Meet E-Commerce Implementation Expert Abby Duffield

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Hey, product launchers. It's Tracee Hazzard here with Abby Duffield from Shapiro. And we're gonna talk about some kind of broad reaching topics today because I wanna really to all that Shapiro does and how Abby supports that. It's really an interesting company because it's been around for. I don't know, how long have you guys been around it, Abby?

We're going on 104 years coming up in this next cycle. So we've been around for over 100 years in the international Shapiro freight forwarding industry. Yeah.

And so. But you guys are broader than freight forwarding. And that's what I really want to bring to the forefront here is when you have someone who has a century worth of information and processing for all different types of brands and companies, then we're really talking about just such a broad brush of experience and all the things that you don't know that you don't know for sure.

And there's a lot that can be encompassed in international shipping, freight forwarding, customs brokerage, e commerce. So there's a deal of information to go over.

Great. Yeah. So, Abby, tell me a little bit about how you got involved with the company and how long you've been with them.

I've been with Shapiro for about four years now and I started in their customs brokerage team doing a lot of data entry and working on that side of operations. And eventually I wanted to move into some more exciting stuff that we had going on, which is our E commerce section, which is growing rapidly and we're super excited about. And I've kind of grown in from there. I am now the implementation manager with Shapiro in this sector. And me and my team help new people that are looking to get into the e commerce world understand how everything works and all those tools and resources, how to help them get started. So that's a lot of what we do.

So you have a little bit of background on the company. Why don't you share that with us? And then I'm going to ask you a ton of questions.

I love questions. I literally handle questions all day long. All right, so let me go into it. Our company was founded in 1915. We've been in business for over 100 years. The business is still a family business. Margie Shapiro is our current CEO and she's the third in the generation of Shapiro's that have owned the business. We are housed and located in the loving port of Baltimore, Maryland in the United States. We are a women owned business with Margie leading the charge there. We have a strong emphasis on compliance which has really helped us succeed over the years. Technological solutions and customer service.

Yeah, you know, it's that compliance is actually how we met. Cause I heard, I'm not sure which one person from your company was giving the talk, but I heard the talk on compliance and it caught my ear because there's so many issues there are.

Compliance is one of the biggest sticking points that we have with clients that are coming in that they just aren't aware at all with all the issues that can come up from that with customs and compliance. I believe it was at Prosper show we had met and there was that talk that had happened where we ran into each other.

That's right. So now define compliance for people because we have a lot of people in the platform who are completely new to freight forwarding and duty and all of those things. What does compliance encompass?

Sure thing. So when we're talking about customs brokerage, we're talking about an entry into the US marketplace that we're saying, hey, here's this electronic entry customs, here's what I'm planning to bring in. And when customs looking at that, that's when we're talking about compliance in terms of is my commercial invoice and packing list that I'm using declaring goods? Is everything there the best information that it can be? Is it as correct as it can be? And am I following all the regulations that the government has set forth for importers to follow? And so that kind of nugget right there is compliance. We want to make sure that all of our customers are highly compliant. It helps us to avoid issues in the day like exams or drawback or a lot of other really scary stuff that we can get into. But it helps avoid all of that in the beginning.

You know, that's so important because what we don't realize is we think that, okay, we just have to get it from our factory to, you know, our warehouse in the US or to Amazon's warehouse, depending on what you're thinking about. But the reality is that it's not that simple. You gotta have it boxed right? You have it labeled right. You have to have it marked with country of origin. There's so many things that actually cascade back further into the product development process and into the manufacturing process that if you don't know what you're doing there and it's your first time, you really could use a good advisor with experience.

I completely agree. I think one of the strangest and most nerve wracking stories that I have is that we had a client that was bringing in a food item. They were noodles and they didn't actually have any of the labeling that you need for the Food and Drug Administration for the FDA to come in. So when it came into the US market and we sent in the customs entry, the client didn't let us know that they didn't have these labels. And so customs seized the entire product and they didn't let it come in because he was missing all of this regulatory information. And it took a while. We got it sorted, we got it in. But it was something where if the client had followed instructions early on, we had made sure that they had had everything. They had worked more with us because we had asked them questions. They're like, oh no, I've got it, it's fine. We could have really dodged a bullet there.

Well, and that's the thing is like, we don't know to volunteer that information when you're new to something, but you guys know to ask the questions. And that's a big difference in working with someone who has that type of experience that you guys have.

It's true. And we love to ask and answer those questions too. We have a lot of people that come in and just, they don't know. So we're happy to teach because this is a really big portion to make sure that everything goes okay for importers.

