Shipping sucks.
There, I said it. 2021 was a brutal year for Beadle & Grimm’s in terms of shipping, and early 2022 hasn’t been that much better. But there’s room for optimism.
Maybe the most frustrating thing I’ve ever had to endure in my career in delivering projects on time has been the shipping delays of the past two years. That feeling of helplessness while your product elements are sitting on a ship outside port, or held up in customs, while your customers wait for their orders, can be overwhelming. When you have a huge box full of elements in your product, all it takes is for one to be held up and it impacts your entire box. That being said, we didn’t help matters by not consistently communicating with customers on moving shipping dates.
So what can we do?
- Freight and shipping are supposed to improve the further we get from the Covid crisis, so overall shipping should be more consistent.
- B&G is implementing more communications to let our customers know about shipping delays so you can better plan for them.
- We’re finding new production capabilities and shipping partners that will mitigate some of the risks we have today.
- If you’re one of our international customers, please know that we’ve made progress on improving our shipping notifications and tracking.
If you’ve pre-ordered one of our products in the past year, you may have experienced some frustration over shipping delays against our initial estimates, but I’m hoping and expecting those delays to shorten, and with any luck, we’ll consistently hit our estimates. I’m confident improvements are coming.