Episode 2 - Unraveling the Mysteries of Shipping from China for e-Commerce Sellers - Part 1

In this episode will take a look at what it takes to ship your products from China. This is Part 1 of a multi-part series that will take the confusion out of shipping by air or sea for e-Commerce sellers on Amazon, Shopify, eBay, or any other e-Commerce shopping platform. We'll also cover shipping for dropshippers and bulk shippers.

Transcript

Episode 2: Unraveling the Mysteries of Shipping from China – Part 1

Welcome back!  

This is the first part of an ongoing series of the e-Commerce Insider podcast. In this episode we’re going to talk about shipping your products from China.  This is such an important topic and covers so many different areas that we'll break this into parts. This episode will concentrate on the big picture. In upcoming episodes we'll dive deeper and get advice and hear stories from real shippers, freight forwarders and seasoned e-commerce sellers. 

Before we get into it, I  just wanted to thank you for listening. I’m learning a lot about podcasting as we go, and I hope to make this series interesting and provide some valuable information for your e-commerce business. Thank you for your patience and suggestions that help me improve how I share my knowledge and experience with you. 

As you know by now, I am an American businessman and entrepreneur and have lived in China for more than 14 years. I’ve learned a lot along the way about the e-commerce business and especially about sourcing in China. Along the way, I’ve learned a lot about negotiating with suppliers, managing orders, conducting product inspections, shipping and dropshipping. and generally helping e-commerce sellers. I work with people every day who sell on Amazon, Shopify, eBay or any one of a dozen other e-commerce platforms to find products for their online stores.

So, what's this episode all about? The plan for today is to talk about shipping from China. We're hoping to unravel the mysteries of shipping from China. If you're an e-commerce seller, obviously this is a major part of what you need to understand about how to do business in China.

It's one thing to source a product. And we talked about sourcing in our last episode. But it's another thing to ship products from China, which is not an easy thing to do, but it can be done. So, what I plan to do is try to give you some background on shipping, about how things work, and what you need to know. If you've never done any shipping from China, then you'll have everything you need from this podcast to get started. I see a lot of messages online and I get a lot of questions every day from e-commerce sellers that they just don't know where to start, and in a lot of cases, they're doing it the wrong way and they're doing it the most expensive and risky way. The problem is they don’t know where to turn for help.

The other problem I find is that a lot of these e-commerce sellers are spending way too much money and they're also creating a lot of risk for themselves. Shipping is a necessary part of the e-commerce equation, and there's no one size that fits all. No matter what kind of e-commerce business you have, you still need to know how to get the product from the supplier to your destination. Even if you’re a dropshipper and have your products directly sent to your customers, you need to know what shipping options you have so you can reliably and cost-effectively ship your products to your customers. Dropshipping, as I mentioned before, is a subject that means a lot of things to a lot of people. For my purposes here, a dropshipper is somebody who orders products from a supplier and then has them shipped to their customers directly on an order-by-order basis. They don't handle the products at all. There are a lot of things that each of these selling methods have in common when it comes to shipping. But the best thing is to find a situation that fits your specific business needs. I want to talk about those differences as we go along.

There are a lot of challenges for e-commerce sellers when it comes to shipping. The two biggest are cost and shipping times. Many sellers, if not most, add the cost of shipping to the product price to avoid charging the customer directly for it. It seems that many potential customers will make buying decisions based on if the seller offers free shipping. For fast delivery times, it’s hard to compete with Amazon’s one- or two-day shipping options. Often when you see something you want to buy on Amazon, you’ll pick the product that has faster shipping times.If you’re sourcing products from China, then you know you’ll have to wait a week or more before you receive your products, no matter what shipping method you choose. Then you’ll need to send them further to your customers as you get orders. Very few people have the patience to wait that long unless it’s a specialty item or there’s a major price incentive to wait. The effects of taking a long time to process and deliver orders can be circumvented by holding inventory in the market where your customers are and delivering from stock. More about that later.

