Introduction

At our Etsy store, we ship our products in either envelopes (pressed flowers/foliage) or small boxes (for our pine/fir/spruce cones and potpourri), and in our efforts to be as environmentally friendly as possible, as well as working within what services are available to us and at a fair price, we have decided to use Evri and Royal Mail.

Envelopes

A photo of two boxes in the background, and envelopes in the foreground. Some envelopes are packed and some are unpacked

For our goods sent in envelopes, which are the pressed flowers/foliage at the moment, we offer two options.

Standard delivery is free and through Royal Mail Second-Class. This is because it was listed as the most eco-friendly way to send letters on their website, and means it will be delivered through a letterbox - no need to wait around for a delivery. Our local postbox collects the post at 9am every business day.

The second option is Tracked 48 for an added fee of £2.70. This is also sent through Royal Mail, but through our local Royal Mail customer service point, which is only open a couple of hours a day in the morning. As such, any orders after 9am will have to be sent the next day business day.

Small Boxes

A photo of three cardboard boxes. The two in the background are opened, and the one in the foreground is packed.

Our potpourri and pine/fir/spruce cones are sent for free in small boxes, and either through Evri or Royal Mail. We chose Evri as it provides tracking for the same price as sending untracked parcels through Royal Mail. We thought the ability to track, as well as being able to easily change your delivery preferences via Evri’s app, were benefits customers would appreciate without costing them too much more in price.

However, Evri’s low cost of tracked shipping only applies to mainland UK. Orders sent elsewhere in the UK add an extra fee. For example, sending to Northern Ireland costs an extra £2.66 (at time of writing), and it would be unfair to pass this along to the customer. It would also be unfair to also swap them to the same priced Royal Mail parcel service, which wouldn’t cost more but removes tracking. As such, we decided, for the meantime, to send parcels to elsewhere in the UK on Royal Mail’s Tracked 48 at an added cost of 40p to us.

There was a discussion amongst us at Rainbow Bucknell if we ought to swap our parcel shipping exclusively to Royal Mail, and increase the costs of our parcel products by 40p. However, with Evri, we send the parcels via a local locker, meaning we can send them out at any time of day, without being restricted to the limited opening times of our local Royal Mail customer service point (only open a couple of hours a day in the morning). Because of this, we have decided to stick with this current system for now.

Future

Overall, we are glad we are able to provide tracked shipping for all our products, and at a fair price. We have currently not explored the option of offering expedited delivery for an added fee, but it may be something to consider with events like Christmas coming up.

Adding different sized envelopes and parcels may also be something we also consider in the future. At the moment, as we are a small family operation, we purchased one lot of boxes and another lot of C5 envelopes from eco-friendly suppliers, and that is what we have to work with to send our products out. If our store proves to become popular, we may be able to purchase larger boxes and envelopes to include, and send, more products in a single order. Until then though, we will send the products out in either a small box or a C5 envelope.