BIZ BUZZ: Light at the end of the tunnel?

The last few weeks—no, the last few months—have been tough for the people running ShippingCart, the overseas cargo forwarding service of LBC Express which, since its launch in 2015, has attracted a strong and loyal following.

The service offers clients the convenience of shopping on overseas e-commerce sites and having their goods forwarded to a US warehouse, from which the items are shipped via LBC to buyers in the Philippines.

But things suddenly went south in November of last year when the company decided to shift their operations to a new warehouse in Portland, Oregon, as their lease on their Hayward, California warehouse was expiring and would not be renewed by the lessor.

All this happened just days before the traditional Black Friday sale in the United States, which is the busiest shopping day of the year for the North American market, both in physical stores and on e-commerce platforms.

The inevitable result was a shipping backlog of, at one point, almost 20,000 items for shipping while new staffers were struggling with startup pains (and note that the job market in the United States has been very tight, with hiring new employees rather difficult even with higher wages being offered).

The backlash was plain to see on ShippingCart’s social media pages with many clients complaining about the long delays in receiving their packages. Some have been waiting for their items to be delivered since November 2022.

But there’s some good news on the horizon.

According to ShippingCart, they have implemented a two-lane processing system to expedite the “depletion” of their outbound backlog. One lane is dedicated to picking and packing “aging shipments” and the other is for newer ones.

“We would like to assure you that your items are not lost,” the firm said in its apologetic letter posted on its website. “Our picking and packing is faster now as we have successfully doubled our headcount to stabilize our Oregon operations.

The company explained that, at present, shipments by air from Oregon to the Philippines will take at least 25 days, and up to 35 days for those being shipped with multiple items (from as short as 10 days previously). If you’re shipping by sea, well, that will take almost three months to arrive.

For sure, things are starting to improve. But the challenge for the company going forward, of course, is to completely clear its four-month shipping backlog and, after that, recover the lost goodwill of its clients.

Can this be done? Abangan!

—Daxim L. Lucas

Pet care online

Two decades since its debut in the Philippines with the SM group as partner, Hong Kong-based retailer Watsons has emerged as a formidable player in health and beauty consumer categories. It now has a footprint of more than 1,000 stores nationwide.

But while Watsons mostly caters to humans, it also recognizes the growing demand for pet care.

However, because of limited space in its stores, pet care is something that Watsons intends to offer using digital platforms. This is a way to meet household demand without reducing shelf space for its traditional wares.

“The challenge with physical stores is that the space is finite. So for us, there are some categories like pet care that for now, we’re making it exclusive online,” Watsons customer director Jared De Guzman told Biz Buzz.

—Doris Dumlao-Abadilla INQ

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