Yeah, so I see on your slide here that says key customers are small to medium in size. And so you think when a company is over 100 years old that like, oh, you only work with big, big firms, but that's not the case. And in fact, your particular job in the company is to talk to U.S. small businesses and independents and things like that.

It's true. We found that our best niche market is with companies that are the small to medium size, where they're not the big Fortune 500 companies that are bringing things. And it's that growing importer, that growing business. Just as we are a, I would say a medium sized business that's based out of Baltim. We are growing and we want to grow with people that are similar in ideals and values to us. So that's kind of. We like to fit in and we like to help everybody grow along with us.

So it says on here 65,000 entries annually. That's like container loads being delivered, right? That's what that means.

So these are customs entries in terms of how many customs entries are we as a business doing every single year? So 65,000. I used to do some of those. I don't do as many of those as I used to, but those can range in terms of time. They take a very long time in terms of if they're very long or they can be fairly short. But all of those we have a top notch program that we use to enter that information in to make sure that we working with customers as best we can and have good ace entries.

Wow. Amazing. So what else you got for us?

All right, next slide. So this is a little bit about Shapiro in terms of our mission. Our plugin as a company is we deliver, problem solved. We like to come up with customized solutions if something does come up. We like to be very proactive in helping our customers if something does come up and letting them know. So this is just a little bit of a statement from Margie. That's your signature there. She's talking about the company.

One of the things that I just really want to point out is that last paragraph about being women owned and having a dedicated management team. Half are women. I don't think I've met a man at your company yet. And I mean, we've only known each other a few months, but still that's confounding to me because I've been working in the industry for 25 years and so much of it is male dominated. And you guys have a fabulous woman owned and managed company. That's terrific.

We do. And we're so lucky for it. I think that it has really helped us to have special characteristics that have made us sell. We do have one guy on my team, his name is Martin. He's cherished as there are not a lot of male members on our staff. But my direct supervisor is. She's a super strong woman that's in that position. And we have a lot of other great female leaders that are in the company that have helped everybody to grow. So we're very fortunate. Lucky. And I agree it's not something that you see every day, but it's part of what makes us unique.

It really, really is. So we'll leave it at that. We'll make sure to put a snapshot of this on the blog post as well. So if you really want to dive deep and read Their mission and their legacy. I think this is a really fabulous statement that Margie's made here.

Wonderful. I encourage everybody to find out more on our website, which is www.shapiro.com. we actually have a whole page there that kind of goes more into the history of the company, if you're curious.

Right. And you don't have to write that down. So if you're listening to this on podcast, you just go to the blog posts, product launch hazards, or go to Abby's expert profile and you can get right to the link. Links to anything for their company or any way to contact them. It's all right there for you. So you only have to go to one place.

All right, wonderful. So let's dive right into it. Ready? Yep. All right. So things to know about importing into the US there's several different pieces to this and I want to focus on first the freight. What you should know about shipping, there are two different kinds of shipping that we're talking about. When you're looking at making something go from somewhere overseas to somewhere in the US or maybe somewhere else nationally, is that you can either be working with a freight forwarder or a courier. When I mention a courier, it's more like some company like dm, DHL or UPS where they're handling small parcel. A freight forwarder is really handling much larger shipments, at least over a pallet. Our minimum size is at least 200kg, which comes out to be about a pallet, depending on the volume. So the difference is, is that when your courier is handling small parcel, a freight forwarder is handling more something along the lines of FCL or lcl, which is a full container load or less than a container load. LCL container load is that we'll take pallets from several shipments and we'll put them all into a container. So consolidating all of them into one container that way, that's able to move much more cost effectively and more flexibly for clients when they're looking to ship overseas.

So now that's a really important thing for someone who's starting out and growing their brand that they probably do have less than container load unless their product is large. And that really helps that you will do consolidation for them. Sometimes it means you have to wait a little bit longer because you got to wait for other people's products to be ready and consolidated together. But I imagine with doing 65,000 customer entries, you probably have a lot of container loads shipping at all times.

It's true. We also are very fortunate to have something that we call our global flow. We're working with several agent services so we're not letting other people's shipments stall our client's shipment out. So we're able to keep everything moving. We're able to get it on the next moving vessel because we have other lines in the water that we can help tap and say, hey, you've got space in your container. We've got a package to send into that. We can fit that in there and get that moving asap.

Wonderful. That's fantastic.

But you're right, a lot of new importers are starting with an LCL shipment as something that's like a pallet, maybe a pallet and a half. We do also find that sometimes people are starting with a single parcel or a couple of small cartons and then they come to us for help. We say, you know what, it's actually more cost effective for you to go with the courier for this. Once you go a little bit more, we'll be right there to help you along the way. Because freight forwarders and couriers do have some different guidelines in terms of how those shipments work.

