Gone very quiet
Discussion
105.4 said:
Red9zero said:
Our milkman has just emailed to say he is packing it in on Friday. Rising fuel costs and people cutting back have just made it no longer viable.
I’m surprised there’s any left. I don’t think I’ve seen a Milkman since the late 90’s.https://techblast.co.uk/news/modern-milkman-win-do...
DSLiverpool said:
On tiktok last night a lad was selling his own brand cosmetics like crazy. He got 1m likes in an hour, had prizes, competitions and shout outs - was amazing to see. I’m going in today to see what they sell on an average live - the world has changed.
You’re certainly right in that!Do we have a resident PH TikTok strategist yet?
loafer123 said:
There’s a waiting list for ours…
In more well heeled parts of the UK things that were killed off are actually now hugely popular and can charge what they want. Near me (in the more well heeled bit I must add!) there's a fishmonger, a greengrocer, butcher, also a fromagerie and they're all ridiculously busy and expensive. I remember quite clearly when my father had a shop in Farnham that opposite was a Greengrocer (20 years ago or so this was) and a cobbler, slowly both went out of business. I bet if they reopened again today they'd do a roaring trade. Milkmen and stuff are the same I reckon.okgo said:
loafer123 said:
There’s a waiting list for ours…
In more well heeled parts of the UK things that were killed off are actually now hugely popular and can charge what they want. Near me (in the more well heeled bit I must add!) there's a fishmonger, a greengrocer, butcher, also a fromagerie and they're all ridiculously busy and expensive. I remember quite clearly when my father had a shop in Farnham that opposite was a Greengrocer (20 years ago or so this was) and a cobbler, slowly both went out of business. I bet if they reopened again today they'd do a roaring trade. Milkmen and stuff are the same I reckon."No, it's an artisan bakery"
"What's the difference?"
"About five pounds"
(c) Harry Enfield
Flooble said:
okgo said:
loafer123 said:
There’s a waiting list for ours…
In more well heeled parts of the UK things that were killed off are actually now hugely popular and can charge what they want. Near me (in the more well heeled bit I must add!) there's a fishmonger, a greengrocer, butcher, also a fromagerie and they're all ridiculously busy and expensive. I remember quite clearly when my father had a shop in Farnham that opposite was a Greengrocer (20 years ago or so this was) and a cobbler, slowly both went out of business. I bet if they reopened again today they'd do a roaring trade. Milkmen and stuff are the same I reckon."No, it's an artisan bakery"
"What's the difference?"
"About five pounds"
(c) Harry Enfield
singlecoil said:
Flooble said:
okgo said:
loafer123 said:
There’s a waiting list for ours…
In more well heeled parts of the UK things that were killed off are actually now hugely popular and can charge what they want. Near me (in the more well heeled bit I must add!) there's a fishmonger, a greengrocer, butcher, also a fromagerie and they're all ridiculously busy and expensive. I remember quite clearly when my father had a shop in Farnham that opposite was a Greengrocer (20 years ago or so this was) and a cobbler, slowly both went out of business. I bet if they reopened again today they'd do a roaring trade. Milkmen and stuff are the same I reckon."No, it's an artisan bakery"
"What's the difference?"
"About five pounds"
(c) Harry Enfield
This basically highlights the bifurcation of society - what used to be a staple died out with the supermarkets, but now finds a market amongst those with many orders of magnitude more disposable income than before.
Cynically, I'm of the view that an uptick in artisan bakeries is a bit like a glut of new supercars - it usually means the "good times" are about to end, because people have just about got comfortable with a new normal of "good times" just in time for the start of the next recession
I've been a gardening products ecommerce retailer since 2002.
I've never seen a year as poor as this one - despite the weather being decent this year.
To be fair we did incredibly well in 20/21 due to lockdown.
I think a lot of demand may have been brought forward in our industry, saturating demand and leaving current demand weak?
Demand has dropped to below 2019 levels (the last pre-covid year for comparison).
2019 was a poor weather year.
As our season starts early (March) I think we can act as a kind of bellwether for other markets.
All I can say is if your season is anything like ours then its going to be very tough indeed (sadly).
Winners (as always) are Google, Amazon and Ebay. Amazon now take 30% of our net sales as commission (Ads & fees).
Seeing lots of companies losing money just to generate money for cashflow.
Demand lower, costs rising, selling prices dropping.
I've never seen a year as poor as this one - despite the weather being decent this year.
