Shipping has been increasing every year without exception since we started. There aren't many sure bets, shipping continue to increase is one of them.
We wanted to share an article we submitted recently about the struggles of Canadian e-commerce:
One of the biggest if not the biggest struggle for a Canadian e-commerce company is increasing shipping costs. Unfortunately there is a sizable disconnect between rising shipping costs and most clients expectations for how much it should cost. They want cheap or free shipping, something that was more easily done years ago and becomes harder as every year passes. To make matters worse, a lot of companies have kept their shipping rates the same out of fear of losing business. They even keep free shipping requirements low despite the fact that it would be very costly to rural areas or cities on the other side of the country.
There are some options for shipping within a big city that you reside in, outside of that you need to mostly use Canada Post or Couriers. While rates for cities that are close to you are still reasonable, it can be up to 50% more shipping when dealing with a farther away city. To make matters worse, as soon as you leave a major city, shipping jumps up substantially. In Ontario, our home province, the difference between city and rural rates is minimum 33% more. If you need to ship to a remote area, expect a 50% increase over the city rate. If you combine far away shipping with rural shipping, the rates can double vs local shipping. When dealing with a far away place like rural Newfoundland, it gets closer to $20 for the smallest box with no signature. Due to inflation and rising labor costs, we expect shipping costs to continue to climb.
We hope that customers become more aware of those increases and that companies adjust their free shipping minimum and shipping costs accordingly.
