Hi there -
Today we past the 1000 mark, two weeks after launch. Not bad, not bad at all. Hope many more x000 will follow.
Tomorrow the second release version will be live, that will iron out most if not all of the issues that you mentioned. Have a looksie and let me know if you are satisfied.
Also, if you have any creative ideas on the further development of the duty calculator, let us know!
Keep bundling
Andre
This week we launched our first product, the Duty Calculator. With the Duty Calculator you can calculate your import tax in a few simple steps for free.
The calculation of import tax can be complicated; that’s why we built the calculator for you. The amount of duty and VAT payable is determined by:
- the type of product that you are importing,
- the value of the product and
- the cost of shipping and insurance.
Let’s start with the first one: the type of product. For Customs purposes goods are identified by a ten digit code known as a commodity code, or tariff heading. Each code has an associated duty rate - usually expressed as a percentage - which is applied when calculating the amount of duty payable.
There are in excess of 10,000 commodity codes and the associated duty rates can vary significantly – even between products that may seem similar to the consumer. For example, a shoe with a textile upper can be subject to a duty rate as high as 17%, whereas a leather upper shoe may only attract duty at 5%. Similarly bags and cases are subject to rates of duty ranging from 2.7% to 9.7%, depending on the material they are made from. Some products do not attract duty, for example wooden furniture, certain cosmetic products and most IT equipment and accessories. Using our duty calculator you can establish the tax you will pay by selecting the category and subcategory of the item that you want to import.
Next we have the value of the product. This is straightforward: the more expensive your product is, the more you need to pay. However, there are several minimum thresholds that determine if you need to pay duty or tax at all, so you may be lucky! Taxes are always calculated in the national currency of the country of import, and Custom agencies set exchange rates on a monthly basis, or more frequently in the event of significant currency fluctuations. It should be noted that the rates used by Customs agencies may differ from exchange rates published elsewhere. You can find the rates also published on the Duty Calculator website.
Finally there is the cost of shipping and insurance. Again these costs will influence the amount of duty and tax payable; the higher the costs, the greater the amount of duty and tax payable. Some freight companies include a duty and VAT estimate in their shipping quotes, but based on our research none of them have quite cracked it yet, and their estimates will often be inaccurate.
Currently the Duty Calculator can be used for goods imported from anywhere in the world into the UK, Germany, Italy, France, Spain, Netherlands, Belgium and Ireland. We are working hard to add new countries and aim to have all EU countries included before the summer. Adding new countries takes time, because we are keen to ensure that the calculator is 100% accurate, so please be patient if your country is not yet included.
We are very happy with the product and I would like to thank Kevin and Sean at Hexagon, Aleksandr, Alex, Aleksandr and Anton at iTransition, Pesh and Riley at Effect Digital and Peter at Fiscal Solutions for their great work. Also I would like to thank our active Bundleers for their useful feedback on the alpha and beta versions.
Keep on Bundling
Andre
Hi there
We just launched the Adwords campaign for the Duty Calculator. Our top runner ad is the following ad with a CTR of 9.2%:
Do you have an idea for a better ad? send it to me and we’ll run it. For every ad that beats the CTR of 7%, the creator will receive a free bundle tech t-shirt from our BundleShirt store
These are the rules set by Google:
Headline: Max 25 characters
Description line 1: Max 35 characters
Description line 2: Max 35 characters
Get your creative juices flowing, and send me those ads!
Happy bundling
Andre
andre@bundletech.com
In my last blog about the 72 million people that are into cross-border ecommerce I mentioned that the average Facebooker spends 25.4 min/day on Facebook. That is a staggering 12.7 hrs a month, equaling over 1.5 workdays! That seems to be a lot of time wasted, or shall we say, repurposed. Assuming that lots of the Facebook time actually happens at work, could we argue that the phenomenal growth of the social networks actually contributed to the decline of the economy?
Lets have a look at what Alexa says on how much time visitors spend on the other networks: YouTube 23.3 min/day, MySpace 21 min/day, LinkedIn 6.7 min/day, Twitter 9.3 min/day (I didn’t add Bebo, as Bebo users are too young to work). When you multiply that time spent with their estimated user numbers (FB 200m, YT 200m, MS 150m, TW 30m, LI 50) assuming that 33% is active, and 50% is in the USA, you get a staggering 5332 manyears per day repurposed to social networks. Assuming that 75% of the social networking is actually spent at work, and a USA GDP/capita of $30k, you are looking at $150m lost in real productivity per day. On an annual basis that means a lost productivity of around $55B, or around 0.38% of the USA 2008 GDP. Given the annualized Q4 2008 contraction of US GDP of 6.2%, you could argue that social networks caused around 5% of the recession (assuming that the social networks did not generate lots of GDP). No wonder that companies are increasingly blocking IPs of social networks.
Now stop reading this blog and go back to work!
Catch you later
Andre
I received lots of great feedback on our Bundle Tech site. There was excitement about the problems we are trying to solve, there were compliments on the design of the site and words of encouragement on starting a business in this environment. And then there was the question: Cross-border commerce, who is into that? Why didn’t you do something in social networks, those are hot, everyone is into social networks!
Well, lets have a look at how many people are into cross-border ecommerce.
My best guess is to start with eBay. The last official data I can find on eBay cross-border trade is from 2005, where eBay reports that 15% of their transactions are cross border. Applying that to today’s GMV, this would mean a cross-border trade on eBay of around $9B. Assuming eBay represents a third of total cross-border ecommerce this would mean that the total market size for cross-border ecommerce is around $27B.
If we take an average transaction value of $150, the $27B would translate into around 182 million transactions per year. If we assume that on average people buy 2.5 items a year from abroad, this would mean that around 72 million people are ‘into’ cross-border ecommerce. A bit less than the number of people that are into Facebook et al, but still a sizable amount. They will work at it a bit less than the 25.4 min/day that the average Facebooker is spending on Facebook, but still.
72 million people buying something from a website in another country, does that sound about right to you? Let me know if you have any comments.
Catch you later
Andre
Hi there
To support our cause, and make you look good, we have created some nice t-shirts for our biggest fans. Have a looksie in our shop Bundle Shirt, browse through the virtual aisles and stumble upon that great t-shirt.
Take care, and have a great Easter break
Andre
What a week, what a week. We’ve been busy keeping three plates spinning.
First plate: our corporate site www.bundletech.com. We launched the site on Tuesday, received many compliments, had our celebratory lunch at Wagamama for £38.12 (yes, we are on a tight budget), sobered up and moved on. One plate down, two more to go.
Second plate: the Duty Calculator. The alpha version was released to a limited public (Marc, Kevin, Sean and me + the clever ones amongst you) on Monday and we are currently testing and stabilizing it. End of next week we’ll be looking for your help to spot bugs we no longer see and to help us make the duty calculator a great product.
Third plate: The Project Known As Top Secret [TPKATS]. We commissioned this project this week with our friends at iTransition and effect. Hurray! But we are not there just yet, still we need to add more and more detail to the spec. TPKATS is big, TPKATS is enormeous, TPKATS is a monster
take care, have a great weekend
andre
today we launched our corporate website. hurray! one site done, many more to come
we are really happy with the site. Pesh and James from effect took our ok idea and turned it into a really cool site, in record time. well done guys!
in conjunction with the site we are starting our blog, by which we’ll keep you up to date with key developments at Bundle Tech.
we are glad to be here, keep an eye on this space, you’ll be hearing from us
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