As I talked about in episode one of this podcast, sourcing is affected by a number of factors when doing business in China. Shipping is no different. In fact, shipping may be more difficult due to all the regulations, documentation requirements, modes of transportation, international import/export and trading laws and regulations. It’s no small miracle that it even works. But it does and I’ll walk you through it.

Not knowing the language, the time difference, the difference in how business is done in China, and so on, stumps a lot of e-commerce sellers and often leads to misunderstandings, disappointment, and temporary defeat. On top of all that, for new e-commerce sellers, just being unfamiliar with the process and an overwhelming fear of losing money or doing something wrong prevents them from taking advantage of what China has to offer your business.You may be wondering when you’ll have the time to do everything that’s needed to get your business started or running smoothly. Between product research, advertising campaigns, marketing your product, maintaining your listings on Amazon or creating your website or your shop on Shopify, customer service, returns, and on top of all that, you need to source products, order them, and get them to where you plan to fulfill them from. It’s enough to make your head explode!

Actually, this is the reason I started this company. Now here comes the shameless plug for Almond Global. I was in a similar situation and found that I wasn’t alone. Since I’m in China, I thought I could start a business that helped Western e-commerce sellers to do business in China. I had the business experience in the West, buying and selling companies, and I have an engineering background. I’ve lived in China for quite a while and have been doing business here for years, so, why not take over this burden for e-commerce sellers. And that’s exactly what I did!

Now, I’m here to tell you it can be done, and that you too can do it. If you’re the kind of person who doesn’t give up and can roll with the punches, then you’ll be just fine.

One of the things that has driven costs up and increased shipping times for the past couple of years or so has been the worldwide pandemic. Before we get started talking about details of shipping and things like that, I wanted to talk a little bit about the pandemic and the effect it's had on shipping and sourcing and those types of things in China.Obviously, it's affected everybody's lives. It's affected everybody's business. And it seems like it'll never end. Being inside China, I know the real situation when it comes to getting products from suppliers and shipping them. Despite all you hear or read, the situation is not nearly as dire as it is made out to be. No doubt, there are challenges, but, like most things, they can be overcome.Before the pandemic hit, we would ship products all over the world, primarily to the US, Canada, Europe, or Australia. We did both bulk shipments for our customers, as well as individual packages for our dropshipping customers. As an example of the pre-pandemic pricing, we could ship a typical small package, let's say a small package around one lb. or about 500 grams, that we would typically ship to the US from China. The shipping cost using a small package service like Yanwen or YunExpress would cost $6 or $7, and it would take about seven to nine days to arrive at the destination address. This seems pretty reasonable when comparing the price of local postage delivery in the US for the same size and weight package was almost the same.Suddenly, after the pandemic hit, ports were shutting down or were severely limited in how many ships they could process. Ships were backing up waiting to be offloaded. Sometimes for weeks at a time. The affect it had on both shipping times and costs was disastrous. The cost of shipping quadrupled overnight it seems. Shipping times for that same package I just mentioned went from 7 to 10 days to 50 or 60 days, sometimes even longer. One of the most popular small package services, called e-Packet, was shut down for a time. I’ll talk more about e-Packet a little later in this podcast.The effect that this was having on e-commerce sellers was devastating because many didn’t have a backup plan. A large number of e-commerce sellers were quitting or putting off plans to enter the market. I even heard a lot of people saying e-commerce was dead. I never believed that. What really happened was that consumers stopped going to malls and brick-and-mortar stores in even greater numbers than before and totally embraced e-commerce shopping. It’s not hard to see that it's the way shopping will be done from here on out.

The good news is that things have gotten much better since then. Shipping costs have almost gone back to pre-pandemic levels and shipping times are back down to eight to 10 days. As for the situation on the ground here in China, things are also pretty much back to normal. Occasionally, there are outbreaks that cause suppliers to slow down and limit production, but for the most part we’re not seeing too many delays. Recently, there were new cases of the pandemic that affected a major port city, but we adjusted and shipped products out of another city. If nothing else, the last couple of years has taught us to be flexible and look for alternatives. I actually spend a large amount of my time in searching for and vetting freight forwarders, shippers, and local transport companies, etc.

