is Bob Young out of his mind?

[Christopher Browne]

On Mon, Nov 10, 2008 at 5:22 PM, bob 295 <icanprogram-sKcZck+fQKg at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> On November 10, 2008 11:30 am, Evan Leibovitch wrote:
>> bob 295 wrote:
>> > I went to order a copy of my book online and discovered that the
>> > shipping costs to Canada had gone from $12US a month ago to $85US
>> > today !!!    Someone ordering my $35US book online would now pay
>> > $120US to have it shipped.
>>
>> I just talked to someone involved with Lulu; the reply was that your
>> $85 quote was for next day delivery (what they call "express"), and
>> that cheaper shipping options exist.
>>
>> They did admit that it was probably not a good idea to have next day
>> as the default shipping method and are looking into changing this.
>>
>> - Evan
>
> Actually the problem is that no cheaper shipping option exists.
>
> As of 08Oct31 there are only two shipping options available for my book:
> Standard ($82.86US) and
> Express ($94.26US).
>
> Official word I got from Lulu is that an "Economy" option is being
> investigated and might be available in a "few weeks".
>
> This is a textbook case of how to commit business suicide.

I have to respectfully disagree...

It is not likely that the Canadian market (which is what was affected
by this) represents materially more than 10% of their market, and
that's what would have been adversely affected by this situation.
Having 10% of the market "chopped off" is certainly not a good thing,
but I don't think it's fair to characterize that as "business
suicide."

Furthermore, it is not evident what led to the loss of the cheaper
shipping option.  I wouldn't think it likely that Lulu would decide
"by magic" to drop inexpensive shipping options; it should seem
obvious that making shipping punitively expensive would pretty
demolish this export market.

I suggest that what happened, in fact, is that Lulu needed to
renegotiate pricing on shipping in general, and that the (rather
large!) changes to foreign shipping rates was something that they
viewed (legitimately!) as a relatively minor side-effect, to be
remedied later.

To the contrary, it's entirely plausible that their shipping service
providers presented them with rate changes, falling out of the various
recent economic events (oil, general economic downturn, etc), where it
might have been committing "business suicide" to NOT have made the
changes that they have.  Having a couple of weeks when shipping to
Canada was "way too expensive" would be preferable to having analagous
problems in the more crucial US market - *that* would be "business
suicide"...
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