FDA. If you know anyone who has done this with food, I'd love to learn.

Re: Shipping $36000 worth of Japanese candy

#49

Post by daeken »

vidarh wrote: post #38
bemmu wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks! Perhaps other countries could be added and there could also be an overall subscription to get from any country, it's a good idea. I do feel I should get this working well for Japan before expanding.

I saw you're Finnish - salmiakki products would be popular with Scandinavian expats... (Norwegian here, living in the UK - Amazon delivers some salty licorice / ammonium chloride candy, but their selection is very limited and mostly to Dutch brands I'm not used to)

A friend of mine was visiting me in NYC from Norway and we were talking about Salmiakki Koskenkorva. It's the first thing that I've simply been completely unable to find here -- looked for it all over the city. Still need to get a bottle.

Re: Shipping $36000 worth of Japanese candy

#50

Post by bemmu »

tstegart wrote: post #43
bemmu wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, that's been on my mind, especially since I keep having candy left over because there is a difference between the bulk amounts I buy (which have to be divisible by 60 generally) and the amount of subscribers I have. I have to be careful though, since it does actually cost a bit to send a package. Another thing I considered was starting some page similar to http://duckduckgo.com/spread.html and reward the most hel…

What kind of marketing are you doing to increase subscribers? Do you send out press releases to bloggers, magazines and news sites?

I should look into this and craft a nice email with useful media for them to use. What's been holding me back is that I don't really know exactly what to say in such an email to make it likely for them to feature it. It's true that one mention from Lifehacker for example could really change things completely.
Post reply on HN