A small shop owner wanted to stop buying stock from a wholesaler in Male and buy direct. He had a list of four hundred items across three overseas sellers and a plan to fly it, because that is what everybody does the first time.
We priced both ways. By air the chargeable weight came to just under a hundred and ten kilograms, mostly because cases and cables are light and enormously bulky. By sea, after repacking and removing every retail carton, the same order came to one and a quarter cubic metres.
The sea freight was about a third of the air freight. The cost was five weeks instead of eight days, and since this was opening stock rather than a restock, five weeks was not a problem.
What made the difference was the repacking. Four hundred retail boxes went into six cartons, and we photographed the contents of every one. The shop has ordered this way five times since, always by sea, and now plans an order two months ahead as a matter of course.
