Shipping

Some of my products can be shipped at an economic price but many cannot, mainly garden products. I have spoken to every carrier I can find and most will not consider taking the job. Tuffnells explained to me that each delivery passes through 7 transhipping points and the trucks are crammed to make it pay, making the chances of damage to products extremely high.

It is possible to ship a decorative plant support but it costs £15 postage and packing, nearly doubling the £20 purchase price.

I’ve concluded that, unless you are local to East Devon, a ‘man and van’ is the best solution. Shared van loads can reduce costs, but bigger orders are really the only cost effective ones. To give an example, Axminster to SW London on a £205 order cost £100 to ship and that client decided to go ahead.

You are welcome to collect and I will deliver within the local area quoting a price each time, or it may work to meet half-way somewhere. We do travel around the country and if the timing works we have delivered to West Sussex and Poole so it is always worth asking.

I am sorry I cannot offer a more convenient delivery service, but despite the promises of the marketing material, carriers are only interested in square boxes.

Pricing

Sometimes potential customers have concerns about how commissions are priced when comparing what they have in mind with similar items found by Googling on the internet. To help you understand how a one-off item is priced it may be useful to understand the commercial model for mass production.

A mass-produced product begins using a design engineer to design it in detail and a toolmaker to construct the precision tooling that is built into a large manufacturing plant. Both off these roles are highly skilled and very highly paid. The unskilled labour or robots that carry out the mass production are very cheap. The high cost of the first two is spread across the many thousands of production items, therefore, the selling price can be low.

When you commission a one-off item, people like myself provide all of the three roles so all of the costs, the two highly paid ones plus the less skilled one are included in the price that will always be very much higher.

To give you a real example, a customer contacted me to say she had a design in mind and had found similar products on the internet for about £65-70, none of which were what she really wanted. She gave me a design and said she assumed that if she added a zero to the price that would probably be a sensible budget she imagined. She was spot on.

Contact Jonne

If you wish to consider a purchase or talk about a commission based upon what you have seen please contact me. Purchases can be made either by cheque or I have facilities to take your payment by credit card over the telephone. Please send an email to the address below with your requirements or give me a call. I look forward to hearing from you.

Email: jonne@jonne.co.uk
Telephone: 07770 720 373