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Shipping partner considering COD as the only payment option?

By Kushank Jain on 14 Comments / 2889 views

Hello,
We are setting up a small e-commerce store in Mumbai dealing in Fashion accessories and artificial jewelry, plan is to buy cheap and sell the cheapest. We are looking for an appropriate shipping partner and having talked with a couple of courier agencies, their response:

Bluedart and DHL : Rs. 310 per courier
Delhivery : 150 Per courier
Aramex : 25000 deposit and 90 per courier
Firstflight : Mailed them, called them a couple of times. They assured me they will call back, awaiting their response.
JaVas, Fedex, DotZot, chhotu.in, Gati : Mailed them a couple of days back, Awaiting response.

Our products ranges form Rs.100 to 500  and we intend to start with Cash on Delivery as the only payment option (no website for us, we will list our products on an FB page). If you guys work directly with any courier companies or have anyone who knows people personally, please let us know. Also, Cost is the Major factor here, as our products are cheap, charging such heavy shipping fee would not be acceptable.

Thank you

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14 Comments

  1. hii kushank

    i am in contact with first flight’s with jalandhar office. there service is very good.but  the cod has little issue.

    for t-shirt weighing around 310 gm with packing , cost me around 170 rs . there service is good but you have to weight long time before getting your money back from these guys..as their system for transfer of money is very long , though they have assured that very soon that collections  will be directly forwarded to account…..and very frankly none of the above company was willing to entertain as there are not much start ups in punjab.. so first flight was best among the rests.

  2. Hello Sahil, 170 Rs. for COD is really expensive for me as my products are quite cheap. Thanks for the reply though

  3. Vichare courier local

  4. Dear Kaushik,

    I would not advise you to start with COD as the only payment option. Even though it is the most preferred payment option in India, using a reliable payment gateway like CC Avenue or PayU is much better. Logistics companies will also willingly open a prepaid account than a COD account. My pick is BlueDart. Aramex is downright pathetic and I am shocked that they are asking for a deposit !! Ask them to pay you some amount for every late delivery they do & believe me you shall end up being the richest person on earth!! First Flight also has a decent network and tracking mechanisms. Other firms, I am not too sure. Being associated with any one is also enough as you can grow you business with them and negotiate rates after a while.

    COD is extremely expensive and the value you have mentioned of your products, it would not be sustainable. Even when you start COD, I would advise you to pass on the extra charge to the consumer. I do not know the margins in your business, but if you had to break even only through COD payments, my wild guess is that your margin would need to be at least 80% on the selling price!!

    Having a proper website would make more sense as it is the first “Moment of “Truth” the customer would experience. I guess any one would trust a proper website more than an FB page. I am not a WordPress Pro (yet!) but a simple WordPress site with a Photo heavy Woo Commerce Theme should do the job for you 🙂

    Another interesting website builder I recently noticed was KartRocket with tons of integration-ready apps including Logistics, Payment Gateways etc! It looked exciting but have not used it so I ll refrain from commenting on the same.

    After all the above, 2 most important things:

    – Start with listing at various Marketplaces like ebay, Flipkart, Snapdeal etc. to generate some cash flow and know product acceptance. These sites are experts at getting traffic. By opening your own store, you are getting into the business of getting traffic which is NOT your forte. Your forte is to make great fashion accessories!

    – Whenever you tie up with a Logistics company, negotiate for a lower minimum parcel weight. Courier companies charge on the basis of a minimum parcel weight of 500 grams irrespective of the actual product weight. I assume no fashion accessory will be more than 200 grams at most! You can definitely negotiate a minimum parcel weight of 250 grams after haggling! This can bring your basic shipping cost by nearly 30-40%.

    The idea seems exciting and best wishes!

  5. Hi kushank,

    Well I do not understand why you want only COD as an option when you can have others for free. If security is an issue you can enquire about email invoicing using other payment methods. This way it wont be any issue and you can proceed without any huge setup.

    Also frankly speaking, if you are entering e-commerce, not having a website would be silly. Check out http://www.teewow.com. The site is being developed using magento and didn’t require much investment. You can contact me at contact@webdesigndeveloplearn.com should you require any help.

    All the best,

    Ishan 

  6. Hi Kaushank,

    Have you checked out SellMojo? SellMojo is a unique social commerce platform, offering businesses the opportunity to sell to their customers with fun, accessibility, and ease within Facebook. SellMojo combines the best parts of an online store platform with a social shopping experience. 

    I can also introduce you to Our Logistics Partners who can assist you with preferential rates. 

    At SellMojo among other things, our aim is to also help our merchants have a single backend and multiple frontends. We wanted to be able to let anyone setup a store and start accepting online payments. We are solving both these ‘problems’ by doing the following:

    a)      All our merchants upload their products in their SellMojo admin panel. Currently we offer 4 front ends; the merchants Facebook Page, the merchants own website, a SellMojo sub domain and a SellMojo Marketplace. In the near future we will be adding more frontends for our merchants. This simplifies their life as they only have to handle inventory at a single location

    b)      We have been working with various payment partners to bring down the amount of time taken to start accepting payments online. Today the amount of time it takes for a merchant to start accepting payments online has come down to a week from a month. We would like to bring this down to a day and we are process of making that happen.

    You can write in hello@sellmojo.com or call me on +919821765850. Would love to help in any way possible.

  7. Hello Sir, thank you for your excellent advice. The problem is, we are starting with very minimal funds equaling to very ltd. inventory. Plus, Ebay, a website and other selling platforms has good cost involved while an FB page is totally free. We don’t know if we will be able to reach the desired audience but we got to start somewhere with the ltd. funds we have. I think we really have to consider about the payment options other than COD though.

    Thank you once again.

  8. Thank you for your advice, will let you know if any help needed.

  9. It was great talking to you and we love your concept. We will get back to you.

  10. Pleasure to be of help 🙂

    I would still suggest to look for options above FB. FB presence is a must but would still recommend a standalone store 🙂 Use FB as a channel to get traffic onto the store. Even with extremely limited funds, you shall be able to make your own website and have a basic payment gateway. Rodinhoods is a great place to search for this info. Read more on this topic here 

    If you feel your audience is on Facebook ONLY, then Nameet’s suggestion of using SellMojo looks really attractive!

  11. Hello Kaushik

    I advice move to move your site to http://www.infibeam.com business module. They have payment attachment and their owm delevery system. So both problems are solved. They have FREE module to minimal charge module. Once you are in profit , think of other options.

    Raju Pawar

  12. I would STRONGLY suggest you review some of the links on this search on therodinhoods (including the article I wrote on Dominos)

    https://www.therodinhoods.com/page/search?q=COD&cx=016023889689686651228%3A00t5jwenpas&ie=UTF-8&cof=FORID%3A11%3BNB%3A1&sa=Search

  13. Sure Sir, Thank you

  14. Seems like a good alternative. I’l study the website. Thank You 

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