Delivery Charges to Business Customers?

JMR

I sell products via my website to consumers and charge them extra for delivery.

I also sell to a small number of retail outlets at a reduced price and up to now have been delivering the goods myself and not charging for delivery.
I now have some customers in the West of Ireland and will need to send goods by courier.
Generally speaking, do businesses charge their re-sellers for delivery or is it included in the product price?

Thanks

Peterdalkey

Delivery charges are quite normal, but they can also be used to increase order size by offering free delivery for orders over a certain value.

JMR

Thanks for your response.

My fear is that I have provided retailers with a trade price list, no mention of delivery charges.
If I stick an additional €30 delivery charge on a small enough order (approx €250) it will eat into their profit margin.

I like the idea of offering free delivery on orders over a certain value

mitosis

I charge delivery to my resellers. Sure it eats into their margins, but I am already giving them as much as I can. If I take on the shipping costs I have to boost the price or make a loss. I allow resellers to collect, and offer free delivery on large orders. Most opt to collect.

mitosis

JMR wrote: »

Thanks for your response.

My fear is that I have provided retailers with a trade price list, no mention of delivery charges.
If I stick an additional €30 delivery charge on a small enough order (approx €250) it will eat into their profit margin.

I like the idea of offering free delivery on orders over a certain value

You need to amend the price list to reflect your delivery policy. You can't sneak in an extra charge (which is how they'll see it)

Gloomtastic!

Over in AH in the infamous Stingy thread, there was a post about someone who used to order over x amount to avail of free delivery. They would then return everything bar one item, again using the free return policy, therefore cheating the retailer out of the delivery charge and return cost.

Maybe something in your T&Cs would discourage this......

relaxed

Peterdalkey wrote: »

Delivery charges are quite normal, but they can also be used to increase order size by offering free delivery for orders over a certain value.

That's key for me, charge per order, so if they only order one biro (for example) fastway charge €10. If they order 1000 biros, its still €10.

If you don't charge for delivery they will just order in 1's and 2's.

JMR

relaxed wrote: »

That's key for me, charge per order, so if they only order one biro (for example) fastway charge €10. If they order 1000 biros, its still €10.

If you don't charge for delivery they will just order in 1's and 2's.

That's very interesting.
I have tried to enforce a Minimum Order Quantity but when a retailer comes looking for a small number of items it invariably leads into a discussion and I end up supplying rather than losing the business.
The way to enforce this is to charge a fixed price for each delivery, regardless of size with possibly the option of free delivery on orders over a certain value.

Peterdalkey

You are gettting some good advice, essentially you need to have stated terms of business for delivery and then stick to them! such as

Order collection : Free
Orders up to XXX Euro: delivery charge Y Euro.
Orders over ZZZ Euro: Free delivery