Remove the dead space
Indian retail boxes are mostly air. Stripping outer cartons often drops the volumetric weight enough to pay for itself several times over.
Included, no charge
Ten orders. One box. One shipping charge.
The single biggest saving available to anyone shipping out of India, and it costs nothing.
What is package consolidation?
It is combining several separate orders into one outbound parcel. You send as many Indian orders as you like to your address, we hold them, and when you are ready we repack everything into a single box. You pay one international shipping charge instead of one per seller. We do not charge for it.
The arithmetic
Why five parcels cost so much more than one
International air freight is not priced by the kilogram in a straight line. There is a floor, a minimum charge every parcel pays regardless of how little it weighs, and then a rate per kilogram that falls as the parcel gets heavier. Both of those work against you when you ship small and often.
Send five separate one kilogram parcels and you pay that floor five times, at the worst per kilogram rate on the table each time. Send one five kilogram parcel and you pay the floor once and reach a cheaper band. The goods are identical. The journey is identical. The only thing that changed is how many times you paid to start the journey.
This is also why the advice to just use the seller's own international shipping falls apart as soon as you are buying from more than one seller. Each of them is independently paying that floor, and passing it to you.
Worked example
The same goods, two ways
Five orders from five Indian sellers, one kilogram each, going to the same address abroad.
| Shipped separately | Consolidated | |
|---|---|---|
| Parcels leaving India | 5 | 1 |
| Minimum charge paid | 5 times | Once |
| Weight band applied | Lightest, most expensive band, five times | A heavier, cheaper band, once |
| Sets of export paperwork | 5 | 1 |
| Tracking numbers to watch | 5 | 1 |
| Opportunities for one to go astray | 5 | 1 |
Exact figures depend on your destination and the current carrier rates. The structure of the saving does not change.
How it runs
What consolidation looks like in practice
-
01
Orders arrive over time
Buy across days or weeks. Each parcel is logged against your reference, opened, checked and photographed as it lands.
-
02
You check the list
Ask us what we are holding whenever you like. You get the itemised list and the arrival photographs so you know nothing is still outstanding.
-
03
We quote the combined parcel
When you say go, we pack everything together, weigh and measure the finished box and send you the chargeable weight and the price.
-
04
One box, one tracking number
You confirm, we file the export documentation and hand it to the carrier. One number to watch instead of five.
What we do while packing
Consolidation is not just putting things in a bigger box
Separate the things that fight
Brass against glass, a steel cooker against folded silk. Hard items get isolated so nothing arrives marked.
Weigh and measure honestly
You are charged on whichever is greater, actual or volumetric weight. We give you both figures before you commit, not after.
Itemise the invoice properly
Every item described and valued individually. A vague declaration on a mixed parcel is the fastest route to a customs hold.
Common questions
Questions we get asked most
It depends on how many sellers you buy from, but the shape of the saving is always the same. International freight has a high minimum charge and then gets cheaper per kilogram as the parcel gets heavier. Five separate one kilogram parcels each pay that minimum. One five kilogram parcel pays it once and gets the better per kilogram rate on top.
No, but it does make an accurate declaration more important, because there is more in the box to describe. We itemise everything on the commercial invoice rather than writing a vague summary, which is what actually keeps parcels moving.
That is normal and not a problem. We pack hard items so they cannot move against soft ones, and we will tell you if something genuinely should travel on its own. Occasionally splitting a shipment is cheaper, usually when one item is bulky and light, and we will say so rather than quietly charging you for the bigger box.
Yes. Ask at any point and we send a list of every parcel we have received for you with the photographs taken on arrival. Most customers check this before confirming so they know nothing is still in transit from a seller.
No stated limit. The real constraints are the thirty day free storage window and the thirty kilogram per box carrier limit. Beyond thirty kilograms we split it across boxes, which is still far cheaper than shipping each order separately.
Keep reading
Where to go next
Start collecting orders at one address
Get your free Indian address today and send as many orders to it as you like.
