Cheapest parcels to the Uk?

CRPR Clothing

Hi,

I'm looking to start selling clothes online to the UK. I've looked at the costs from An Post to ship individual garments across and they seem pretty pricy. Is there other Couriers that can be used to ship to the UK. I don't need tracking details etc. just somthing along the lines of standard Royal Mail.

Any advice would be great,

Thanks

CamperMan

CRPR Clothing wrote: »

Hi,

I'm looking to start selling clothes online to the UK. I've looked at the costs from An Post to ship individual garments across and they seem pretty pricy. Is there other Couriers that can be used to ship to the UK. I don't need tracking details etc. just somthing along the lines of standard Royal Mail.

Any advice would be great,

Thanks

I find AnPost expensive, and could not find a courier service either that would ship many packages at a low cost, I ended up posting everything from the North using Royal Mail.

defiant12

Figure out what volumes you will be looking at and approch the likes of DPD, TNT, UPS, etc.
If your volumes are high enough they will certainly beat An Post and provide a vastly superior service...

J_Wholesale

If you have volume to ship, then DPD are probably the cheapest. The only downside is they normally take 2 days to deliver - pick up on a Monday, delivery to UK address on the Wednesday - as they use road rather than air.

ir555

Try Nightline - use them for all our national and UK to IRL deliveries. Should be cheap given their conneciton to ferry company/ existing UK network.

As mentioned above DPD have great "range/ play" on export delivery prices - worth contacting a sales agent and bargaining with them. Set a weekly number of deliveries e.g. 5 - get a rate and then get them to agree to rates when for when you start to achieve 10, 15, 20, 100 deliveries per week.

Cheers
DM

Glenalla

CRPR Clothing wrote: »

Hi,

I'm looking to start selling clothes online to the UK. I've looked at the costs from An Post to ship individual garments across and they seem pretty pricy. Is there other Couriers that can be used to ship to the UK. I don't need tracking details etc. just somthing along the lines of standard Royal Mail.

Any advice would be great,

Thanks

It is a very expensive piece of water!. The best I can do for irregular parcels is GLS / The Parcel Shop. All others wamted me to sign up to minimum per week which I was not in a position to do.

The Guvnor

I did not find DPD at all cheap to the UK - albeit for boxes to 30kgs.

In the UK they give out 24hr rates of £3 to most of the UK and surprisingly they can get a cheaper rate to send from Manchester to Ireland than we can get in Ireland.

I'm right in saying a price of €6.00 next day on upto 30kgs is about their limit for Ireland and to the UK you are looking at what €10-11?

J_Wholesale

The Guvnor wrote: »

I did not find DPD at all cheap to the UK - albeit for boxes to 30kgs.

In the UK they give out 24hr rates of £3 to most of the UK and surprisingly they can get a cheaper rate to send from Manchester to Ireland than we can get in Ireland.

I'm right in saying a price of €6.00 next day on upto 30kgs is about their limit for Ireland and to the UK you are looking at what €10-11?

We all know that Ireland is more expensive than the UK for just about everything. Royal Mail to Ireland is at times half the price of An Post to the UK.

Rates within the UK or from the UK to Ireland have no bearing on rates from Ireland to the UK, and comparing them gets you nowhere. Compare courier company 1 to courier company 2 for the same route - that's all that counts.

91011

J_Wholesale wrote: »

We all know that Ireland is more expensive than the UK for just about everything. Royal Mail to Ireland is at times half the price of An Post to the UK.

Rates within the UK or from the UK to Ireland have no bearing on rates from Ireland to the UK, and comparing them gets you nowhere. Compare courier company 1 to courier company 2 for the same route - that's all that counts.

Not really true - royal mail offer a surface & airmail service to ireland. An Post only offer a air service to uk. Air v Air prices are similar.

If you contact an post for parcels and you've the potential for doing any volume, you'll get good rates. - i have a 4.75 national rate (up to 30kg) and a 9.50 UK rate. (up to 10 kg)

J_Wholesale

91011 wrote: »

If you contact an post for parcels and you've the potential for doing any volume, you'll get good rates. - i have a 4.75 national rate (up to 30kg) and a 9.50 UK rate. (up to 10 kg)

We used to use An Post for parcels to the UK (until about 2 years ago). For some reason they started using Fedex to do the UK leg of the delivery, and we had about a 2 month period where they lost or delayed 1 in 5 packages. That was the straw that broke the camel's back for us and we haven't touched them since. I'm guessing they no longer use Fedex, as no courier business could survive with that level of delivery problems, but even still, we'd never touch them again.

The Guvnor

The €4.75 rate nationally is not a bad price.

J, I am in both the north and south hence my comparisons of the UK prices.

I don't like it when a guy in Manchester can send a box to Cork for less than I can from Newry or Dundalk with the same company which in this case was DPD.

To the UK atm Parcelforce are the only viable option.

Fastway can be good but have heard they can also be terrible depends on the area and driver.

I think I am right in saying DPD is franchised so to a certain extent the local owner can adjust his/her prices.

antoinolachtnai

Why doesn't the OP put operations in NI or GB? It sounds ridiculous, but if you can find a partner it might be worth your while, even on a small scale. After all, you have to pay for pick/pack and storage somewhere. VAT is lower too and presumably that makes up a few percent of your price.