US photog with requested photo in UK

I’m a photog in Denver and have received a request from a person in Bavaria, Germany who saw one of my photo’s at a friend’s here in the states and wants to buy the same photo 50” x 40” mounted in acrylic. The cost to ship this photo has been researched and will run between $650-$700. The cost to ship just a print is $150 - $200. In addition, according to my customer photographs finished in acrylic appear to be cheaper in the UK than in the states which is making the cost even higher.

I’m wondering if others have been faced with similar challenges and what solutions you’ve come up with?

Well I recommend this lab in the UK DS Colour Labs they do great work, but can only ship up to 20×16 to the rest of the EU. The other lab I use is Whitewall, which are actually based in Berlin. Again absolutely top class work from these guys, but they are not exactly cheap. They also have a US based lab now, I would think that they would be able to help.

The one advantage of digital imaging, it doesn't really matter where you are, or where the lab is that you use, since you are just uploading data.

Alan

Whitewall appears to meet my needs. Thank you Alan!

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J-Blake wrote in post #18379197
...........requested photo in UK

...........have received a request from a person in Bavaria, Germany

I am a little confused. . Is the person who wants the photo in Bavaria, Germany, or are they in the UK?

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Tom Reichner wrote in post #18380223
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I am a little confused. . Is the person who wants the photo in Bavaria, Germany, or are they in the UK?

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Tom at the current moment in time it doesn't matter much from a "marketplace" point of view, since we are all still part of the EU. So I use Whitewall, a lab based in Berlin, in just the same way that I use DSCL, who are based in Manchester. It would be just like someone in California using a lab in Maine say. The only difference we have is that some "states" use the Euro, while others still use their own currency. I believe that in the early days of the USA some of the several states still produced their own currency, as well as the Federal Dollar.

Because we are also an offshore island, sometimes shipping from us to the rest of the EU can still be an issue, even after nearly 50 years of membership of the club. We Brits have never been really full on in support of the union, hence Brexit. So in many ways we struggle to play at a retail level in the EU market as a whole. So the lab in Manchester doesn't have an easy, cost effective method of shipping larger product outside of the UK. While I can get large prints sent from Berlin overnight for the same cost as from Manchester, £9.99!

Just so you understand the geography Berlin is only about 570 miles from London. Paris, Brussels, and The Hague are all much closer to London than Edinburgh, or even Manchester are.

Alan

BigAl007 wrote in post #18380439
Just so you understand the geography Berlin is only about 570 miles from London. Paris, Brussels, and The Hague are all much closer to London than Edinburgh, or even Manchester are.

Yes, Alan, I understand the physical geography. . But I thought that crossing international borders between a member of the UK and a non-member nation would require some sort of customs or something similar, which usually adds significantly to the cost of shipping. .

For instance, I am only 50 miles from the Canadian border, and I am 2,800 miles away from my folks in Pennsylvania. . Yet for me to ship something to someone 50 miles away in Canada costs me about $19, while shipping the same thing to my parents nearly 3,000 miles away in Pennsylvania only costs about $8. .

As soon as it becomes international shipping, the pricing structure completely changes. . Isn't that how it works for you when it comes to shipping across international borders, with countries that are not part of the UK?

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Tom Reichner wrote in post #18380506
Yes, Alan, I understand the physical geography. . But I thought that crossing international borders between a member of the UK and a non-member nation would require some sort of customs or something similar, which usually adds significantly to the cost of shipping. .

For instance, I am only 50 miles from the Canadian border, and I am 2,800 miles away from my folks in Pennsylvania. . Yet for me to ship something to someone 50 miles away in Canada costs me about $19, while shipping the same thing to my parents nearly 3,000 miles away in Pennsylvania only costs about $8. .

As soon as it becomes international shipping, the pricing structure completely changes. . Isn't that how it works for you when it comes to shipping across international borders, with countries that are not part of the UK?

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That's the "big" thing about the EU, is that it is one large single market for customs purposes. Most of the rest of the EU seems to get that, in that shipping is generally priced as if it were not international when shopping anywhere in the EU. Unfortunately though here in the UK we have never really embraced the whole single market deal, also we are an offshore island, which probably mildly complicates matters. So I guess we are more like being in Hawaii, and the rest of the EU is more like the lower 48. Plus our shippers, including Royal Mail as well as the likes of DHL, UPS and others have realised that they can screw us with "international" prices, even though it's within the EU single market.

I'm sure that if the full benefits of the single market in cross border purchasing were working in both directions for British retailers and consumers, then the result of last years referendum might have been different. The general population of the UK just don't really see much benefit on an immediate level from the EU. It wasn't even like membership made going on a cheap holiday to Spain for a week any easier or cheaper than it had been before we joined. I'm just old enough to remember doing a road trip around europe as a child before we joined the then Common Market. Just like after we joined we didn't need visas for travel.

If there are not lots of retailers looking for shipping to the rest of the EU, then you are not going to get a competitive price. Generally if I want something shipped from anywhere else in the EU it will cost me much the same in shipping as getting it from the UK. For someone in the rest of the EU it is common to look at online retailers all over the union for the best prices, so I'm not surprised that someone in Germany knows that we have some very competitively priced labs. It's just our unusually, for the rest of the EU, high "international" shipping rates that screws things up.

Alan

Just order from a UK based lab, and get them to ship direct to the customer. Simples and sorted!

Colin Glover wrote in post #18382015
Just order from a UK based lab, and get them to ship direct to the customer. Simples and sorted!

Colin the only issue with that is that the lab I would recommend is not able to ship anything larger than 20×16 outside of the UK, which is an issue when the customer is looking to have a 50×40 sized product. My suspicion is that this is very likely to hold good for most labs in the UK, since when it comes to shipping it's a relatively consistent marketplace, at least costs wise. I have been involved in the process of finding courier services for a small retail business based in the UK. Pricing here now seems to be very much based on dimensions, as well as weight, where in the past it was far more based just on weight. This is because so much product now ends up at some point on an aircraft.

Alan

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Colin Glover wrote in post #18382015
Just order from a UK based lab, and get them to ship direct to the customer. Simples and sorted!

If the photographer (the OP) doesn't live in the UK, and the client who's buying the prints doesn't live in the UK, then why would you suggest that the photographer order the prints from a UK-based lab? . That doesn't seem "simples" to me at all.

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Tom Reichner wrote in post #18383109
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If the photographer (the OP) doesn't live in the UK, and the client who's buying the prints doesn't live in the UK, then why would you suggest that the photographer order the prints from a UK-based lab? . That doesn't seem "simples" to me at all.

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Well it's because buying something online from a retailer in Berlin, should be as easy as buying from a retailer in Manchester. Just like you buying something from a retailer in Honolulu should be as easy as from one in Seattle. Actually it seems like that is the pretty much the case if you are in most of the continental EU, where intra EU shipping seems to be no more expensive than shipping within a single EU country. Whenever anything seems to HAVE to be loaded on a boat or plane to get where it is going, we in the UK seem to get hit big with shipping charges.

This is not just international shipping though, even within the UK if you live on one of the offshore islands, mostly around the Scottish coast, then you again get hit with a big hike in prices. Actually they even hit "remote" areas of the UK, such as the Scottish Highlands with these high shipping charges. There are some places in the Highlands where you might have to drive between 100 and 150 miles to get to a location that is less than 10 miles in a straight line away from you. Often that will be on roads that it hard to average much more than 30-40 mph on. This can effectively mean having to send out a vehicle that will cover 100's of miles to maybe do one or two deliveries. Hard to imagine in such a small and otherwise densely populated island like the UK.

Alan