Okay, so let's get into it a little bit. I want to talk about the overall process as it relates to your business. Just knowing the process helps you make decisions about which products you choose, what costs are going to be, and generally lets you analyze the feasibility of selling a particular product.

If you think about it, shipping is just as important as sourcing, obviously, because you can source the product, get everything lined up, but if you don't consider shipping costs, shipping times, and things like that, then you’re setting yourself up for failure. I’ve seen e-commerce sellers who spend a lot of time, effort, and money to source a product, only to be derailed due to the cost of shipping. They had no idea it could cost so much. It’s not unusual for shipping to exceed the cost of the product itself.

I talk to people every day about this very subject. It's okay. How much is it going to cost me to ship this? Without specifics, for example, weight, size, product, destination, there's not much I can do to give them a firm quote. But there are things that you can do before you actually commit to buying a product, so that you have a good idea of what the shipping costs are going to be. 

The one thing to keep in mind is that shipping costs are definitely not cheap, no matter which mode of shipping you choose. But in a lot of cases, it's not as bad as you might think. I'll give you an example. We ship a lot of products from China. We ship or dropship everything from small individual packages all the way to hundreds of cartons. We do fulfillment from the U.S. as well as from China. From China, a package weighing less than 1 lb. being sent to the United States usually takes 7 to 10 days and costs around $7 to $8, possibly a little more. And that's perfectly acceptable, I think, considering how far it has to go and all the processing along the way. By comparison, if I ship that same package from our Texas fulfillment center by USPS First Class and ship it to a US address, it takes about 3 to 5 days costs around $6. So, if you consider going all the way from China to the U.S., Europe, Canada, Australia, or almost any other place, it's not that expensive. It's just a big expense that you don't normally think could be a major part of your cost. That's for one product. 

That's an example if you're doing drop shipping or something like that. But if you're sending a bulk shipment, you have to decide if it makes sense to send it by air or by sea. Sometimes your shipment can be sent by rail or even truck, but for most cases that we deal with the choice is either air or sea. The tradeoff here is time versus cost. 

Choosing between air or sea shipping is not only about the cost and the time it takes, but there are a lot of restrictions that have to be considered before deciding which way works for you.

Some of the things that you need to be concerned about are what kind of product is it that you plan to ship, are there any restrictions based on what kind of product you want to sell. There are many choices of shipping services, and they all have their own specialty or restrictions that determine if you can use them to ship your product. For example, there are restrictions about size, weight, minimum weight, destinations, and whether your product is considered to be a dangerous good. For instance, does it contain liquids (even small amounts, even water), is it flammable, does it contain batteries, is the item restricted from being exported from China, or is it restricted from being imported into your country, and so on. 

A couple of weeks ago a customer in India, who sells on Amazon in the US, had a cleaver or butcher knife sent to me so I could do an evaluation for him. After I was finished, as I normally do, I asked him what he wanted done with it. Some customers don’t want to add any more costs and tell me to discard it. Sometimes they want me to send it to them. Such was the case this time. The only problem was, I couldn’t find a shipper who would ship it due to restrictions in China for shipping knives. It was just over the legal size limit for shipping. 

There's a whole list of things that can't be imported into a given country. So, it makes sense to check your product before you spend a lot of time sourcing, manufacturing, or setting up a website or product listing to avoid wasting your time. Worse than that, if you buy a product in bulk and then find it can’t be shipped, imported, or exported, you have wasted a lot of money. What makes it more difficult is that restrictions change without notice and could be based on safety, geo-political, health, or any number of other reasons.

Such was the case for a customer of mine who wanted to dropship an essential oil product from China to mainly the US market. I helped him source the oil, the bottles, the labels, and the product packaging. Everything was good to go to start taking orders. I was even aware that there were certain restrictions about shipping flammable liquids abroad. Before I sourced the products, I checked with several freight forwarders about shipping this product. Due to the small amount of oil being shipping, it was not going to be a problem, according to the shipping companies. Suddenly, the rules changed, and we couldn't ship any kind of essential oils or any kind of liquid at that point, it could have been just water, but still not able to ship through the channels we use for small packages. I contacted more than 30 shipping companies and freight forwarders, all to no avail.

