PufferPrint Blog Post #1 – Covid-19 Shipping and Production Update

Hello PufferPrinters. I’m Jeremy- Director of Print at PufferPrint

First off- I know this is a scary, weird, odd time for all of you, so I want to start off by wishing you well and hope you and your family are staying safe and healthy.

It’s been an interesting journey over the past several months with Covid 19 and things will continue to evolve. I found it important to get this information out there for all of our customers who are currently in the middle of printing, or are getting to that point and contemplating putting an order in soon.

As you know- our print team is located in China, where the virus has already emerged, peaked and new cases have been decreasing there for quite some time. So on the production end of things- we ran into a full shutdown for about 3 weeks, followed by limited production capabilities.

Our print team has been back to full production now for the several weeks.

Where we are now seeing evolving delays, is in the shipping and customs.

As you might know- PufferPrint handles not just printing, but the shipping, customs, and delivery right to your door. Our shipping teams, as you might imagine, are being affected by like anyone else in this global pandemic.

At this point, they’re seeing at least 5 day additions to our regular shipping times. Air frieight has slowed as ports and shipping hubs are changing their policies daily, many flights are grounded. I know of one order headed for the east coast that would normally be on a flight, but the shipper decided that it would get there faster by truck.

In addition to times, shipping costs are in flux. The shippers aren’t able to nail down costs so shipping is changing from day to day, but we’re seeing increases of between 20-30% to US, 10-20% to Canada and 15-20% in Australia.

What does this mean? Well- it means we’re in an evolving situation. As always I’ll do my best to keep you informed with updates on any expected orders and deliveries and provide answer your questions when they come up.

Expect an update to this video blog within the next week or two as things begin to head towards a new (hopefully temporary) normal.

Thanks for placing your trust in PufferPrint and for those of you new to the self publishing world- we look forward to working with you soon !