Choosing Manufacturer Delivery from Poland and Customer Delivery from Ireland

karlkarlson

We're currently neck-deep in business planning and working out our start-up and ongoing business costs. We will be an online women's clothes retailer operating from Ireland, with clothes manufacturing taking place in Poland.

Our relationship with the postal system?delivery companies will be three-pronged as far as we can see it:

GETTING FABRIC TO THE MANUFACTURER

GETTING THE FINISHED PRODUCT TO IRELAND FROM THE MANUFACTURER

GETTING THE PRODUCT TO THE CUSTOMER

For the first part I think we'll be relying on Polish companies or those who have a ready-made relationship with the fabric wholesalers. However if anyone has any experience shipping from one location in Poland to another I'd appreciate their thoughts here.

On the second part, does anyone have particular experience working with delivery companies shipping finished product from Europe--or indeed Poland specifically--to an Irish warehouse?

On the third part, I'd be particularly interested to hear some opinion from online retailers based in Ireland who ship worldwide. Are businesses using a multitude of options depending on where they are shipping? For sending clothes, would An Post be the best option over normal airmail since these are lightweight items?

Thanks for any help any of you can take the time to offer.

Karl

karlkarlson

Bumping this post in case any one has some useful insights to share.

TheReaver

Could only help you with the second issue,

Cheapest option would be seafreight but transit time could be above two weeks due to transhipment in Antwerp or Rotterdam. Check out the following for FCL quotes

Containerships
Evergreen
DFDS

If you expect the shipments to be LCL to Ireland and unlikely to develop into FCL it might be worth considering doing the warehousing/distribution direct from Poland, anyway for LCL quotes try the following

DB Shenker
Kuehne Nagel
DHL



FCL = Full Container Load LCL = Less Than Container Load

karlkarlson

Thanks for that TheReaver.

By FCL, if you mean the big rectangular boxes normally stacked on cargo ships, than yes we would be less than that and probably always will be for the foreseeable future.

Distribution from Poland is something we have talked about al-right, but from the start we will go from Ireland. I've spoken a little with DHL but I will try the others.

stedeb

Hi Karl
I am in the Rag trade myself and for years have sent fabrics from everywhere to eastern Europe and then ready made garments to Ireland .
your options
fabric supplying

fabric company can arrange for you
or
use a freight forwarder here to arrange the transport if it is bulky shipment they have contacts all over ( you have more control this way)

Finished goods to Ireland

are your goods hanging or flat pack
I use road freight and find it can be very reasonable depending on your shipment size (should only take 1 week shipping )
any Freight forwarder will ship for you

getting goods to customer
we send hanging garments through a retail company for this so i cant help on the an post part, but if you are doing daily volume i am sure an post , Tnt,Dhl can give you good rates.

karlkarlson

Thanks stedeb.

are your goods hanging or flat pack I use road freight and find it can be very reasonable depending on your shipment size (should only take 1 week shipping ) any Freight forwarder will ship for you

This is the first time I've heard about 'hanging'. So far the manufacturers have only talked about packing the finished good in a box for shipping to Ireland. In what cases would you use hanging, stedeb?

stedeb

Hi Karl
we use hanging garments as our product is high end ladies garments with RRP250 + so we cant expect our customer to receive the gmts flat pack and scrunched up .
I find that we have garments that get creased a lot when they are boxed so we have to repress at an extra cost here so to counteract that i get them delivered hanging up (more expensive to transport but cheaper than repressing).

karlkarlson

stedeb, in our case we plan to receive the shipment and warehouse the stock (take them out of the box and hang them) and then individually ship to the customer once the orders come through online. We would potentially steam the clothes ourselves if and when it's needed before distribution.

The clothes won't be particularly cheap either - not too far away from what you're quoting.

I'm inferring that you're shipping direct to a retailer, whereas we would be the retailer ourselves. Correct?

What do you think of our approach? Is hanging delivery generally much more expensive?

stedeb

hi Karl
It depends on the volume and type of garment you bring in hanging .
If you have a full truck to yourself you can get approx 8000 garments hanging and a good rate .
if you are doing groupage hanging you will pay per bar rate and space on the drop
(IE. on the truck you will fit 2 dresses in length but you will fit 3 tops in length).

for sure flatpack will be cheaper (but you will have the steaming to do at an extra cost )and you can use a lot more transporters this way as the hanging is specialized business but is available .
What volume will you be bringing in per shipment?
Is it only Poland you will be using ?

Hope it goes well as it is very tough out there at the moment especially for new collections.

yes we ship pre-orders to our retail shops in irl and uk hanging (we don't do web-sales as yet , but have agents in all areas uk and irl)

karlkarlson

Hi stedeb,

Our numbers will be a lot lower than 8000. Since we're just beginning they'll be somewhere in the region of 400 pieces in our first collection (16 lines). With each collection we'll likely hope to increase those numbers and reduce manufacturing costs per unit.

So steaming the clothes when taken out of the box is probably doable by ourselves (obviously that would be a different story if it was 8000). We'll likely go for flat-packing at least at the beginning and if it creates any big issues consider hanging down the line.

Yes only from Poland for now.

Any other thoughts or advice you'd have would be most appreciated!