You may think it would have been okay to ship these small 10ml bottles, but, no such luck. By the way, 10ml is about 1/3 of an ounce in imperial units. So, not very much. Eventually I sourced just the oil from a US company and sent the rest of the kit to our US fulfillment center and rekitted everything to be shipped from there. It set us back several months and costs increased due to the higher cost of the oil in the US.

There are a lot of products that you need to check first before you decide to go and buy them to see if they can be shipped. Another example is knives, there are size restrictions on shipping knives. There's a whole list of things. It's not that difficult, but It's just something for you to keep in mind that you need to be concerned about. 

Other things you should be aware of are if the product is branded. A lot of people want to buy cheap products in China, and they think that they can buy cheap knockoff products and sell them in the United States. It’s very difficult, despite what some people think, to trade in branded products. The concern is whether the item is fake or unlicensed. 

I’m sure some people do get away with it. But, it's not very common anymore. If you buy a product and it says Coach or Apple on it, or whatever the product might happen to be, it has a very good chance of being stopped in customs. This could happen on the export side or the import side. The problem is that not only might it be stopped, but the shipment could be seized, you could be fined, or even worse. So, you have to be really careful about trademarked items. We do get a lot of questions about that. Maybe someone wants to buy Apple knock-offs or other branded items like Mickey Mouse t-shirts or items with cartoon characters on it. We don’t even try and recommend you don’t either unless you want to risk losing money and facing legal penalties. 

Most shipping companies and freight forwarders will not ship these items if you don’t have a license from the manufacturer. That's the first question they ask, does the product have logos or are they branded? If it's branded, then there is a concern that in a lot of cases, they won't ship that product. So, if you're planning on setting up an e-commerce business based on selling knockoffs and things like that. You can't get them from China. If you can, then I don't know how you're doing it, but I’m sure you won’t be doing it for long.

Other difficult items to ship include any product with batteries. Generally, these products have to be shipped by services specifically created to handle dangerous goods. There are restrictions on battery type, size, power ratings, etc. There are even restrictions based on whether the batteries are replaceable or permanently mounted. Because of this, a lot of suppliers have broken with tradition and are now shipping products without batteries. This is a good idea, but you have to weigh that against what your customer base is expecting. 

I remember as a kid that many products were sold without batteries. It was always disappointing to open a new toy that required batteries only to find they weren’t included. Invariably you didn’t have the right size lying around, so you had to make a quick trip to the store. Not only that, but the added expense of buying batteries made the product that much more expensive. Therefore, due to market demand, manufacturers started including batteries and they started printing “Batteries included” on the outer packaging so you could make a quick decision when you’re at the store to buy it or not, just based on that one issue.

You can ship products with batteries, but it will cost more, and they will be subject to specific restrictions which limit your choices. It’s good to be aware of these things before sourcing your product from China, or anywhere else internationally.

Another important consideration regarding shipping is whether you will dropship products directly from China on an order-by-order basis directly to your customers or will you buy a product in bulk and send it to a fulfillment center in your market and have the fulfillment done there. Which mode you choose depends on your distribution/fulfillment strategy. There are cost considerations as well as shipping time tradeoffs.

Dropshipping individual orders directly from China doesn’t require as much initial cash outlay as shipping the product in bulk. However, when shipping individual packages, the chances of items getting damaged or lost are higher. We’ve been really fortunate in this regard that we have a good track record. 

The main advantage of bulk shipping is that once you have the product in your destination market, the customer can receive the product much faster once they place the order than if it has to come all the way from China. There are, however, other considerations when shipping in bulk. For example, when you ship in bulk, you need to figure out the best mode that meets your business goals. Do you want it fast, or do you want it cheap? It’s one or the other when it comes to bulk shipping. This means, you need to decide if you will ship by air or by sea. In some situations, depending on where you’re sending the product, it might also be possible to ship by truck or rail, but that’s not very common (at least for my customers). Besides the differences in costs and shipping times, there are other things that need to be considered when choosing which mode works best for you. 

