| John Earl said
at 2:34pm on March 6th, 2008 |
I recently started to sell prints here on BG. I was wondering if anyone could tell me the best way to ship them without spending a fortune. I am offering them with and without mats. Without is easy, but with is more expensive. The mats are 11 x 14 and 16 x 20. Thanks ~John Earl |
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| Janeice Silberman said
at 2:51pm on March 6th, 2008 |
John, Sharon has posted this information somewhere else on this site before. So look for it. |
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| Mindy Newman said
at 3:02pm on March 6th, 2008 |
John - Golly! Prints on line sales may be very good. I wish you luck. I'm hoping you will tell us how that works. |
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| MOMOKO said
at 3:11pm on March 6th, 2008 |
I am in the middle of lawsuit regarding prints, and I think I need a long break from prints. Some of prints tend to fade in color after several months, and to get prints that do not fade so fast it costs fortune. Just because the print job was expensive doesn't guarantee the long term quality.
Regarding to shipping, I don't have experience as I have not sold anything on-line. There's a retail of DHL called "unishipper," and I find it the cheapest (much cheaper than DHL). I really struggled to open an account with unishipper, and billing and making payments are very different from other services, but once I know their odd ways of doing things, it is nonetheless the cheapest. It may take a week and lots of phone calls just to open an account.
In my case, the representative had to set a studio visit to review my art business and interview me in person to open an account. Another strange thing was that customers will not know how much the shipping costs until s/he received a bill by snail mail. They don't do things with Internet or not even over the phone. One has to wait till receiving invoice via snail mail. I got impatient with that, and setting up the automatic payment with credit card was another work because I had to submit the application by regular mail and they had to received it in their headquarter or something then it took another month to get it set up.
Some of cheap services, not only shipping, but also everything else, take a lot of labor on users' end. |
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| Janeice Silberman said
at 3:18pm on March 6th, 2008 |
I have always heard from other artists that having prints, became almost a second business. Many artists have their spouse or a secretary to handle it all. |
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| MOMOKO said
at 3:22pm on March 6th, 2008 |
The other thing about unishipper is that if you miss a payment your account will be gone. So I thought I didn't want to miss the payment because it is a hassle to open a new account, it is worth getting credit/debit card payment because the invoice is solely depending on only one envelope via snail mail that comes in, I forgot how often, something like every two or three months. And if you don't pay, they don't try to collect the payment. They just close the account.
unishipper can ship things about half price of DHL in some cases, and they are all air, not ground. I think it is fair to say it's 30 % less in cost. They are great in international shipping too. |
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| MOMOKO said
at 3:24pm on March 6th, 2008 |
Oh, no. It's not all air! US domestic with unishipper has ground shipping too! International shipping has only air. |
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| John Earl said
at 6:26pm on March 6th, 2008 |
What I was really interested in was packing sugestions. Paintings are no problem becuase I ship them boxed through UPS, but prints are small and Im not sure what the best packing method is to save money. I will still send them UPS that way I can get a tracking number. I'm mostly worried about them getting bent. |
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| Cesar Garcia said
at 6:27pm on March 6th, 2008 |
John,
We recently sent prints to a buyer....very large "gallery wrap" framed and weighed at least 16lbs. or more. These were insured for around $800.00, and sent Fedex...only cost me max $20.00. 3 day ground delivery. |
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| Abstract Art By Sharon Cummings said
at 6:33pm on March 6th, 2008 |
John you can buy pre-cut corrugated cardboard from U-Line in the exact size you need to fit the matted print. You will need 3 sheets. Two for the outside and one cut smaller that will fit inside. The the inside one, you use 3 (three) 1/4 inch wood dowels in a "Z" pattern. This makes it very difficult to bend them in ANY direction. Early on I just used the two pieces of cardboard and some got damaged. Since this dowel method 0 damaged and over a year now with 100's sold. :) |
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