The world is a wonderful and diverse place. This month I’d like to share an experiment with you that was conducted by a boutique shoe-maker in Berlin with a quirky company name – Atheist Shoes. This small company makes trendy Bauhaus-inspired footwear for customers all around the world. They ship to the US using the US Postal Service. They began to notice that many of their US customers either never receive their shipment, or it arrived only after a long delay.
So they devised an experiment. They sent 178 packages to 89 people in 49 US states. Each person was sent two packages of the same size and weight, all packages left Berlin on the same day via Deutsch Post and were handed over to the USPS for final delivery – this is where the experiment began. One package in their standard company box with “Atheist Shoes” printed on the outside, wrapped in their standard company tape with “Atheist Shoes” printed on it. The other package was sent in a neutral non-descript cardboard box with neutral tape.
Both packages should have arrived at their destinations at the same time.
Instead, they found:
· Shipments in company packaging took on average 3 days longer than neutral packages to reach their destination.
· 9 company branded packages went missing, while only 1 neutral package went missing.
· In Michigan, the company branded package arrived 37 days later than the neutral package.
As a result the company has decided to stop using their company branded packaging for orders that ship to the USA.
Think carefully about how you’re packing each order – even if your company doesn’t have a controversial name. Something as simple as the box you use and the tape you wrap it with could cost you days in shipping time, and could affect your “gone missing” rate by almost 10x.
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