To be fair we did incredibly well in 20/21 due to lockdown.
I think a lot of demand may have been brought forward in our industry, saturating demand and leaving current demand weak?
Demand has dropped to below 2019 levels (the last pre-covid year for comparison).
2019 was a poor weather year.
As our season starts early (March) I think we can act as a kind of bellwether for other markets.
All I can say is if your season is anything like ours then its going to be very tough indeed (sadly).
Winners (as always) are Google, Amazon and Ebay. Amazon now take 30% of our net sales as commission (Ads & fees).
Seeing lots of companies losing money just to generate money for cashflow.
Demand lower, costs rising, selling prices dropping.
GardeningEcomm said:
I've been a gardening products ecommerce retailer since 2002.
I've never seen a year as poor as this one - despite the weather being decent this year.
To be fair we did incredibly well in 20/21 due to lockdown.
I think a lot of demand may have been brought forward in our industry, saturating demand and leaving current demand weak?
Demand has dropped to below 2019 levels (the last pre-covid year for comparison).
2019 was a poor weather year.
As our season starts early (March) I think we can act as a kind of bellwether for other markets.
All I can say is if your season is anything like ours then its going to be very tough indeed (sadly).
Winners (as always) are Google, Amazon and Ebay. Amazon now take 30% of our net sales as commission (Ads & fees).
Seeing lots of companies losing money just to generate money for cashflow.
Demand lower, costs rising, selling prices dropping.
Has the wholesale cost of garden furniture gone up much in the last 3-5 years, because it feels like the consumer prices have more than doubled in that time?I've never seen a year as poor as this one - despite the weather being decent this year.
To be fair we did incredibly well in 20/21 due to lockdown.
I think a lot of demand may have been brought forward in our industry, saturating demand and leaving current demand weak?
Demand has dropped to below 2019 levels (the last pre-covid year for comparison).
2019 was a poor weather year.
As our season starts early (March) I think we can act as a kind of bellwether for other markets.
All I can say is if your season is anything like ours then its going to be very tough indeed (sadly).
Winners (as always) are Google, Amazon and Ebay. Amazon now take 30% of our net sales as commission (Ads & fees).
Seeing lots of companies losing money just to generate money for cashflow.
Demand lower, costs rising, selling prices dropping.
skwdenyer said:
Good advice. We went rather early, so we set up our own NL entity and found local tax / accounting providers. If doing this, you need to rent an actual office (not just a nameplate like the UK) as your registered office - our accountant rents us a "desk" to get around this. We didn't require a deposit for VAT. Register in NL for VAT OSS. Dutch bank account needs a personal visit to NL, but we've found no problem using a Wise account (even Shopify Payments accepted that) - so that was set up remotely. We had a really good Dutch lawyer and accountant
If you're selling B2B, Dutch VAT is reverse-charge, so you never charge and never receive VAT. If importing, apply for an Article 23 Licence - that will allow you to defer VAT on imports. Or you can use a fiscal representative who will have this in place already (but will charge some additional money along the way).
Watch for different rules on imports depending upon whether you're selling on to trade (wholesale) or direct (ecom / retail).
The benefit of a local entity is that (if you, say, use Shopify) you can use local payment options - in our case we get quite a lot of sales from NL customers using iDEAL which is support by Shopify (but only if your site is properly established in NL).
We're in fashion, so opted for a fashion-specific fulfilment specialist in NL. We're not shipping from UK-EU regularly, instead importing direct into NL. It isn't really cost-effective to move (say) India-produced fashion IN-UK-NL because you'll get hit for duties twice (unless you're running bonded warehousing in the UK and can generate replacement certificates of origin - unlikely to be worth it at the scale of most). That's going to be true for a lot of people (UK being "a nation of shopkeepers" as once said), so quickly you're not going to want to bother with importing via UK.
Also watch out for transferring UK-NL (say) with UK VAT if you don't have a subsidiary and are just going to hold stock in NL. An "export" (where you can get back the import VAT) is only an export if to a 3rd party. If you shift goods to your NL fulfilment hub, you may not in fact have exported the goods for UK VAT purposes - you've just moved them to another location that you own. So you may not be able to reclaim the import VAT on the export, but you'll still have to pay NL VAT on the way in. This requires a little thought about the transaction flow.
