Basics of Shipping Wine & How You Can Customize Wine Club Shipping Labels
by Chelsea Camper | Last Updated December 30, 2015There are some basic steps you need to take before you can start shipping wine, but once you’re licensed to do so you can have a lot of fun designing your own custom shipping label!
Basics of Shipping Wine
Shipping wine, even domestically, has extra shipping steps that need to be taken. For starters you’ll need to be licensed to ship wine. Once you have your license you then need to become familiar with which states you can and cannot ship to. To help with this, FedEx offers a Wine Shipping Guide. Simply select your state and FedEx will let you know to which states it can and cannot ship to and those states that have limited shipping options.
Now that you have your license and you know where you can and cannot ship wine to, it’s time to actually ship your wine! Customers who purchase your wines online, over the phone, via fax, ect. are usually called “off-site” customers and the shipments are “Direct Shipments.”
Your shipping label must include a notice that the package contains alcohol and that someone 21+ must sign for the package; it can’t be left at a door step. The signer must have a valid photo ID when they sign for the package.
How You Can Customize Wine Club Shipping Labels
Shipping labels for wine clubs can be customized and tailored to reflect your club’s unique brand and wines. You can get shipping label sheets with your club’s logo and colors pre-printed on them by designing your own shipping label sheet.
By using a regular sheet of letter paper with a shipping label built into it you can combine multiple shipping forms onto one sheet. This can help your pickers in the fulfillment stage by keeping the shipping and picking information all on one sheet, making it less likely for orders to get mixed up.
So what can you do to customize your shipping labels?
- Brand it with your wine club’s logo and colors
- Include history about the wine club or the bottle of wine on a removable card
- Add an optional gift message for people who want to send wine as gifts
- Label placement, size, and number of labels for those with unique fulfillment processes
What kind of shipping labels do you use to ship your wine?
Image: sebastien.barre
