Ingasbo Gets Hijacked At The Post Office.

.....OMG! Over the weekend I shipped out three circlets to addresses in the U.S. All three of them were over $7, with the most expensive being $9. Ingsbo currently charges $5.50 for shipping. Wow! I knew then that I had to get my shipping prices increased in a hurry. But I still thought that I had some time.

.....Well, I just returned from the Post Office after having shipped a single narrow circlet to England. It cost me $26 to ship it. I charged $32 for the circlet itself and $5.50 to ship it. Off of the $37.50 this client sent me via PayPal I gained approximately $11.00. After discounting the cost of supplies I ended up actually LOSING money on this circlet. Holy Cow! It's tough being a small business in today's world.

.....Normally, I would have brought the circlet home and sent an e-mail to the customer requesting additional shipping. But I was stuck on this one. PayPal never notified me via e-mail on this order (the first time this has ever happened to me). By the time the customer contacted me wondering what happened I told her that I'd ship the circlet to her without increased postage as an apology. Wish I had thought about that more before making the offer.

.....Things are a lot different than they were last year. My last set of shipments was early summer in 2007. The standard shipping price them was $4.25 for domestic shipments and approximately $11.00 for shipments to England. Ingasbo went on hiatus for the wedding and the big move. The hiatus turned out to be a little longer than anticipated, but I never thought prices on everything would rise so dramatically. Sheet metal prices almost doubled. The sanding and grinding supplies went up by at least a third. Even my post office box went up significantly.

.....I think that I had better get the prices raised on my web-site sooner rather than later. That's for sure!

.....Aaron / Arontius.