Another thing that you should consider when sourcing and shipping products from China is the size of the product. This affects shipping costs more than anything else. It's very easy to ship smaller products. A lot of the small package shipping services are backed by international agreements between countries that subsidize the cost of shipping. This promotes trade between countries. But these services are usually limited to small and light packages up to about 4lbs or 2kg. 

For larger items and when shipping in bulk, shipping costs are calculated based on the size and weight of the packages being sent. It’s a misconception that it’s only the actual weight that is used to calculate shipping costs. Shipping companies have to account for not only the weight of the shipment, but how much room it will take up in the airplane or hull of a ship. This is known as the volumetric weight. It’s derived by using internationally recognized formulas for calculating size and weight. The shipping company will normally use the higher of the actual weight, or cargo weight, and the volumetric weight when calculating shipping costs.

For example, if you ship a light, but bulky item that takes a fairly large size box, you will pay more than if you ship a heavier item in a smaller box. This is why it’s very important how the product is packed. If your product takes a lot of space and is not packed very well, it could end up costing you a lot more for shipping than it should. Most suppliers know this and do their best to minimize wasting space in a shipping carton. It’s not always possible to do this and you will end up paying more than you thought you would.

I have a customer that we recently helped find a company to create a plastic injection mold for their product and ultimately to do the production run. The first step after getting the mold made was to produce a few samples to look at the quality and see if any adjustments to the design or mold needed to be made.

I won’t mention what the product is, but it’s fairly bulky considering its weight is only about 2 lbs. The customer asked to have it shipped to him in the US so he could look at it closely before moving on with the production run. When I got quotes to ship the product by air, the cost was shocking since it was based not on the cargo weight, but on the volumetric weight. In this case, the volumetric weight came out to about 13 lbs. even though the cargo weight was only 2 lbs. Adding to the outrageous cost of this was the restriction that the shippers had of a minimum of a 45 lb. minimum per package. So, what went from a fairly light and potentially inexpensive shipment, turned into a very expensive proposition.

So, you can see the importance of choosing products that not only meet the demands of your market niche, but also products that can be shipped at a reasonable price. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t pick larger or bulkier items, it just means you have to consider how much you can charge for your product and weigh that against your costs, and maybe consider these things when you’re in the product research phase.

As a bit of an aside, we have another service where we do sample evaluations by Zoom video calls with our customers where we perform a detailed evaluation of samples. This consists of a 30- to 45-minute session where we go over the product in detail. We weigh the product, measure it, assess the overall quality, perform some operational tests, and generally do what you would do if you had the product in your hands. Quite often it only takes a few minutes to realize a sample is not up to a customer’s expectations or requirements and can be quickly eliminated from the list of suppliers’ products they are considering ordering. This saves a couple of weeks of shipping time and the costs associated with that. This doesn’t replace an onsite pre-shipment inspection of a production run at the factory, however. This is only to test a sample of a product. We’ll talk more about pre-shipment inspections in a future podcast. Inspect. shipping a sample. 

Let’s talk next about incoterms. What are they, you ask? Well, incoterms are internationally recognized rules used in international shipping to define the responsibility of buyers and sellers for a given export transaction. You may have heard terms such as E-X-W, F-O-B, D-D-P, or maybe even D-D-U. Altogether, there are seven terms used for any kind of shipping and four more used for sea freight. To get the full detailed description of each term and how it works, just do an internet search for “incoterms” or go to the US government website “trade.gov/know-your-incoterms”.

The reason incoterms are so important is because it clearly states who is responsible for a shipment from one point to another in the entire shipping process. Each one has documentation requirements, costs associated with actions for each given point along the way, and for making sure the shipment moves from the buyer to the seller with all the handoffs, movements, stops, check-ins, customs clearances, and so on, along the way.