The other gotcha to watch for is if you move goods UK-NL via FR (say) then you'll have a different headache - because the VAT may be due at the FR border - so unless you're going to organise a T1 document for movement FR-NL and do customs clearance in NL (which we do via our partner) then you're going to get stung. It is one of the reasons why you should import direct to NL if you can for NL stock-holding. If you are shipping UK-NL you'll need to think carefully about the carrier and the route (or use a 3rd party like Fulfilment Crowd who I'm guessing will make all these problems go away).
In case it's useful, we've used Heebink (dutch haulier with UK operations) to move goods UK-NL when we can't avoid it (pallet loads), and then our NL partner to do the inward clearance (so the goods move from Rotterdam to the warehouse under a T1 document). But that's all a level of complexity above what I think DSL is talking about
What else? Shipping declarations (export and import) tend to get charged by the line. So think about whether you can aggregate your goods on your shipping documents to minimise the number of lines. We group by HS code and country of origin, and by doing so frequently save quite large amounts.
+1 for Avalara, they're good and can handle a bunch of scenarios.
Finally, assume that NL customs are going to be a lot stricter than UK. We've had trouble moving shipments in that would have posed no problems in the UK, due to the rather less-than-flexible approach to some aspects of paperwork. But then we're importing from rural India, so the paperwork quality's often not what it might be.
If all of the above's too much to think about, and you're in fashion, and DSL's approach won't work for you, I'm open to talking about introducing people who can make it all rather easier (but PH Mods please note, I'm not in the consulting business, so this isn't an advertisement of my services).
Really drives home just how competitive stupid Brexit was. The pandemic did a great job of masking these issues. Now things are getting tougher hopefully some light will be shone in this area and we can get something done about it. Like rejoin!If you're selling B2B, Dutch VAT is reverse-charge, so you never charge and never receive VAT. If importing, apply for an Article 23 Licence - that will allow you to defer VAT on imports. Or you can use a fiscal representative who will have this in place already (but will charge some additional money along the way).
Watch for different rules on imports depending upon whether you're selling on to trade (wholesale) or direct (ecom / retail).
The benefit of a local entity is that (if you, say, use Shopify) you can use local payment options - in our case we get quite a lot of sales from NL customers using iDEAL which is support by Shopify (but only if your site is properly established in NL).
We're in fashion, so opted for a fashion-specific fulfilment specialist in NL. We're not shipping from UK-EU regularly, instead importing direct into NL. It isn't really cost-effective to move (say) India-produced fashion IN-UK-NL because you'll get hit for duties twice (unless you're running bonded warehousing in the UK and can generate replacement certificates of origin - unlikely to be worth it at the scale of most). That's going to be true for a lot of people (UK being "a nation of shopkeepers" as once said), so quickly you're not going to want to bother with importing via UK.
Also watch out for transferring UK-NL (say) with UK VAT if you don't have a subsidiary and are just going to hold stock in NL. An "export" (where you can get back the import VAT) is only an export if to a 3rd party. If you shift goods to your NL fulfilment hub, you may not in fact have exported the goods for UK VAT purposes - you've just moved them to another location that you own. So you may not be able to reclaim the import VAT on the export, but you'll still have to pay NL VAT on the way in. This requires a little thought about the transaction flow.
The other gotcha to watch for is if you move goods UK-NL via FR (say) then you'll have a different headache - because the VAT may be due at the FR border - so unless you're going to organise a T1 document for movement FR-NL and do customs clearance in NL (which we do via our partner) then you're going to get stung. It is one of the reasons why you should import direct to NL if you can for NL stock-holding. If you are shipping UK-NL you'll need to think carefully about the carrier and the route (or use a 3rd party like Fulfilment Crowd who I'm guessing will make all these problems go away).
In case it's useful, we've used Heebink (dutch haulier with UK operations) to move goods UK-NL when we can't avoid it (pallet loads), and then our NL partner to do the inward clearance (so the goods move from Rotterdam to the warehouse under a T1 document). But that's all a level of complexity above what I think DSL is talking about
What else? Shipping declarations (export and import) tend to get charged by the line. So think about whether you can aggregate your goods on your shipping documents to minimise the number of lines. We group by HS code and country of origin, and by doing so frequently save quite large amounts.
+1 for Avalara, they're good and can handle a bunch of scenarios.
Finally, assume that NL customs are going to be a lot stricter than UK. We've had trouble moving shipments in that would have posed no problems in the UK, due to the rather less-than-flexible approach to some aspects of paperwork. But then we're importing from rural India, so the paperwork quality's often not what it might be.
