Free Shipping in Canada – The Deciding Factor

Free Shipping in Canada – The Deciding Factor

The majority of people who replied to our (fall giveaway) question,  “What is the most important deciding factor when purchasing online?” said it was shipping, and we completely understand this.

As online retailers we always try to keep shipping as low as possible, however, as much as we would like to, we cannot give free shipping on all our orders.

Shipping costs in Canada are extremely high, even using Canada Post. If we had free shipping: A 1 kg parcel (32x17x16cm) shipped from Toronto to Vancouver costs Approx. $17. So, if the markup on a product purchased is $15 and you deduct the packaging, payment processing fees and shipping from it, we would lose about $4 – $5 on the transaction.

This is the reason almost all small Canadian online retailers cannot give free shipping.

We are only able to give free shipping on orders over a defined amount, where we hope our markup will cover the shipping costs.

Ah! We already can hear you saying, “Well, why do some stores offer free shipping?”. There can be many reasons:

• They are trying to break into the market by losing money, but gaining customers for the future.
• The products they sell have high markups
• The products they sell have a high price point
• They have included the shipping in their price
• They sell immense volumes of product and can demand very low prices from the manufacturers and shipping rates from the shipping companies. (eg Amazon)

So you say, Amazon makes money and gives free shipping. Well no, Amazon Retail does not make money and has never made money. Amazon’s other companies, like cloud computing, prime etc. make billions, which more than covers their losses in retail. “Why don’t they care about losing money in retail?” Because their sole objective is to drive all the competition out of business and create a monopoly. Once accomplished – then the consumer will pay.

But we don’t expect consumers really care, they just want to pay as little as possible. We understand, and that is why we offer well priced gift ideas, and try to keep our shipping rates as low as possible.