We are often asked why we do not offer “free shipping” for the world’s most revolutionary performance drink. This is all the rage at ecommerce sites around the world, so why not at Krampade?
There are two simple points why we don’t routinely offer free shipping to customers.
First, our average product weighs 1.5 pounds a pouch, which means there is a lot of weight in a low cost item. Hence, it is prohibitively expensive to ship it without charging a lot more for your Krampade, so we have customers pay the shipping expense. This keeps prices low. The important point is you pay us for shipping what we pay the US Postal Service (USPS). When the USPS auto-packer calculates the incorrect shipping cost, we make it right. If this mistake results in an overpayment on the customer’s side, we add a complimentary product to make up the difference. If it is on our side, well, we just lose a bit of money.
Second, news flash, there is no such thing as free shipping. Every cost is calculated into the price of any product, which includes the cost of goods, production costs, warehousing costs, and delivery costs to the customer. We could charge more for a pouch of Krampade and send it to you with “free shipping”, but is it really free? Of course not.
Our product is offered at Amazon, and you can get “free shipping”. Well, let’s do some math here. At Amazon, we charge $16.50 per pouch, over twice the amount we charge on our website. For those keeping score, a single pouch from Amazon cost the customer $16.50, whereas the cost from us would be about $14.65 ($6 for the pouch, $1 for shipping and handling fee, and $7.65 for the US Postal Service). Sort of a break even deal for everyone, eh!
Now let’s purchase three pouches of Krampade. From our website, the cost is about $29 ($18 for three pouches, $1 shipping and handling fee, and about $10 for USPS). Now for an Amazon order, the cost is $49.50, but has the coveted “free shipping”. The customer can celebrate the free shipping for an added cost of about $20. Of course, we had to estimate the cost of shipping when we set up the pricing for Amazon and that is calculated into the price structure, hence it isn’t free, now is it?
One time we had a customer purchase 6 pouches of Krampade from us on Amazon. That was a $72 purchase and it was shipped to a location in the Great Plains, hence it was shipped in a low cost regional box for around $9. If the customer had purchased from us directly, the cost would have been about $45 rather than the $72, a difference of $27. So, in essence, the “free shipping” cost this customer an additional $27, but we appreciated the additional revenue!
We’d prefer you purchase our product from our website to save your resources, but that choice is of course yours to make. We’re happy to have to ship your product “free” via an Amazon purchase.
Note that we do permit free local pickup from our Grand Forks, North Dakota facility. Yes, this is truly free and is a perk one gets for in living in the coldest city in the lower 48 states. So, if you’re passing through Grand Forks, order it up via your mobile device, enter the Krampade address, and use the free local pickup option. We’ll have it ready for you to pick it up and will even be there on a Saturday or Sunday if needed. Why? We want to keep your trip cramp free, of course!
Next time you think about “free shipping”, remember what your grandma said, there is nothing free in this world, including shipping.