I’d like to take a moment to reply to a customer survey that was sent to us this morning. I would also like to thank this customer for sending in such a detailed survey response. We often see them come back with short statements but not usually so detailed. Thank you!
Happy Canada Day by the way!
While I find most things have excellent prices, I find your jewelry a little overpriced which keeps me hesitant from buying as many pieces as I’d like to.
I can understand why you would feel this way if you are comparing prices with the same item in the USA. The prices are in US dollars of course and ours are in Canadian dollars after paying the exchange rate and shipping and taxes. Then we add our standard markup which is much less than most brick and mortar stores. Standard Keystone (markup) is double wholesale. Many physical stores triple the prices. Our overhead is lower so we don’t go more than standard. Also silver jewellery is like the stock market, silver prices fluctuate quickly and depending on when we buy we could look overpriced. Unfortunately we can not judge when is the best time to buy silver jewellery.
How we price our jewellery for example – a pendant that sells in the USA at retail price of $45 would wholesale for $22.50 US. That is what we would pay for it. After it gets here it costs us over $29 Canadian. Add our markup for profit and it’s now $58.00
You pay $58 plus shipping of say $11.00 and we send you the pendant.
We then pay for the box to ship it in, the bubble wrap, the label, the ink to print it and your invoice. We pay $9.50 to Canada Post to ship it to you with tracking number and fully insured if possible.
If you paid by PayPal we are charged another $2.07 for the transaction in order to get paid. Then we deposit the money to our bank and get charged another transaction fee for the deposit and another transaction fee to transfer it to our credit card to pay for the jewellery we purchased for you. Business bank accounts are a necessary evil and are very costly. One of our major expenses in running this business is banking fees.
When all is said and done our profit is about $23.00 Canadian. Our USA counterparts would make a profit of about $22.50 US which is equal to $27.00 Canadian. We are now $4 in the hole in comparison.
Needless to say if we lowered our prices further we would be out of business and you would be buying in the USA.
There are times when I wanted to do a smaller order and the minimum shipping cost was over $11.00 so I didn’t place my order, for larger orders this is fine, but when someone only wants to order $5, $10 or $20 worth of small stuff, say for a special ritual or spell, $11 for shipping is excessive and can send customers looking elsewhere for folks with cheaper shipping options.
As mentioned above we charge only our cost of shipping and packaging costs. Canada Post has minimums on parcel post so even shipping a small parcel across the street would cost us $6.50.
Sending out a single pendant in an envelope would be much less costly but would not provide tracking nor insurance and could get damaged or lost. So if your item does not arrive or is damaged we would be out the entire order. Our recommendation is to order more at one time and save. Also there is free shipping in Canada if you order $100 or more.
Thanks again for your valued comments and we wish you Happy Canada Day!
