One of my big goals for this year is to be more careful with my business expenses to help raise my bottom line a bit. The first major transition was to order my packaging supplies in mass quantities from an online retailer instead of doing multiple shopping trips every month at a major chain store. On Monday, three big boxes arrived on my doorstep. It took about an hour yesterday to rearrange my office and closet to make space for 50 mailing tubes, 250 bubble mailers and 1000 pieces of chipboard.
To give you an idea of what sort of savings we're talking about : I was paying about $15 for 25 size #0 bubble mailers. Now I am paying $37 for 250 of the same. Can't really beat that. Totally worth a bit of reworking storage.
I have been making lists of other things I am constantly restocking (mailing labels, plastic sleeves, book rings) and will be purchasing them in large quantities too. It feels like a big cost up front, but the overall time and money saved is totally worth it.
This whole ordering and receiving packages from uline is like déjà vu. When I worked in retail, it was one of my responsibilities to order supplies for the store. Realizing that I am now ordering mass quantities supplies for my own shop is pretty surreal.
And please note : This post is totally not sponsored by uline. I just try to be honest with my experience as a small shop owner, and knowing stuff like this would have made me change my spending months ago.
I am currently the featured entrepreuner on the new website, StartUp Corner. I think this site is going to be an amazing resource for new businesses and I am excited to see it grow. I also have another fun interview up on Tea Talk this week.


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