The easiest way to handle this is to find a freight forwarder who can handle all the paperwork and logistics associated with shipping the product. If you were to try and do it yourself, you would most likely not be successful since there are so many regulatory requirements and requires a lot of relationships with various entities along the way. Freight forwarders usually have deals set up with carriers and can get better rates than you could. 

Having said that, it’s still a good idea to know what the incoterms mean, because you’ll need to decide which method of shipping works best for you and there are cost implications. For example, many suppliers will give you a cost estimate which may include the cost of the product and the terms are “F-O-B”. That means they will finish the product and deliver it to a shipping port (or maybe your freight forwarders warehouse at the port). Since there is a cost associated with them having it shipped to the port from their factory, they will include this in the cost. You should be aware of that. 

Usually, when I’m sourcing a product, I’ll ask for the quotation to be “E-X-W”. That means the supplier will have the product ready for pickup at his warehouse or loading dock, but I’m responsible for having it picked up and taken to the port. The reason this is important is because E-X-W does not include any shipping price since I’m responsible for pickup. I might be able to, and quite often can, get cheaper local shipping than what the supplier is offering, so now I save a little money there. 

I have seen situations where the supplier insists on shipping F-O-B and there’s not much you can do about that except try to negotiate it. There are other implications for the suppliers, including tax issues, that we won’t cover here. These types of things may shape their shipping  policies and the reason they will only offer F-O-B shipping. However, I’ve never had a problem getting them to agree to E-X-W. 

Two more incoterms are important to know and they are D-D-P and D-D-U. These are both basically door-to-door services with one including import duties (D-D-P) that are pre-paid before the shipment is picked up and the other one (D-D-U) where the import duties are not collected in advance and must be paid when the shipment goes through customs on the import side. 

Both methods have advantages and disadvantages, but the main thing to consider is that they are door-to-door services which leaves all the hassle of shipping up to your freight forwarder or whoever is handling your shipment. 

It's not my purpose here to provide a detailed tutorial about incoterms, but you can see the importance of understanding them and the affect they may have on how you ship your products and the costs associated with that. If you’re interested, let me know and in a future podcast I can go over those in detail.

I can’t emphasize too much how important it is to get a freight forwarder or company that can handle the shipping for you. They usually can get better pricing and if anything goes wrong, they are much better equipped to handle it than you would be. Transparency is important as well as finding someone who will respond to your questions and deal with problems quickly. It’s also good to get to know several freight forwarders. Not all freight forwarders handle every kind of shipment. Mostly they are interested in bulk shipments. I have a couple freight forwarders who only handle container shipments, others will do large numbers of “loose” cartons, others will only do small individual packages. We’re constantly vetting new freight forwarders to make sure we can offer the best prices and the best service because in the shipping industry, things change quickly.

So, now you know a little about shipping and that you need to contact some freight forwarders to give you pricing for your shipment. It helps if you have an idea what information they will be looking for rather than them having to pull it out of you. The less you waste their time, the more likely you will get better service. That’s a simple law of how business is done.

The types of things a freight forwarder or shipper needs to know are, 1) What is the product, 2) What is the destination? You’ll need to provide the city, state or province, and country along with the postal code, 3) The pickup address where the product is located (usually the supplier), 4) How many cartons are there in the shipment, 5) What is the overall weight and the weight of each carton, 6) What are the dimensions of each carton, 6) They’ll probably ask for a picture of the items so they can determine if there might be any shipping restrictions. This seems like a lot of information, but it really is necessary to get a firm quote. 

You can also see why it’s hard to get an idea of shipping costs without this information. It probably wouldn’t surprise you to know that a lot of people who ask about shipping costs haven’t even picked a product yet to sell. They simply ask what our shipping costs are. Without these details we can only give examples of other shipments that may be similar to theirs.

