Looking back on 2010, we see a difficult year. Most of our problems were caused by shipping. Not only our import shipping by steel container but also our truck shipping to our customers.
Import shipping became increasingly expensive as shipping companies claimed shortages of steel containers and not enough ships. It’s funny how these became available if we agreed to pay much higher prices. Add to this the very high cost for random government inspections and we were hit with a 40% increase in these costs.
The cost of LTL truck shipping to our customers increased dramatically in 2010. We lost our favorable treatment for residential delivery and the use of a the lift gate and the trucking companies arbitrarily added costs over and above their “usual” 5.9% annual price increase. Of course the “temporary fuel surcharge” continues to climb. I’ll bet that even if diesel fuel fell to $1 per gallon, this would still not disappear.
Many importers of Chinese made Christmas goods reported late and incomplete deliveries. Fortunately, we have most of our figures made in the Philippines, so we had few problems other than shipping delays.
It was the kind of year you would expect as the world economy slowly exits the “Great Recession”, but the tactics used by the shippers and suppliers makes one cynical and I don’t want to become that way when we design and sell such beautiful and inspirational figures.