This year our company moved from one location to another. We also ended up doing this right around in this current situation. This meant that we were lucky to get into the new office at the right time, but we also new that we were going to need to keep costs even lower to keep up with the market. Staying competitive can come down to cash flow and the ability to spend money on more important things. This was very true for our company and if we could cut 5 thousand a year off of our supply room, that money could instead go to marketing. That was the mindset we took and I want to go through how we ended up using shipping supplies stores to lower our budget and help our company survive the this economic crisis.
As all good supply rooms should be they should be cataloged well. Ours was not in our old office. So when we packed up we decided to up our game and take copious notes. We spent an hour or so getting quanity of everything and then we kept amazing notes on every single thing we used for a month in our new office. This was to know exactly what we were going to be using and this time we knew it would even be more important because we were doing some internal marketing instead of outsourcing it. So our stock of things like boxes, tape, and lables was going to be in higher use and we knew we needed to find the absolute best price and location.
After a month of notes, we knew what we were going to use for the next month. This meant it was time to shop for these items and knowing that we were spending thousands a month on these items then we needed to find the best place. I started looking at the local big box office store next to us. I had our list and went in and got pricing and quantity on each item. It turned out that much of the quantity was not there that we needed. Unfortunately, the price for our boxes, tape, and labels was pretty high as well. So with this information, I asked if they would do any discounts or bulk pricing and the answer was a quick no. This was unfortunity considering we were going to be spending thousands each month. Well luckily, there are so many options out there that I was going to find.
I looked around and found that Amazon was going to be my next place to price things out. I really like to support local, but if the cost is going to be much less then my company deserves me knowing. I put all the stock and quanity into amazon and found that the price was going to be about 1/3 less than the big box store and shipping would be about a day. If we needed rush items we would not be able to get them. That is a marketing problem and could cause problems in the future.
We ended up looking at the shipping supplies store next and that was the answer. They offered bulk discounts for quantity purchases. We ended up saving about 50% at the end of the big box office store. It was the answer and I hope it helps you too!
