Blind and double-blind shipping are two common practices that, when effectively employed, can increase your business’s profit margins and boost your distribution momentum. Here is everything you need to know about blind and double-blind shipping.
What Is Blind Shipping?
Blind shipping is a supply chain strategy that’s gaining a lot of popularity in the e-commerce sector. It allows businesses to covertly ship their products directly to their customers without revealing the identity or location of the manufacturer or distributor. Usually, the supplier knows the identity and location of the supplier.
What Is Double-Blind Shipping?
Double-blind shipping also relies on operational confidentiality, except it’s double-sided. This tactic involves concealing both the identities and locations of the customers and the suppliers. The supplier ships the product to the e-commerce business warehouse. From there, it’s shipped directly to the customer and the customer is none the wiser that the product came from a third-party manufacturer or supplier.
Blind Shipping in E-Commerce
Blind and double-blind shipping are both common supply chain operational strategies in the e-commerce sector. The idea is to help protect the identities of the customers while also maintaining a strong competitive edge for the brand.
If your customers learn the identity of your suppliers or manufacturers, there’s nothing stopping them from purchasing your products directly from the manufacturers at a much cheaper cost. By keeping this information confidential, you’re protecting your business interests, retaining control over the supply chain, and ensuring customer loyalty by establishing yourself as a key player in the game. Customers will appreciate the convenience of purchasing the products they’re seeking out from a reputable and sustainable source rather than having to seek out third-party sources they know nothing about.
On the flip side, if suppliers learn the identities and locations of your customers, they can then reach out directly to your customers and offer the same products at cost, which effectively eliminates you—the e-commerce business and middleman—from the picture altogether. Double-blind shipping can help you protect your assets by preventing your manufacturers and suppliers from going behind your back to directly reach out to your customers.
How Can You Set Up a Blind or Double-Blind Shipping Operation?
To set up an effective, efficient, and affordable blind or double-blind shipping operation, you need to have a good working relationship with your freight forwarder.
For a standard blind shipment, you need to instruct the freight forwarder to remove the original bill of lading which contains the supplier’s information. When the package arrives, the customer will only see your company’s information on the shipping label.
Double-blind shipments require the freight forwarder to take the additional step of providing an alternate incorrect or “dummy” address to the supplier, so they don’t learn the end-customer’s actual name or location.
Throughout the entire process, only the shipper and the freight forwarder know the shipment’s full journey trajectory from start to finish.
What Are the Advantages of Blind Shipping?
Setting up a blind or double-blind shipment supply chain operation is like running a well-oiled machine. Proper planning and execution of all intermediary processes ensures that everything will go smoothly from start to finish. Most importantly, it guarantees that the shipment will arrive exactly on the date specified to the customer within minimal risk of loss, delays, or revealing confidential information to either the end-customer or the supplier.
As you can imagine, there are a lot of advantages to employing blind or double-blind shipment processes throughout your supply chain operations. Here are just a few advantages to consider.
Protect Your Assets and Maintain a Competitive Edge
Aside from preventing the formation of a direct manufacturer-customer relationship, blind shipping also prevents competing businesses from poaching your customers and suppliers by keeping their identities, locations, and contact information confidential.
Blind or double-blind shipments help you protect your business assets while also taking on an ethical approach to product delivery that gives both customers and suppliers peace of mind when it comes to preventing identity and product theft.
One way to protect the identity of your distributors and manufacturers and prevent shipment losses or delays is to integrate dropshipping. Combining blind or double-blind shipping operations with dropshipping is an effective end-to-end solution that streamlines the entire delivery process with optimal business benefits. The product goes directly from the supplier to the end-customer and eliminates the need for warehouse storage during transition, which helps cut down supply chain costs while maintaining anonymity on both ends.
Client Retention and Quality Control
Through double-blind shipping, you can keep your distributors’ and manufacturers’ identities a secret from your customers. This anonymity prevents customers from purchasing products directly from one of your sources at a fraction of the cost and ensures their reliance on your business. This is the very definition of supply and demand. Customers demand a product that, from their perspective, can only be supplied by your business.
Establish Brand Consistency
A strong and well-planned out blind or double-blind shipping strategy allows you to maintain consistency throughout all operational levels of your brand. From back-end operations to customer service and right down to supply chain operations, you can ensure high-quality and reliable services at all times that yield favourable results for your business. Customers will be able to easily identify your products because only your logo, brand name, address, and contact information will appear on the shipping labels.
Increase Your Profit Margins
Gaining brand awareness and establishing yourself as an industry authority figure is the name of the game. Once you’ve laid the groundwork and established your brand as a force to be reckoned with, you can make necessary supply chain operational and pricing adjustments to facilitate future growth.
Lean Supply Solutions provides full-service and cost-effective warehousing and distribution, order fulfillment, and e-commerce fulfillment, as well as 4PL contract logistics services for an international supply chain market. Serving a wide range of businesses from large multinational manufacturing companies to e-commerce and retail businesses, we build effective end-to-end supply chain strategies for our clients. Contact us today to learn more.