So and if you're unfamiliar, you know dhl, that's a courier, just to kind of give you an example. So you understand. But there are private ones as well, correct?

There's multitude. It's easy to google them to find out what's going on over there. So with that, we're talking about a couple different other kinds of shipments. Air versus ocean. Ocean is going to be your most cost effective routing. Depending on the size of your cargo, it's going to take the longest. Air is going to be your quickest. Ocean is going to take longer, but air is going to be much more expensive. And then you have two differences there. You've got Air Express, which is something more along the lines of DHL or UPS doing small packages, or air cargo, which is pallets going into the base of a plane that's heading out. And that space is already very tight and limited, which is why the cost is higher than an ocean shipment where you have hundreds of containers on a vessel. So the space is much more available there. So the cost is much cheaper, but the time is going to be longer. So it's good to make sure you're preparing your transit times in advance. So important it is especially around whenever there's a holiday from where someone's shipping, especially in China, it's good to make sure that you're being as preemptive as possible.

Right. And we do also find, because it's great to know that you handle all of those different types of things or recommend them. Because many companies that are starting up with a product and their launch can sometime be a mix of having to express some things in ocean freighting. The rest you know, you may have to air a pallet. It depends on the timing of things and how delayed your launch might be to your marketing plan. So you have to keep those things in mind and make sure that you're in constant communication with who's ever working with you for the freight forwarding. Because you may need to make some changes as you get closer to your launch date.

It's true, especially if for some reason your supplier says there's a delay and things are getting down to the wire. If you would let us know what's going on as we're working on you with your shipment, we'd say, you know what, let's see if we can't send half of this via air and get it there sooner. What are our other options? So we're always looking at those other custom experiences that we can have to get something moving.

Wonderful.

So know your commodities, customs and PGA requirements in advance. PGA is short for Partner Government Agency. The US Government really does love their acronyms. There's going to be a lot in here. But PGA kind of takes in any government organization that would be looking at your cargo, Food and Drug Administration, United States Agricultural Department, the Federal Trade Commission for a couple of them. We know what a lot of these are because we've got a top notch compliance team and we have several brokers in our company that are brokers licensed with the US Customs. So that definitely helps to make sure that we know what's going on. It's always good to check though. I say this, I had somebody that wanted to bring in colored pencils. They didn't check their duty rate until everything got here. Colored pencils actually have anti dumping duties on them which are extra duties because the US doesn't want them here because there are private companies in the US that already have an interest in those products. So there was an extra 100 plus duty rate percentage on top of those colored pencils. So a huge duty rate. They had no idea until it came in. So it's always good to check out what you have going on beforehand, especially when there are new regulations that seem to be coming out all the time.

Right. And there are new regulations going in and out all the time. And so that's something to really be aware of. It's something that when we work with our clients Here. And that's one of the goals of product launch Hazards is to make sure that you're thinking about these things ahead of time. Because we say landing costs is more important than cost of goods because it can be double your cost of goods sometimes. And we have certain ratios that we recommend you get them down to. And there's a whole bunch of episodes on those things about pricing and costing and all of these other things. So make sure you check those out. But one of those significant factors are these changing duty rates and customs issues and PGA requirements. All of those things factor in. So I've worked in and around the furniture industry for a very long time and there's always been bedroom duties, bedroom furniture duties that are higher than the cost of the furniture itself, which sounds just crazy because furniture should be expensive to make. But when you're talking about duties that are almost double what it costs to make the product, you can no longer be cost effective shipping. In this particular case, it's a china duty only. You have to switch to another country for manufacturer. And so these are important things in your design and your planning and your product pricing to make sure that you're competitive.

It's very true and it's great to keep in mind. The other part that we like to focus on is that some entries do need to have special documentation in order to make sure that they are compliant. So if you are importing, let's say, sunglasses, you may need to have some kind of FDA certification about that, because sunglasses are reviewed by the FDA with a customs entry. So things to keep in mind for first time importers, it may look easy and we talk about a lot of information, but you always want to make sure that you're doing your due diligence and double checking information that you have, because at the end of the day, it's your responsibility for everything. A customs broker and freight forwarder is technically a middleman. So if you're bringing something in, you want to make sure that you have done all of the work that you need to do to make sure that you are talking to somebody who's either an expert in the field or you're comfortable with the information that you've received and have vetted it thoroughly. So when we recommend a customs HTS code for a product that you have, it's always good to go out and double check and say, hey, this does match what my product is. Or say, hey, you know what, it's slightly off. Maybe I had my description wrong. I really meant this more. And we can get it revised the other issue is make sure you keep track of your records. Importers are supposed to keep track of the records for at least five years. I have a lot of importers that sometimes will just be like, alright, I've done this, I'm completely fine now. And they'll forget to go look at something until there's an issue later. A great thing about Shapiro is that we've got an online portal which will help house your documentation for up to five years. But it's always good to keep a backup just in case.