If all of the above's too much to think about, and you're in fashion, and DSL's approach won't work for you, I'm open to talking about introducing people who can make it all rather easier (but PH Mods please note, I'm not in the consulting business, so this isn't an advertisement of my services).
Car sales hmm keep having little bursts of activity but overall still quiet really. I think all dealers in all sectors are the same. Over the last two years I'm pretty sure some in the trade might have scaled up or taken on premises/staff that will be unsustainable in these more normal times. I was speaking to one guy that's doubled up on everything he has to do 35k profit per month just to tick over. 5 staff and the boss plus a nice big unit. I'm a one man band but I did have to seriously resist the urge to take staff on again at various points in the last couple of years.
GardeningEcomm said:
To be fair Jammy the cost of garden furniture to import will have doubled.
A forty foot container that did cost £1250 recently cost £14,000.
Fortunately this is dropping now but those selling prices had to rise.
I do wonder if this sort of thing isn't just because we are heading or are already in harder times but because the cost is just too much for people who were interested to stomach? A forty foot container that did cost £1250 recently cost £14,000.
Fortunately this is dropping now but those selling prices had to rise.
We looked at some garden furniture last year i think it was and we left it because the prices appeared to be inflated due to demand.
Now though? no chance. It is simply too expensive (and i know its not your fault the containers have gone up so much).
m3jappa said:
GardeningEcomm said:
To be fair Jammy the cost of garden furniture to import will have doubled.
A forty foot container that did cost £1250 recently cost £14,000.
Fortunately this is dropping now but those selling prices had to rise.
I do wonder if this sort of thing isn't just because we are heading or are already in harder times but because the cost is just too much for people who were interested to stomach? A forty foot container that did cost £1250 recently cost £14,000.
Fortunately this is dropping now but those selling prices had to rise.
We looked at some garden furniture last year i think it was and we left it because the prices appeared to be inflated due to demand.
Now though? no chance. It is simply too expensive (and i know its not your fault the containers have gone up so much).
Our (very nice admittedly) 8 person set cost £1600 in 2019.
Earlier this year it was a shade under £4000.
At the moment it’s on “sale” at £2750.
I get containers have gone up but the price increase per unit isn’t in the thousands
Market forces are what they are, if demand in the covid times outstripped supplies then the retailers can take advantage.
But if there model is now based around selling these things at £4K the wheels are going to fall off pretty quickly.
It’s a shame as the product is so good I’d like to buy another set and maybe some more seating for other areas but at todays prices they can swivel
Dr Interceptor said:
Based on prices I’m seeing in my industry (Swimming Pool Equipment) I wouldn’t be at all surprised if that £1600 set was now £4000 based on the same margin/markup. And the on sale price at £2750 is them now outing it at cost to avoid being sat on stock come winter.
Is it shipping costs driving it, or more broadly based?Maybe we will see reshoring of manufacturing?
Dr Interceptor said:
Based on prices I’m seeing in my industry (Swimming Pool Equipment) I wouldn’t be at all surprised if that £1600 set was now £4000 based on the same margin/markup. And the on sale price at £2750 is them now outing it at cost to avoid being sat on stock come winter.
No chance. They flat pack very neatly for international shipping, yes that shipping container might have gone up £14k or whatever but the amount they'll get in one will be in the hundreds.The actual increase per unit will only be up a couple of hundred quid at most.
Pflanzgarten said:
No chance. They flat pack very neatly for international shipping, yes that shipping container might have gone up £14k or whatever but the amount they'll get in one will be in the hundreds.
The actual increase per unit will only be up a couple of hundred quid at most.
Cost of raw materials, cost of manufacture, cost of packaging... it's not all about shipping.The actual increase per unit will only be up a couple of hundred quid at most.
In Sept 2021, a 5kg tub of 200g Multi-Function Chlorine tablets cost me £16.50, sat on the shelf in the shop. That same tub in April 2022 was £24.00. Sodium Hypochlorite has practically doubled in price in less than a year, Dry Acid also.
For every box I send out, the man packing the box costs me more year on year, the cardboard box the product goes in costs more, the bubble wrap or packing paper costs more, the product inside the box costs more, and that's without factoring in powering (and in the winter, heating) the building that we dispatch from.
All of that will have to be factored in to the price of the garden furniture.
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