Have You Taken Advantage of Duty Free Ecomm?

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Freight Train

Have You Taken Advantage of Duty Free Ecomm?

Section 321 is the statute that describes de minimis. De minimis is the retail value below which articles can be admitted into the country free of duty and of any tax imposed on or by reason of importation.  The U.S. Customs and Border Protection states that the fair retail value of articles imported by one person on one day and exempted from the payment of duty shall not exceed $800.  The de minimis threshold was previously $200 but increased with the passage of the Trade Facilitation and Trade Enforcement Act of 2015 (TFTEA). What does this mean for your business? It means a savings strategy. Because inventory can enter the U.S., if the items value is under $800, you can send orders from either of our bi-costal facilities in Canada duty-free.

The icing on the cake? Canada offers a business-friendly duty drawback program, as well as a duty deferral program. So, you can ship your inventory into Canada and ship orders from one of NRI’s Canadian facilities, duty-free, and leverage either duty deferral or drawback to negate Canadian duties. By combining these ideas and utilizing NRI’s Canadian facilities, this creates a duty-free program for USA destined ecommerce shipments.  It does not require an FTZ or bonded facility to operate and it provides potentially significant improvements to your margins. NRI is managing this from our facilities on both west and east coasts – Vancouver, Kamloops, Montreal, and Toronto.

 

Carrier Options

Carrier programs are now providing value propositions for brands to consider a single point of Global B2C inventory.

·          Cost competitive express delivery services globally

·          Low-cost 2-4 day freight services with FedEx and UPS to all points in the USA

·          Consolidated inventory reduces costs, provides flexibility with less risk.

For a specific freight profile to your product please contact us and we will provide a detailed proposal.

NRI. The 3PL Who Aspires For More

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Our Warehouse Management System (WMS) is different than any other. Why? We made it ourselves. Design began in 2005, development started in 2006, and we began to roll-out our software in 2008.

Our proprietary 3PL software suite provides NRI and our clients the benefits of a highly customized solution for the apparel, footwear, and accessories industries. In addition to strong API capabilities that support high degrees of integration and customization, Aspire provides:

  • Forecasting and planning
  • Labor scheduling
  • Training management
  • Receipt management
  • Inventory management
  • Order management
  • Returns management
  • Storage maintenance
  • Invoice management
  • Freight services
  • Performance metrics

NRI’s decision to utilize a home-grown system instead of an off-the-shelf solution was due to the lack of availability of an existing system that covered all our needs or the unique needs that we see our clients require. Having a system as robust and flexible as Aspire has allowed us to easily handle unique client and internal requirements without constraints – cost, time, and flexibility – of an off-the-shelf solution. It has also allowed us to develop a system that is scalable for multiple locations with minimal effort and cost. Aspire is a complete 3PL Software Suite including:

  • WMS (Warehouse Management System) which handles receipt, order, and RA/return management, complete inventory tracking at all touchpoints, cycle/physical count management and maintenance, and much more.
  • TMS (Transportation Management System) with rate-shopping logic against multiple carriers. It is currently integrated with all major domestic and international small parcel carriers in both the USA and Canada. As we have developed our TMS ourselves we have been able to work with our partners to integrate additional niche providers that can add value within their distribution network. We have experience integrating international agent services and mail consolidators for those clients who seek such services. Many functions exist beyond simple rate-shopping such as integrated automatic service upgrades with multiple parameters, setting of preferred vs. available carrier services, and more.
  • LMS (Labor Management System) managing client business forecast information, engineered labor standards, Service Level Agreements.
  • EMS (Employee Management System) managing employee related data, payroll, time sheets, invoicing, and much more.

Aspire is just one of many things we provide at NRI. Get in touch with us to find out more!

Are You Prepared for Q4?

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Delivery woman in snow

As we are all just getting used to the COVID-19 pandemic and all the challenges it has brought us, the holidays have snuck into our lives. As a logistics company, we want to remind everyone that preparing for the holidays starts now! What can you do to prepare?

Forecasting – forecasting is critical in successful execution. What are your end-of-year and daily estimates looking like? Are there any promotions or gifts with purchase programs you’re planning? Planning and preparing for these are crucial to a smooth operation during the holidays.

Carrier Constraints – while we are currently working with carriers on developing plans to help mitigate the anticipated challenges of the peak holiday season, we encourage you to prepare and set expectations with your customers. Setting these expectations may decrease customer complaints and start everyone’s holiday season on the right foot.

Customer Service – many of our Partners at NRI are evaluating their customer service strategies to build additional support during the peak season – and we suggest you do the same!

NRI is also preparing for Q4. We’re increasing our staffing (our team members are permanent, full-time employees by the way!) and increasing shift ranges through each day of the week. We’re also building overtime shifts on behalf of our Partners to cover processing days during the peak season, which is a nice bonus for our employees.