Experiment: free shipping!

Free is great, but it doesn’t always make sense!

According to studies, customers love free delivery. And they especially love it when it’s simple, so ‘zero’ is easier to understand than ‘so-and-so euros in delivery charges for orders up to so-and-so, and less or free for orders above that, etc., etc.’.

And of course we love it when, on the one hand, we have less work to do – for example, with invoicing – and, on the other hand, customers visit us more often than they do other shops.

That’s why we’re going to trial free delivery across Germany for the next few weeks!

If it works well, we’ll be happy to keep it that way.

If not – for example, if loads of customers buy a tin of chewing gum with free delivery and we end up making a huge loss as a result – we’ll have to change it back.

But for now, we’re assuming it’ll go well! So more customers will be buying, but they won’t all be sticking to the very lowest price range.

Our lucrative volume discounts will certainly help too. Whether with or without delivery charges, it’s always worth buying a bit more from us to save, for example, 5% when you buy 2 or more items, or 10% when you buy 5 or more. Just bear in mind the best-before dates, which – unlike 99 per cent of all online shops selling food or dietary supplements – we clearly state in our shop!

Update 9 August 2021:

We’ve now had two months’ experience with ‘free delivery on everything’.

Initially, things looked promising: a very small proportion of customers were ordering for under 20 euros – the range where it slowly starts to become a loss-making business – and we were still covering the 5 euros in actual delivery costs.

Unfortunately, however, the proportion of very small orders has since increased. It really isn’t worth it any more to sell a wooden toy for 4 euros or a tin of chewing gum for 6.70 euros with free delivery when we then have to cover the actual 4–5 euros ourselves. Not to mention the PayPal fees. And the shipping boxes. And so on and so forth…
And unfortunately, some people have also started ordering the same low-priced product every few weeks with free postage, even though the best-before date was two years. Of course, you can’t keep an offer like that going!

So this ‘free delivery on everything’ won’t be possible for much longer. Or rather, the only thing holding it up now is that I haven’t yet found the time to go to the trouble of reprogramming everything.

But the new concept will definitely be more than fair. First of all, we’re compiling a list of all the delivery charges charged by other shops that stock our brands – and then we’ll make ours even cheaper!

Here’s an overview of the delivery terms for other shops that also stock Natur Vital, Energybalance, St. Helia & Co.
For legal reasons, but without naming specific shops!

G. F.: €4.95, free for orders over €49.90

B. G.: €4.80 for orders up to €50, €2.50 for orders up to €100, free thereafter

E. B.: €5.90, free on orders of €100 or more

P.V.: €4.95, free for orders of €50 or more

R. K.: €4.90, free for orders of €60 or more

Q. E.: €2.95, free for orders of €100 or more

R. V.: €4.99

B.T.: 5 euros, free for orders over 70 euros

O. S.: €3.90, free for orders over €29

O. O.: €3.50, free for orders over €59

F.A.: €3.99, free for orders over €60

E. E.: 5 euros, free delivery on orders of 110 euros or more

G. M.: €3.95, free for orders over €100

V. B.: €4.90, free on orders of €50 or more

B. E.: €4.50, free on orders of €39 or more

K. M.: €4.90, free on orders of €100 or more

This means that we’ll soon be increasing the delivery charge to 4 euros for orders of 30 euros or more; even so, we’ll still be among the cheapest retailers for these brands.
In return, however, we offer volume discounts from as little as 1 item – something almost none of the other shops offer!
And thanks to our unique best-before date display system, you can easily plan your stock so that you can make the most of the volume discounts, whilst also being sure not to order too much.