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(12/09/02) Text (12/09/02)
West Greenwich, Rhode Island-based Coast to Coast Fulfillment, Inc. has developed a methodology which gives the company a strategic advantage over West Coast alternatives in distributing products manufactured in the Far East. “At first glance it appears that it would be cheaper to take products from the Orient landing on West Coast and ship them from there,” says Coast to Coast president, Hermond Ghazarian. “However, we have found that most of America’s mail-order consumers are east of the Mississippi. Thus, it is faster for the consumer, and more profitable for our clients, to forward the shipping containers to the East Coast and then distribute the products to consumers from there.” For $1,200, we can have a 40-foot container shipped from Long Beach, CA to one of our Rhode Island warehouses by rail, and usually have the goods ready for picking, packing and shipping to consumers in three days from the time the goods first landed on the West Coast.” According to Ghazarian, each of his clients’ 40-foot shipping containers usually hold several thousand individual consumer products. After transcontinental shipping of a container-load of goods into Coast to Coast’s Rhode Island warehouse, the additional inbound shipping cost per unit usually amount to be pennies per unit. This cost is more than offset by the decreases in postal or UPS charges in getting the package to the consumer. 47 percent of Coast to Coast’s consumers are within five shipping zones and 64 percent are within six shipping zones from its distribution warehouse in Rhode Island. According to Ghazarian, “If we were shipping from California, 61% of the nation’s direct-response buyers would be residing in postal zones 8 and 9. This results in both greater expense and time compared to Coast to Coast’s East Coast alternative. Shipping and handling is typically charged to the consumer at fixed fee regardless of the consumer’s shipping zone. Thus, our clients save shipping and handling costs and increase their margin between the shipping and handling fee charged to the consumer and the direct shipping cost with UPS or the U.S. Postal Service.” “The consumer can also benefit,” according to Ghazarian, “Since, in a back-order situation, even with the added time to get a container to the East Coast, the product will usually arrive at most consumer households faster than if the product were shipped directly to the consumer from California. This is because standard mail and UPS ground, can take up to ten days to delivery to the more distant zones.” Coast to Coast Fulfillment’s Rhode Island distribution center is within 6 zones of more than half of the direct-response customers. Ghazarian reports, “Thus, starting from when and where a container-load of goods clears customs on the West Coast, if we were shipping directly to consumers from California, most consumers would be 7 to 8 zones away. Consequently, products can take 7 to 10 days to be delivered to the majority of consumers from a California fulfillment house, while we can deliver packages out of Rhode Island to most direct-response consumers in 4 to 7 days from the time a container first clears customs in California.” Wholesale buyers also benefit, according to Ghazarian, since most wholesale distribution centers are east of the Mississippi. From its Rhode Island wholesale shipping center, most of its wholesale orders to catalog companies, to marketers, and to retail store warehouses are within a days’ drive by truck, thus saving the buyers time and money. Ghazarian reports, “Shipping goods made in Asia from the East Coast is like winning the Triple Crown for our clients; their shipping costs are reduced, the consumer gets the product faster, and retail stores get their goods quicker with less freight expense.” Coast to Coast is the largest United States Postal customer in Rhode Island, specializing in direct-to-consumer and wholesale fulfillment.
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