The WFN office is now closed for the weekend. I will have to wait til Monday to call the WFN rep back and finalize our order. Meanwhile, here are the options I'm thinking of. I would like feedback on this asap (no later than Sunday evening by 9pm).
1) As our group continues to grow and there is more interest in WFN products, our orders will continue to be large orders, so we will have issues with shipping rates in future orders because shipping cost is based on the overall weight of the order. WFN usually offers free shipping once a year, during November (Black Friday special). We could just wait til Nov to order and skip this order.
2) On the other hand....I was comparing Tropical Traditions prices (another high quality CO company) and even with TT's free shipping promo they have right now, WFN's virgin coconut oil would still be cheaper with the 24% shipping rate ($49/gal with the 24% shipping vs. TT's Gold Label CO for $75/gal with free shipping). TT's expeller pressed CO is also more expensive compared to WFN's expeller pressed even with the 24% shipping added. Granted, this is not TT's wholesale pricing (I don't know how much cheaper their wholesale prices would be). We had a TT account years ago but there was hardly any interest for it from the group, so we had to close our account. TT will not allow me to open another wholesale acct until we can consistently place orders
For those who aren't familiar, TT and WFN coconut oils are very similar in quality. Both are very high quality CO's. I would recommend both companies. I tried both of their CO's and personally prefer WFN's over TT. So even if we do go ahead with the WFN order at 24% shipping, we're still paying less for coconut oil compared to TT. I'm not comparing WFN with any other company because to be honest, WFN and TT are the only two companies (in my opinion) that provide the best quality oils. All other cheaper priced oils may be okay, but I wouldn't necessarily consider them extremely high quality.
As far as non-coconut oil products, I can't check on all the products, but the popular products like palm oil and cacao powder would still be cheaper than retail with the 24% shipping.
So, what I'm basically saying here is that although the 24% shipping is a lot steeper than what we've paid in the past, we would still be paying less than if we paid retail (at least for the products I looked at and mentioned above).
3) For this order, we can stick to ordering only the virgin coconut oils (virgin cold-pressed or centrifuged) and order the other products in Nov when there is free shipping. WFN offers free shipping on cases of their virgin cold-pressed and centrifuged coconut oils (6 gallons in a case). Since we order other products, buying cases of the virgin coconut oils lowers our overall shipping. This is why I have always tried to order a case or two of virgin coconut oil to lower our overall shipping cost. But this time, I would have to order 3-4 cases to get shipping bellow 15% (our usual rate we've had averaged anywhere from 10-15%) --- that's way too many for me to try to sell outside of GOBC.
So there are our options. I can't think of anything else to do so that it's fair for everyone. I cannot split the order into two separate orders because the shipping would still be just as expensive since it's based on overall weight. One order may have a cheaper rate (if it weighed less), but then that wouldn't be fair to the others on the heavier order who would pay more for shipping.
Please let mek now your thoughts! If you would like to edit you order, let me know and I will delete them for you. Otherwise, I will assume everyone wants what's in the cart currently. I will make my decision Sunday night and let everyone know what I've decided.
Thank you!! Jocelyn ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ *Grande Organics Buying Club */serving Casa Grande, AZ and surrounding areas/ website: www.grandeorganicsbc.info <http://www.grandeorganicsbc.info> health blog: www.freshreform.net <http://www.freshreform.net> email: gobc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