There may be other shipping requirements depending on where you are shipping your products. For example, if you are going to ship your product to an Amazon warehouse, you’ll need to provide the information I listed just a minute ago, but also you’ll have to provide Amazon receiving labels which Amazon creates and provides to you when you create your shipping plan. These are not shipping labels, but they are used by Amazon when your product arrives at the warehouse so they know everything about the shipment as it relates to their operation. Other fulfillment centers have the same requirements to varying degrees. 

Also, don’t forget things like labels for SKUs, or barcode labels. These are generated by the fulfillment companies in some cases, but in the case of Amazon, they will create them. You can download these labels and send them to your supplier so they can print them out and stick them on the product. This is much cheaper than having Amazon do it because they charge about 30 cents per label. 

Also, don’t forget that each product has to be labeled with “Made in China” to meet import requirements. It can be on labels attached to the product or printed on the product packaging. It has always been a requirement, but wasn’t heavily enforced, but recently for packages going to the US, this has been enforced. Also, don’t forget that each carton has to be labeled with “Made in China”. 

Most suppliers we’ve dealt with know these requirements as do the freight forwarders, but it is your responsibility to be compliant with import requirements as well as fulfillment center requirements. 

Moving on, one of the big questions you might have is should you ship by air or by sea? And the answer is, it depends. It's not just a matter of how fast you want to ship, but it's also a matter of cost. Do you need it fast or do you want it cheap? because you can't have both in most cases. I get a chuckle every once in awhile when I see some supplier, shipping company, or fulfillment company say they have the best shipping times and the lowest costs. Unless they are operating their own trucks, ships, boats, and/or airplanes, that’s just marketing hype. Even then, they are subject to the same port congestion and customs processing as everybody else.

From China, air express is usually done by DHL, FedEx, or UPS. But even with these carriers, they have a network of partners who may do different parts of the shipments. Maybe they’ll partner with another airline to send the products to the destination country and from there they handle the rest. I believe this is one of the reasons why tracking numbers always seem to show little or no information until the shipment arrives at the point where these companies take over the shipment. Quite often with UPS, for example, we’ll get a UPS tracking number as soon as the shipment is entered into their system here in China, but it’s not until the shipment has cleared customs on the receiving end that we actually see updates. This is the source of anxiety for customers who spent a lot of money and time on a product and it seems to go into the abyss for a while.

Even if you decide to ship by one of these air express companies, you most likely will be working through a freight forwarder who will handle the pickup from the factory and take the shipment to their warehouse in one of the major port cities. There, they will prep the shipment for customs and finalize everything before it is picked up by one of the air express companies. This is another reason why tracking numbers don’t always explain where the product is because you only received the tracking number from the air express company and not the local pickup company in China.  

If you plan to ship by sea freight, the process is similar to air express, by that I mean, the product will be picked up from the supplier and sent to the freight forwarder’s warehouse in a major port city and it will be prepped for shipment and customs clearance before it is loaded on the ship. 

No matter if you go by air or by sea, during the preparation phase at the freight forwarder’s warehouse, they will verify the weight and size of each carton. Theirs is the official weight and size. Even though you may have given this information to them, they will rely on their own weighing and measuring to determine the official numbers. What that means is if there are any discrepancies, you may have to pay more if the actual dimensions and weights are different. This happens very seldom for us because we accurately weigh and measure the cartons in our warehouse. It doesn’t do any good to under state these since the official weigh-in and measuring is up to them. It also shows how important it is to get a good freight forwarder who won’t pad those figures to get more money out of you. 

You’re probably beginning to get the picture of why it’s difficult to do a lot of these things without having the right relationships and actually being in China. Of course, many e-commerce sellers do this successfully, but the important thing is to be educated as much as possible to avoid issues. There are so many requirements and regulations and policies, that you could spend a lot of time dealing with these issues. 

That’s all the time we have this episode. This will be an ongoing podcast series and we’ll take some deep dives into various shipping topics in future episodes.

Thank you for listening and feel free to contact me and let me know your thoughts. If you have any ideas about topics you would like me to cover about doing business in China for e-commerce sellers, feel free to reach out. My contact details are in the outro.

Have a great day and be successful!