Shipping $36000 worth of Japanese candy • Hacker News Board

Re: Shipping $36000 worth of Japanese candy

#121

Post by bemmu » Mon, Jan 16, 2012, 11:39 AM UTC

redslazer wrote: post #98

Have you considering putting a phamplet in each envelope that people can give to friends who can try it at half price for the first month or so? That way you could get access to new potential customers. You could also make it more enticing for people to give the phamplet to someone by rewarding people who have friends sign up.

Good idea, I should probably include something anyway to explain what the package contains. I could make a combined candy explanation + referral pamphlet and include that.

Re: Shipping $36000 worth of Japanese candy

#122

Post by bemmu » Mon, Jan 16, 2012, 11:43 AM UTC

kpi wrote: post #103

Reminds me of Joel's post on streamlining a shipping process http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/HowToShipAnything.htm...

Joel's post was useful. I managed to avoid buying that $1000+ label printer they use. Instead I have a script that makes a PDF of labels and then I go to the convenience store, discreetly replace the paper in the common expensive looking copy machine with labels and print with that. Prints 300 labels in under 5 minutes this way.

Re: Shipping $36000 worth of Japanese candy

#123

Post by bemmu » Mon, Jan 16, 2012, 11:46 AM UTC

dzhiurgis wrote: post #112

This gave me an idea of shipping dark rye - eastern european kind of bread. They do have rye bread in UK, but it is completely different from the real thing. I wasn't able to find any "lithuanian bread" online, maybe the nature of the product is difficult to ship. I think most breads shelf life is like 3 days, with some extremes of 10 days..

Issue with rye bread is that unless it is really fresh, it loses a lot of flavor.

Re: Shipping $36000 worth of Japanese candy

#124

Post by geon » Mon, Jan 16, 2012, 2:44 PM UTC

Would you deliver candy toy cooking sets?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gr-qewC-4gY

Re: Shipping $36000 worth of Japanese candy

#125

Post by bemmu » Mon, Jan 16, 2012, 3:43 PM UTC

geon wrote: post #124

Would you deliver candy toy cooking sets? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gr-qewC-4gY

This one would not fit in a normal envelope. What happens in the US when you get something that doesn't fit into your mail slot?

I just know that in Finland, in such cases you have to go to the post office to get the package, so I've tried to avoid sending such things as part of the regular shipments. I might still add an option to order those separately.

Re: Shipping $36000 worth of Japanese candy

#126

Post by moswald » Mon, Jan 16, 2012, 9:12 PM UTC

bemmu wrote: post #110

moswald wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The barcode you mention links your specific merchant account to the physical product's UPC/ASIN in order to properly track your inventory. Amazon can also handle the labeling of the inbound inventory for an added fee. (Disclaimer: I work for Amazon doing FBA Ops)

The checklist on the packing slip seems to indicate that I need to do something for each item: http://i.imgur.com/yyJXf.png The first item is "ALL items are covered with the correct FBA stickers". So actually that is not necessary, and if I just buy a huge pack of candies and ship it to you with only this single packing slip on the big box containing many candies, then you can still sort things out?

If you are subscribed to the labeling service, absolutely. If not, the fulfillment center may do it as a courtesy. The most important issue is what the FC expects from your shipment. Any unplanned or unexpected prep activity will cause your items to be sidelined in order to continue the inbound process for all of the other shipments. If a massive shipment comes in that isn't labeled/labeled correctly the FC may elect to ship it back due to things like space considerations or man power needs to handle the prep.

Sorry for the delay in replying. Feel free to pm if you have any other questions.

Re: Shipping $36000 worth of Japanese candy

#127

Post by squish101 » Tue, Jan 17, 2012, 1:08 AM UTC

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…

Maybe come up with a 3 months subscription package or something along that line and reward those who pay the 3 months subscription upfront with additional candies for free. You can use the leftovers you have or other unique Japanese products that people may like. This way you're assured that you have subscribers for the next 3 months.

Or instead of giving away free candies to the package I mentioned above, reduce the price to say $20-$22/mth if they pay upfront for 3 months to give them the $6-9 savings over 3 months.

Re: Shipping $36000 worth of Japanese candy

#128

Post by sachingulaya » Tue, Jan 17, 2012, 5:44 PM UTC

This is a bit late but there seems to be a market for: http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=auto&...

kind of candy in the US. Consider importing it if only to raise your brand identity by getting it featured on novelty blogs.

Re: Shipping $36000 worth of Japanese candy

#129

Post by literalusername » Fri, Jan 20, 2012, 1:18 AM UTC

bemmu wrote: post #72

literalusername wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Are you a small business with questions about your FDA-regulated product? Or, do you wonder if your product needs to be approved by the FDA? Contact us!" http://www.fda.gov/ForIndustry/SmallBusinessAssistance/Small...

I sent this question to the mentioned e-mail address industry@fda.gov last August, but never got a response. Retrying.

Any luck this time around? If not I'd give them a telephone call.

Re: Shipping $36000 worth of Japanese candy

#130

Post by bemmu » Fri, Jan 20, 2012, 11:19 PM UTC

literalusername wrote: post #129

bemmu wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I sent this question to the mentioned e-mail address industry@fda.gov last August, but never got a response. Retrying.

Any luck this time around? If not I'd give them a telephone call.

I got a copypasta response from them, outlining the steps I already took on their website. Will read it carefully to see if contains any of the info I actually asked for.

One thing is that they expect me to use their web interface to file "prior notice" for every single package I send. I see writing a scraping script in my future..