Shipping Overseas?

You have most likely reached this page having asked how to get our products to Australia, Europe or some country other than North America.  It is understandable, we offer products and prices than no one else in the world can match.  In 2013 we had customers from Perth to Sydney and from New Zealand to Denmark and of course the UK.  Buying in US dollars makes our prices attractive but the quality and choices even more so.

(Please note this blog was put together back in 2013, this update I am writing now is at the end of 2018. The Dollar value may have changed, the products will likely have changed. It now many be 2022.

It may not be marble you are considering it could be a vanity unit or Cement Tiles that we did not sell in 2013. Please just swap the word marble in the text for the product that is of interest to you. The methodology of shipping has not changed. There may be more companies available to ship in consolidated containers as the world GDP will have either grown or less as the world GDP has shrunk). My message to the future 🙂

The issue for the you the customer is how can I get this wonderful marble (we will assume marble) from Atlanta, Georgia USA to my bathroom?  Firstly marble does not ship air freight, unless it is just a sample.  It is heavy.  So this method of shipping is cost prohibitive (we will just assume you are not a billionaire).  Let’s also assume you are in Australia.

The way to get the product to you is the definition above on what is called a consolidated container.  Many people all over the world are buying products on a daily basis from different countries.  They use a 3rd party warehouse and then the 3rd party warehouse uses a shipper that specializes in consolidated containers.  Essentially shipping your pallet of marble in a container with lots of other pallets of other people’s products making the process efficient and cost effective.  For example.  A Ocean Container can carry 24 pallets a family moving from USA to Australia may have twenty three pallet leaving space for one more pallet, yours.  That one pallet could be your pallet of marble.  You then just pay for 1/24th of the container.

Consolidated container

Definitions
  1. Container stuffed with several shipments (consignments) from different shippers for delivery to one or more consignees.

Hopefully you are still with me….?  So now you have the methodology.  It really is quite straight forwards.

At The Builder Depot we do not arrange this for our customer.  All we do is ship inside the USA.  Why?  We would have to have a dedicated department, this would increase the product cost (we are against anything that increases the product cost). So you the customer has to find that warehouse or 3rd party location yourself.  You will want a warehouse that can prepare the shipment for shipping overseas.  We pack the marble in a wooden crate, but you will still want a warehouse to have the skill to inspect it before it gets loaded onto the container for overseas shipping.

Then you need to find a Consolidated container company.  Google can be your friend here.  Figure 1, shows a search in Google from shipping a pallet from USA to Australia there are hundreds of options.  I chose the link circled here.  That is in Figure 2, Xpressrate this may not be the best one, you need to do the work from this point.

ship from usa

Example 1.  Google Search for shipping “pallet from USA to Australia”

Example

Figure 2.  Just an example an international shipper.

So this briefly outlines the process.  To clarify:

  1. The Builder Depot does not ship outside the USA
  2. The Builder Depot does not complete or assist in any paperwork for shipping overseas. There are experts for this, you have to hire them, they do it.
  3. The Builder Depot ships to a USA warehouse that you designate, just like a retailers warehouse in for example California. You have pre-organized and communicated with this warehouse (they will know it is coming – you will want a reference number that we can put on the pallet, or some paperwork or code to identify  your shipment), they will prepare your marble shipment for overseas transport in an Ocean Container
  4. You direct the consolidated container company to collect the pallet and then it ships to you overseas
  5. There will be paperwork and forms.  You will need to do research and understand the process, we shipped thousands of square feet of marble to 3rd party warehouses in 2013 many went to Miami most likely destined for the Bahama’s, Australia was the number two final destination.
  6. From our side we receive an order online like any other order this order would have a 3rd party warehouse as it’s ship to location.  As a company we are not part of what happens to that shipment from beyond this point.  You could ship it to the moon if you like.  But for us all we are part of is shipping to a location in the USA.
  7. I hope this helps outline what we do and how the process of overseas shipping works.
  8. I am sure one day we will get there but a this time we are not in a position for an “overseas dept.”

Final note: of course if you are super rich you can get it loaded onto your plane and have it air shipped.  If that is the case just have your assistant sort this out for you 🙂

All we do is ship to a designated USA location in the lower 48 states.

You may ask, but there is a whole world out there, you could ship and sell even more?  Perhaps. But then we would have to hire and export department. Advertise internationally. Language barriers. Cultural differences. This is not impossible, but I think if we are gong to sell to a market. We are going to have a warehouse and an operation in that market. Hire people from that community. Currently we are in the USA, the industry of Home Improvement (which is what we are in) is valued at $300bn, that is “B” for Billion.  According to good old Wikipedia that is more than the entire GDP of Scotland, Flanders in Belgium and twice the amount of Manila.  In short we are not in a position to take on the world until we have captured the sales in our own backyard.

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