Frequently Asked Questions
How much does it cost to store my inventory in your warehouse?
Your only fee to store inventory is $0.02 per day per item stored. Aside from the storage fee, all you are responsible for is the shipping fee once you sell an item.
How many items can I store in your warehouses?
As many or as few as you want. We have clients who send us 20 products at a time and others who send 4,000 products. You only pay one low rate per item for as long as the item is stored here. No minimum spending required. We work with both large and small based businesses. Home based internet, ecommerce and ebay sellers are welcome!
How quickly can I begin using Shipping Elite?
In most cases, we can get your account setup and start receiving your inventory within 2 weeks. Sometimes as quickly as 4 business days if we have extra warehouse space available. Please contact us to see what our current availability is.
Why do you charge a flat rate for shipping?
We like to keep things simple without guessing games. The more confusing the pricing is, the more administrative people we need in our company to keep track of everything. This means, we would have to hire more people and charge you more money as a result.
We calculated the average UPS fee for each of the 1,000's of orders we've shipped around the country by the weight of the packages. That's how we came up with the average shipping rate per package. We actually lose money on orders shipped to the west coast. We make a little on the orders shipped to the east cost, so overall we come out even based on the average flat rate prices we are using.
The reason we do this is to help you as the business owner. No longer do you have to guess how much your order is going to cost to ship. You can easily look at the weight of the items in your order, look on our rate chart and know with 100% accuracy what your cost will be to ship that order.
How does your service compare to dropshipping?
Typical dropshippers buy inventory, mark it up by 25% and allow you to sell their products. When you sell something, they ship it out for you, and typically charge a dropshipping fee as well. The problem is, you can't compete in the marketplace after they take their two cuts into your profits.
With Shipping Elite, you can purchase inventory directly from the manufacturers at regular wholesale prices, which are typically 50% off the retail price. You have the inventory shipped to our warehouses, so you can operate a business out of your home easily if you want. When you sell an item, you send us the customer's information, we pacakge up the order and ship it out within 24 hours (or same day if you send the order to us by 2pm).
We don't charge a dropshipping fee or take a portion of your products like dropshippers do. All you pay is a small storage fee and the flat rate shipping fee and that's it. You get to keep ALL of the profit you deserve and still don't have to touch a single piece of inventory.
Shipping elite has all the luxuries of dropshipping, minus the huge expenses. See case study here.
Can you put our name on the shipping labels?
I'm sorry, but we cannot do that. We carry inventory for many different companies and changing our label system for each one would be a nightmare to keep track of. We do however use a generic name on the labels. Depend on which warehouse we store your items in, the "from address" will say something like Warehouse Distribution, Customer Fulfillment, etc.
Inside the box we can put your own fliers or marketing materials if you want, so that way customers will know your business sent the package. We can insert these items at no extra cost aside from the cost to print & design the materials added to the boxes.
Do I have to buy the shipping materials if my customers order many items?
No, we pay for everything. All you ever pay is the small storage fee and the shipping fee per order that is shipped out. We have many different sized boxes in stock, so we will choose a box that accomodates your items. We then place your merchandise in the box, fill it with void fill such as kraft paper or bubble wrap, seal it with industrial shipping tape and apply the shipping label. We cover everything for you.
How quickly will my order be shipped out?
If you send us an order to fulfill before 2pm eastern time, we will get it out the same day. If not, your order will go out the next business day. The only time we can't guarantee same day shipping is if you send us a very large request such as 200 orders at 1:59pm. Our UPS pickup is at 4pm, so we need a couple hours to get the orders boxed up and labeled.
Do you ship internationally?
Yes and no. We typically ship via UPS for most of our clients because they give great service and tracking. We can ship to Canada, however it starts to get a little expensive, especially for larger items. If your customers are willing to pay the higher rate (or you are willing to pay the different) we can ship the items to them.
Orders shipped to Alaska or Hawaii are also a pretty expensive task. The pricing for each region is shown on this page.
Shipping overseas is VERY expensive, so our clients typically don't request this service. Contact us if you need to ship overseas and we can look into the pricing for your specific products.
Most of our clients have made the business decision to only ship to the lower 48 US states for cost savings reasons. It's up to you to decide if the cost is worth it to your business.
Are your shipping rates negotiable?
Our shipping rates can be lowered if you ship out a lot of orders. If you ship more than 750 orders per month, we will lower your flat rate shipping fee for your account. The more we ship, the better deal get on shipping fees, which we can pass on to you in the form of a discount. High volume accounts that ship over 2,000 orders per month get an additional rate cut. Contact us for more details.
Do you have a question not already answered on this page? Please contact us and we'll be happy to help.