summer shipping: steps you can take to keep orders flowing
TRANSCRIPT
Summer Shipping STEPS YOU CAN TAKE TO KEEP ORDERS FLOWING
Table of Contents
03 WHAT ARE YOUR OPTIONS?
03 SHIPPING UPGRADES
04 WEATHER MONITORING TOOLS
05 COOL SHIP
Safely shipping wine during the summer months is a challenge for every winery. Exposure to elevated temperatures carries the risk of weakened or altered flavors and leaking bottles. As every winemaker knows, severe heat can cause wine to expand, even to the point of pushing the cork out of a bottle. Wine should be kept at a consistent, stable temperature to ensure high quality product is delivered to your customers. Planning ahead for the summer shipping season is a wise course of action and will help you avoid revenue loss and inventory issues. From vineyard to bottle, you take great care in the winemaking process. But the journey doesn’t stop there. It’s important to maintain control over what happens while your product is in transit. Until the consumer has opened the bottle and tasted your wine, judgement is still out as to how well you’ve done.
What Are Your Options? When it comes to summer shipping, there are several options available to you, all of which fall into the categories of 1) expedited shipping, 2) weather monitoring, or 3) controlling the temperature of your wine while in transit.
Shipping Upgrades An easy way to avoid weather related headaches
is to upgrade shipping for orders shipping to or through states that are experiencing a heat wave. While you might usually ship a club using ground service, consider upgrading customers in warmer states to overnight or two-day service during the summer. This does increase your shipping costs but the extra effort to be accommodating and safeguard your wine will be appreciated by your VIP customers. For online orders, many wineries routinely suggest that customers select express shipping during checkout. This can be easily accomplished by using state specific messaging in the shopping cart.
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Monitor the weather and ship when temperatures permit Many wineries elect to suspend shipping during the summer months. However, with the right
tools in place, you should be able to ship year round. While it may not be an option for southern states, effective use of weather monitoring tools will allow you to reach a good portion of the US throughout the summer. If this is the option you prefer, systems need to be in place to track orders that have been placed on hold and to reserve the necessary inventory so that it is available when those orders are released. If you fulfill using a third-party logistics company, you should be provided systematic tools to manage orders.
At a minimum the system should: • Provide live access to a weather map of the U.S. and all current climates and forecasts • Allow you to selectively place states on weather hold • Allow you to set a date range for any particular state’s weather hold depending on the forecast • Allow you to review each order within a particular state, view its destination weather, and release
if it is going to a milder climate • Reserve inventory for orders on hold • Automatically release orders for processing once the end date of the weather hold has passed • Allow you to reprocess the order to ensure that all compliance requirements are still satisfied
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Keeping Cool Advances in shipping technology have made it
possible to ship wine in less than ideal weather conditions. While these options may not be suitable in every situation, they do provide alternatives above and beyond shipping upgrades and weather holds.
At WineDirect, we’ve categorized our cool shipping options as good, better and best. The time in transit and associated costs will vary with each and these may be used by themselves or in combination with each other, depending on the situation and your preference.
Cool Ship Options CoolPack The easiest way to keep wine cool is to use insulated packaging. Polystyrene and refrigerant help buffer against the rising mercury advises Wine Folly’s educational website.1 WineDirect’s CoolPack packaging2 provides excellent insulation while adding minimal additional weight to the overall package. Our high-density foam refrigerant provides temperature control for up to 72 hours. If the customer can’t be reached in 72 hours, we recommend that you use 2 Day service instead. While CoolPacks are a good option for protecting your wine during the final mile, they do add to your total shipping costs. Therefore, we suggest you use them in combination with the methods listed below, selecting CoolPack when necessary to avoid prolonged exposure to heat.
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Cool Ship Trucks At WineDirect, we offer two cool ship truck options3 (northern & southern) from our American Canyon fulfillment facility. These trucks travel straight to carrier hubs in Texas, Florida, and Ohio. They effectively act as zone skips to the eastern and southern states; ensuring your wine’s temperature integrity for the first leg of travel. Once they reach the hub, orders are handed off to the carrier and sorted for delivery. They are then put on a delivery vehicle the next day. Cool ship trucks are an excellent option for club shipments traveling to southern states like Texas, Georgia, or Florida. While it does result in additional transit time, total costs are comparable to ground shipping from California.
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Bi-Coastal Fulfillment Move your product closer to the consumer to speed up delivery. This is the ideal option, because it provides your customers the level of service they’ve come to expect. By converting what were formerly Zone 8 shipments to Zones 3 or 4, we’ve found our customers are able to reduce national transit times by an average of 3 business days. This speed of delivery results in improved customer satisfaction and product integrity. Not only does the quick time in transit minimize the potential for heat related damage, but you save on shipping costs as well. At WineDirect, our bi-coastal delivery network4 gives you 2-3 day access to 90% of US wine consumers. Plus, we use refrigerated trucks to transfer your product to our Ohio facility, so you can rest assured that the integrity of your wine is protected.
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SAME
HIGHER
Ship
ping
Cos
ts
Bi-Coastal Delivery
Cool Ship Trucks
CoolPack Inserts
Express Shipping
LOWER SAME HIGHER
Time in Transit
Time and Cost Comparison
Options as Compared to Shipping Ground from California
Avoid missed deliveries You can use any of the above techniques to protect against hot weather damage to your wine shipments, but if the delivery is missed, you still run the risk of having your wine sit on a hot delivery truck. Encourage your customers to ship to a business address whenever possible, and if that’s not an option, we suggest you use UPS My Choice. My Choice provides your customers more control over delivery times and gives them the option of rescheduling if needed. Being prepared for all seasons ultimately allows you to better serve your customers and sell more wine. With the many options available, you can extend your shipping season through the summer months. Contact a sales representative to learn more about how WineDirect's fulfillment solutions can accommodate the shipping needs of your winery.
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Sources 1. When’s the best time for shipping wine? Wine Folly, February, 2013 2. WineDirect documentation: http://documentation.winedirect.com/Orders/CoolPack 3. WineDirect documentation: http://documentation.winedirect.com/Orders/Temp-Controlled-Trucks 4. WineDirect documentation: http://documentation.winedirect.com/Orders/Bi-Coastal-Fulfillment
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