UPS International Shipping from Developing markets

I got a wake up call at 6:00 am this morning.

One of my manufacturers is preparing a shipment of lamps from Cameroon to our the Design Center Partners in San Francisco. She'd called me twice before I woke (annoyed by what I thought was my alarm clock) and called her back.

She was frazzled.

Stacy, she said, "I am so sorry to have woken you, but I am at a loss, I don't know what to do." Now, that frazzled tone got me into a panic because as a a French woman living in Cameroon for the past 15 years, Camille, is no joke. I think her Frenchness makes her tough by nature, add to that being married to a Cameroonian man and living in a village where they own and manage a 40 person furniture "atelier." I know she's seen it all.

BUT, whatever she experienced at UPS and DHL in Yaounde had her shook.

Evidently, UPS and DHL both quoted roughly 130,000 CFA ($266 USD) to ship this very small package of lamps to San Francisco. However, when she brought in the lamps after packaging, the price more than doubled to 270,000 CFA ($552!!!!). Mind you this is the discounted price after some good-ole African negotiation. I told you Camille was tough.

I'm writing this blog entry at 7 am because I want the world (or at least my small community of blog readers) to know what a major rip-off it is to ship from Africa and I'm assuming this goes for most developing markets. When you add any of the UPS & DHL'ers to the mix, the magnitude of rip-off goes beyond what we can imagine. These characters know that we don't have a choice. Using regular mail is NOT an option as the items would likely be stolen somewhere on the way to the Yaounde Airport.

So, as a fix, I'm absorbing the price differential into my net cost (reducing my already minuscule margin) so that the total cost to the customer is not hugely inflated.

If anyone knows of reliable and affordable outfits shipping from West & Central Africa, please let me know.