Gollihur Music Fine Tunes Its Shipping Strategy with Endicia

Gollihur Music Stays in Tune with Shipping Trends

When Bob Gollihur was searching for a replacement piece for his beloved upright bass, he realized the market for this instrument was terribly limited. Taking matters into his own hands, Bob founded Gollihur Music in 1997 to provide customers with a plethora of specialized upright base products and resources.

Bob’s son Mark, a bass player himself, joined the business in 2002, making Gollihur Music a true family affair. Today, the pair only sells products they’ve personally experienced, because their global audience of upright bass enthusiasts are considered part of the family.

Given the business runs entirely online, Mark — who recently took over the business from his father — quickly learned how to strike a chord as a successful ecommerce business: Stay on top of shipping news.

For Mark, it’s important to keep up with delivery trends and changes to the U.S. Postal Service^® and private carriers. By doing so, Gollihur Music can offer cost-effective shipping options for its customers.

In the past, Mark would compare new Postal Service rates and services by hand, copying and pasting orders into online forms to compare prices. When Mark started working with a programmer to revamp his order processing system, he wanted to add a shipping solution that would integrate seamlessly with the website and update automatically to reflect new postal prices.

Endicia and Gollihur Music’s Shipping Symphony

“When we discovered Endicia, we found it ticked all the boxes — it was affordable, easy to integrate and would boost productivity,” said Mark. “We signed up in 2006 and haven’t looked back since.”

Endicia’s partnership with the U.S. Postal Service enables it to provide timely rate and service updates as soon as they go into effect — directly within the software. This allows customers such as Gollihur Music to effortlessly stay abreast of the latest shipping news and adjust its shipping strategy accordingly.

When a new change goes into effect, Mark can automatically see how USPS^® rates are affected via Endicia Professional. He then compares these prices with his UPS WorldShip^® software and chooses the most affordable option for each package.

“We currently ship a couple hundred packages per week — 15-20 via UPS^® and the rest through USPS. When dimensional weight pricing went into effect, Endicia identified cost savings that moved roughly half our UPS package volume over to the U.S. Postal Service,” said Mark. “It made sense for us to make the switch since all the accessories we ship are small and lightweight — the Postal Service’s sweet spot.”

Additionally, Gollihur Music’s two-person team is able to stay agile with Endicia, automatically pulling much of the shipping information from the website backend. Mark can accept an order at 3:58 p.m., process the label and package the product before Gollihur’s 4 p.m. package pickup time.

Another of Mark’s favorite features? “I love having the ability to easily customize the shipping labels with my own logo or message.”

With Endicia, Mark can create professional labels with the Gollihur Music logo, making the shipping label unique to his business. It can also hide postage costs using Endicia’s Stealth Postage feature.

Endicia also streamlines Gollihur Music’s international shipping so it can reach countries like Canada, Australia and Great Britain using the U.S. Postal Service. Endicia auto-fills customs forms, prints an all-in-one label and alerts Mark to country bans so he can navigate all the nuances of global shipping.

“Endicia has served as an up-to-date and malleable solution for our highly-customized operation,” said Mark. “We pride ourselves in providing the best for our customers and we look forward to using Endicia as we continue to serve our upright bass family.”