If you’ve been with Podzilla for a while, you know by now that this is not my favorite kind of update to write, and I hold off on as many of these as we possibly can throughout the year. I've held off on adjusting pricing for as long as I reasonably could, but it's time unfortunately as supply chain adjustments keep coming.
Starting Monday, September 28, Podzilla's pricing is being updated. Anything that goes into production on or after that date will be billed at the new rates. Orders in production before then stay on current pricing.
Why now
The main driver is shipping. USPS has raised rates three separate times again this year, and those increases have stacked up to more than 16% in total. We’ve eaten most of that along the way rather than passing each bump on to you, but at this point the gap is too wide to keep absorbing, so shipping prices on many items are moving up to reflect what it actually costs to get your orders out the door. A smaller number of product prices are adjusting too, including some of the size-tier apparel pricing. Some blank prices have actually went down so you will see that reflected on the sheet as well.
The good news
I didn't want this to be all bad, so a few changes are rolling out at the same time that should save a lot of you money:
Smarter additional-item shipping. Right now, if an order has items from different catalog entries in the same category, each one gets billed at its own first-item shipping price. Take an order with a CC1717 adult tee, a CC9018 youth shirt, and a Rabbit Skins 4400 bodysuit. Today that's three first-item shipping charges. After the 28th, only the first piece of clothing (the CC1717 in this example) is charged first-item shipping, and the other two are billed at the additional-item rate. For anyone selling family sets, sibling shirts, or mixed-size bundles, this adds up fast.
Ornament bundles just got a lot cheaper to ship. Additional-item shipping on ornaments is dropping from $2.20 to $0.89. With Q4 coming up, that's a big win for anyone selling ornament sets or getting multi-ornament orders.
The full breakdown
Every change is listed item by item in this read-only sheet:
PRICING SHEET
It covers product price, first-item shipping, and additional-item shipping for each affected catalog item. If something isn't on the sheet, its pricing isn't changing.
What I'd suggest
Take a few minutes this week to compare the sheet against your active listings and adjust your Etsy prices or shipping profiles before the 28th. For a lot of you, the shipping changes above will offset some or all of the increases depending on what you sell, so it's worth looking at your actual order mix rather than assuming the worst.
Thank you for trusting Podzilla with your orders. I don't take that lightly, and I'm doing everything I can to keep pricing fair on both sides.
Russ