Newsletter Flashback: Introducing shipping services during the Covid-19 shutdowns
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Adding Canada-wide shipping for the first time during a global pandemic. Note: This was originally published as an email newsletter on November 9, 2020.
Behind the scenes: Small business in a time of Covid
For those just joining us, welcome!
Every day we get questions about what it’s been like to run a store during Covid, so we decided to give you, our dear newsletter reader, a behind the scenes look at your friendly local game store.
In past issues we covered The Puzzle Pandemic and transitioning in-store events to online formats. Today we wanted to show you what our first 6 months in the wild world of shipping have been like for our little store.
We started taking online orders just as the first shutdown began in mid-March. For our first two months, we exclusively offered in-store pickup; we only introduced Canada-wide shipping in mid-May.
We actually would have started shipping a couple of weeks earlier. At the time, our biggest challenge in starting up shipping wasn’t sourcing boxes, tape, or other packing materials - it was getting our hands on a postal scale! Everyone was sold out, likely because we weren’t the only ones suddenly having to weigh our options (har har). But as soon as we got one we were off to the races.
Six months later, here’s where our games have ended up:
These maps show where shipments have gone, grouped by postal forward sortation area (FSAs - a fancy way of saying the first half of your postal code). As in newsletters past we’ve removed the scale for privacy, but otherwise those are our real numbers. Keep in mind that some FSAs are bigger than others; we promise we aren’t shipping all of our games to the far north of BC!
Predictably, most orders have remained here in the Lower Mainland (a more detailed map of that is coming up), but it’s interesting to see the other semi-nearby places that have shopped with us.
Fun fact: we’ve sent just as many packages to the northern tip of Vancouver Island as we have to the Sunshine Coast and to Salt Spring Island!
Now that we’re fairly comfortable with this newfangled ecommerce thing, we’ve been making a concerted effort to improve our site’s SEO and presence on Google, social media, and other search engines to broaden our reach across Canada. After all, if we’re offering Canada-wide shipping, we might as well let folks know we’re here.
And bit by bit, our strategy seems to be working - there’s even a teeny tiny FSA dot in St. John’s, Newfoundland!
Of course, the majority of our online sales have remained close to home - and that’s perfectly fine with us.
(Note: this map of the Lower Mainland uses a different colour scale than the national maps to better illustrate differences between FSAs.)
Like so many others in 2020, we find ourselves doing and thinking about things we wouldn’t have dreamed a year ago. A year ago we would have told you that we have no interest whatsoever in shipping. Now our gaming area is a puzzle fort hiding a shipping station which is stacked high with cardboard boxes (the boring kind) that we’re using to send games to Newfoundland.
It’s been a wild year.
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