Welcome to our latest business update.
Brexit finally arrived....we knew we had to find a resolution to avoid many of our overseas customers receiving demands for tax on their purchases before they could receive them.
The new shipping process initially resulted in complications with invoicing, taxation, tarifs and administration fees for which our European friends were presented with an unexpected bill! This was not right and how we like to do business. So, in early January (with a heavy heart) we temporarily shut our EU stores whilst we found a new solution.
In March, after a great deal of work with our shipping partners, we managed to find a way to ship to France and Germany, minimising the extra administration fees and making the price on the website the final price for the customer. This has worked pretty well for us and our customers, but it was still leaving us at the mercy of local customs agents who could slow things down for some customers. We knew we wanted to give our European customer’s a better service than that, and we still had to find a solution for the rest of Europe.
In steps our knight in shining armour...OGOship. A fulfilment company distributing from The Netherlands, working on behalf of our stores to despatch products to our customers in Germany and France. Having this facility in Venlo, means faster deliveries, and no local customs checks between the warehouse and the customer. We are also hoping to open up the delivery network to the rest of the EU as soon as we can!
We are currently trialling two of our key campervan conversion products in our multi-warehousing system...our exclusive Kiravans VW T5/T6 Double Passenger Seat Swivel (LHD) and the Kiravans VW T5/T6 DoorStore are now being fulfilled by OGOship. So, if you order one or both of these items, and these items alone, your order will be dispatched from our Netherlands warehouse. All other items are still being distributed from our UK warehouse, but our aim is to ship 85% of our product range to our EU customers from The Netherlands before the end of the year.
More exciting news…
We are in the process of establishing a completely independent trading business in The Netherlands to better serve our EU customers. We are totally focused on making things simple and hassle free for all of our customers near and far, as well as for our own internal processes.
Watch this space for more exciting news :)
Rob