Wow, that's great. I didn't know that. See, I'm learning new things about you all the time.

Wonderful. All right. I'm mainly going to focus on importing into the us. There are plenty of regulations for every other country that's international. Everybody has their own thing that they've got going on. But we're just going to focus on the US for now because there's a lot of information here and it's one of the hottest markets that we have going on right now for E commerce for the us if you are importing, you do need something called a customs bond. Customs bond is collateral for the US government to say that you'll pay your duties and taxes. You don't really want to use your bond because it's kind of like if you've gone bankrupt on a payment or you defaulted on a payment. So the bond is there for collateral. You have to have it set up. You have to have it if you're importing. We do offer customs bonds. There's two different kinds that you can get and you can get these. For most brokers there's a single entry bond or a one time, one use bond or a continuous bond which will last for 12 months. It doesn't last for a year, it lasts for 12 months. So if you set it up this time now, it'll be good until this time next year. The reason it's called a continuous bond is that it will automatically renew, kind of like a subscription, and it will continue on.

So this is something that you don't really need to do until you're ready because you don't want to do it too soon. If you're going to do a continuous bond.

Correct. Usually what we do is that when people are looking at a customs bond, we'll send them the information, we'll send them the application. You can fill in it in advance, but we won't process it until closer to when you're ready to ship. That way you're saving on that timeframe and you're saving that money until you really need to use it. The other thing about customs bonds, depending on the type of entry that you have, because there's two types, there's an informal and a formal entry. An informal entry is for a shipment that has a product value that is less than $2,500 US dollars. If it's more than that, you need to have a formal entry or if your product has some kind of pga. So if it has FDA regulations on it, it's going to be a formal entry anyway because the U.S. customs wants to see more about that product. So you have to have a customs bond for formal entry. You may not need them for an informal entry if you are using a courier, which will clear your product underneath their courier bond. Shapiro is not a courier. So we don't have a courier bond. So we have all of our clients get a bond. But what this does is it helps to build a history with U.S. customs to say, I am this importer. This is my number, this is my bond. Customs gets a little bit sketched out when you start using different customs brokers and when you start having different bond numbers that keep popping up all the time because it's showing that you're not being consistent. So something to keep in mind. All right. Incoterms. This is probably something where I get the most questions about. For international shipping, there are several incoterms. And what the incoterm is, it's who takes ownership of the goods at one point, who owns what, where. Technically, there are certain incoterms that I always like to suggest, and there's some that I always like to say, you know, you might want to rethink that. The most common incoterms that we see are EXW or EX works, which is where your buyer at origin, they take care of the export packaging, and then the seller, sorry, the seller is the supplier. The buyer, which is usually the client or the importer, they take care of everything else, which means that they're not taking care of it themselves. They're usually working with a procurer, freight forwarder for those portions. Fob, which is probably the most cost beneficial for most importers looking to start out, means that the seller is bringing the product to the port overseas and then from there, your freight forwarder and customs broker is taking it on from the overseas port, bringing it into destination. The reason that this is that's typically.

The way we work, Abby, and we recommend to most people to work because you want to really make sure that everything has been wrapped up, cleared because ex works leaves too much responsibility on you when you don't know what you're doing.

It's very true and that's why we like to recommend FOB as well. Plus the fact that the move from the supplier's warehouse to the port, you can save a little bit of money on that if you're having your supplier take care of that portion for you. Now, ones we always like to say be careful of our cfr, which is cost and freight, or cif, which is cost, insurance and freight. So they're the same thing. Just one has insurance and one doesn't. Here's where the issue for this comes in. Sometimes when you're getting cost from your supplier for a CIF shipment, there are things missing called destination charges. And that's when the vessel or the airplane lands at the port, it has to get to the warehouse where it's going to get processed. Those charges are considered destination charges and they tend to be up in the air and you may not actually know how much those are going to cost you unless you ask about them. The other issue is that you don't have control over when your transit times are, when your arrival time is, or when your shipments actually leaving. That's all in control of your supplier. And if you don't have good relationship with them, you could really have things be in the air. So we always like to recommend have the most control and visibility over your shipment. Make sure that you're double checking everything. Don't always trust where you think that you should. Sometimes it's better to do it yourself.

