How can I efficiently set up international shipping for my baby clothes business?

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1

Hi community!

I am currently based out of the US (I house all of my inventory baby clothes in my house at the moment) I am expanding quickly and currently ship to US and Canada. I am still working through kinks with my Canada orders but is there a Shopify expert I can work with or pay to help set me up successfully for shipping to other counties? Thinking of UK next!

any advice is appreciated! I want to make sure I have shipping costs and any import duties handled correctly.

2

Hi @goodmorningbaby

Congratulations on your expanding business!

A few things regarding international shipping:

  1. Do you have a carrier you would like to work with on that?
  2. If yes, are rates going to be based on gross weight or volumetric weight?
  3. Duties/Taxes can hardly be collected on your website so the user sees the final price directly, they will have the mention “Total including Shipping minus Custom Fees”

We’d love to have a chat via email or any other communication method you prefer, we’re based out of France and thus had our fair share of international shipping quirks to sort across both sides of the Atlantic.

Cheers!

3

Hi @goodmorningbaby

Good to hear that you are going to expand your business. May I know which carrier you are planning to use for that purpose? That is one of the major decisions if you are planning to get accurate shipping costs. Along with these, you will also need to take care of the documents needed for shipping internationally. You can check out this guide: https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/shipping/shopify-fulfillment-network/getting-started-with-shopify-fulfillment-network/international-shipping

4

Ideally you work with a 3PL partner together… a service like ShipBob or ShipMonk is ideal… ShipMonk also offers a service through Passport that allows for all duties to be incorporated during the check out! so your customers know exactly how much they are paying.

5

Hi there! Thanks so much for your response!

We currently use USPS for the majority of our shipping and to Canada as well (US + Canada). Rates are based off of weight.

Do you have your customers pay the import duties?

6

Thank you!! We are currently using USPS for shipping. I will check out that link right now!

7

Are these apps I can add on to my shopify account/wesbite?

8

If you’re looking for an easy way to work on your shipping costs, checkout https://www.shipping-rate-importer.com/

It allows to import your shipping rates as a csv file, and apply a few post-processing calculations and filtering to make sure you get it right.