Have you budgeted for shipping costs? You should. At Perlstein Lab, one of our goals is to help other startup labs and biotechs by providing useful & helpful information about our experiences. In a previous post, we shared our data about the startup expenses you can anticipate when setting up your lab for the first time. As we dug deeper into that data, we noticed expenses that are significant, yet silent until you receive an invoice. It’s similar to that feeling in the darkroom when another Western Blot fails.
Most of our team came from the land of tax-exempt status in academia, which also comes with free shipping from many suppliers. However, as a commercial company, we come face-to-face with these expenses. That’s why we’re building Perlstein Lab using lean startup principles to find innovative ways to cut costs. This includes putting a scientific eye on the data of our lab shopping expenses.
Our virtual lab manager, HappiLabs Tom, helped organize and analyze our spending to identify where we can save money. Figure 1 shows June’s total costs (as a percent) with all of our suppliers. The costs were broken down into sub-total, shipping, and taxes. The expenses for each company were analyzed to determine which companies have the best and worst shipping rates. Keep in mind, some companies provide one-time free shipping, some reagents require expensive, overnight shipping, and certain chemicals incur a HAZMAT shipping fee. We have displayed five suppliers with favorable shipping terms.
From the graph above, two insights are obvious:
- Taxes don’t vary much so they’re easy to plan for
- Shipping varies a lot by supplier
Overall, shipping and taxes account for about $1200-1400 per month for our 4 person lab. Plan accordingly as you grow your company. While you can’t lower your taxes, you can listen to these 3 Recommendations for Lowering your Shipping Costs:
- Plan ahead. Shipping is most expensive when we misplan and require an item to be shipped overnight. That little “mistake” might mean the difference between $12 or $36 in shipping costs.
- Buy from Amazon. You can’t beat free shipping on orders over $35 when any lab purchase is usually in the $100’s. Our most common items purchased on Amazon include office supplies, glassware, and gloves.
- Negotiate with suppliers. Deals such as ‘Free shipping on orders over $500’ are common and some suppliers might grant you free shipping once you purchase a certain amount from them, say $10,000 over the course of a year.
Hire a virtual lab manager to help your startup lab. Visit www.happilabs.org.