That is so true, Abby. That one is very. I've seen a few of them happen and go very, very wrong.

Oh, I have too. We had one shipment that was a CIF that came in and their supplier didn't have the ISF filed in time. They didn't let them know that destination charges weren't going to be covered. They ended up having an extra $1,000 on top of their shipment of what they thought that was going to cheap and really easy end up arriving two months late based on the transit times that their supplier had picked for them. And there's nothing that you can really do at that point other than send somebody an angry email and see what leverage you have. But if you were taking control of the shipment to start off with, you can avoid a lot of those headaches. The last one I'll go over really quick is ddp, which means that your seller is taking care of everything. Now. It means that your Seller is taking care of everything. You have control over nothing. So if that doesn't sound like it's a good time, it really isn't. So I tend to not discuss that one.

Yeah, that one you're really out of control on. Timing is the part that will hurt you the most, not it's true.

Customs entry. So once something comes into the US it has to get to where it's going because the port is probably not the final destination. When things come into the port, they usually go to a containerized freight station if they are coming out from an ocean container, or they'll go to an airport warehouse where they'll get processed before they're able to be picked up. There's a couple different methods of delivery that we can focus on. There is the full truck load. So if you have a full container, you can have the container delivered directly to where it's going, depending on what that warehouse or facility's delivery requirements are. Less than truckload means that your pallet's going into a truck and kind of getting consolidated with other shipments to move out. Which goes along the same lines of being flexible with timing, being a bit more cost efficient and being able to get things there when it needs to get there. A lot of times we see with the E commerce marketplace that we have a lot of LTL shipments that are going and there are very specific requirements that some E commerce marketplace needs. Something may need to be palletized. It may need to have certain kind of labels applied to it. So it's good to make sure that you are having a conversation early with your freight forwarder if they're handling delivery at home about what you may need. We do handle rework at the warehouse when it comes in. Our truckers are able to do this for us and we have a partner network that's able to do this for us. So if you need something, it's always good to ask or double check. The last kind of style of delivery is courier. So for those small parcels, again, courier's usually able to take care of that shipment going directly to the door. If you have a delivery that needs to be split up in terms of going to different places, you bring in a pallet and part of it's got to go to one warehouse and part of it's got to go to the other warehouse. At that stage, it may be better to have something shipped out via a courier, maybe somebody else's delivery network that they have that handles small parcel. I do know that there are some e commerce marketplace that do help with those sorts of resources, which is good because they have a high volume and they're able to have very cheap rates with those couriers. But some e commerce marketplaces will not handle full container sizes, very large pallet loads. So it's good to always double check that. The other thing with delivery, and this goes back, some of them charge you.

More money, some of them charge you.

Money if you put too much. It's true. Yep. I know that those small parcel shipments have about oversized or overweight shipments there too. The other item I was going to bring up, and this kind of goes back to making sure you've got things ready at origin and talking to your supplier and making sure that you know you've got the right country of origin. Label on there is dunnage. So dunnage also means packing. So when you've got the master carton, it's going to have other products put inside of it. So let's say I've got a bunch of soccer balls that I want to ship from overseas. Those soccer balls might need some kind of padding in there to make sure that they don't get damaged if I don't have them packaged inside something else. So dunnage would keep all of that stuff safe. Now, some ecommerce marketplaces don't want you to use certain kinds of dunnage, like Styrofoam peanuts or like paper scraps that they'll put in there or newspaper balled up. So it's good to check for that too. But a certain style of packaging can help your shipment arrive somewhere very safely. The last two parts, labels and palletizing. So some products might need to have a certain UPC code put on them. Might need to have certain labels for processing when the product arrives. It's good to have that overseen to make sure that you are meeting those requirements of what your delivery warehouse is expecting of you. All right, I think I actually covered all my points without looking at all of my points here. So we are all set. Fantastic. Be clear with your expectations for your delivery. Your hazard plan is say, I need it here by this date. I need these exact cartons going to this exact place. I have seen deliveries go haywire because customers have not been clear what their expectations are or they might have given the wrong phone number for where that delivery should be going and what that appointment should be made in time. So it's good to be very, very clear with delivery expectations depending on what you need every point. So we've talked about freight forwarding from overseas, getting to the US Going through the customs brokerage portion to enter into the US and the delivery to your final destination and all the points kind of that tie everything together. You can really never ask too many questions in this business in terms of making sure that everybody's on the same page, do you fully understand something? There is fine print on these things. There are legalese, it's okay to ask questions about that to make sure that you understand what's going on, you understand what's included, what's not included. What are these notes? What does this mean? Make sure you ask all the questions and double check things in advance.

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