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Alltrue (formerly Causebox) is increasing prices. See full details below:
Why has shipping taken so long recently?
Shipping has been such a challenge this year. To be honest, we kept thinking we were through the worst of it, and it kept getting more difficult. The pandemic created all kinds of supply chain disruption (here is a helpful podcast that explains the situation). We continuously had products stuck offshore of our port in Los Angeles for upwards of a month and then stuck again onshore at the port after offloading due to labor/trucking shortages. We tried everything imaginable to get these items quicker, but it was simply a situation that we couldn’t influence. One of our top priorities as a business in the second half of 2021 was to ship your seasonal box more quickly, and it was an all hands on deck affair. We’ve spared no expense to book the earliest and most reliable shipments available for those where we have control and stepped in to support logistics efforts of many of our amazing brand partners. So it has been really demoralizing to have all of our efforts and progress offset by unprecedented supply chain challenges, (which are hard to fully explain to our community and tend to sound like excuses). We can’t express our gratitude enough for how patient you’ve been over the past year. It means the world to us to have an understanding community that genuinely cares about the mission.
What do you mean by ‘efforts and progress’ for improving shipping timelines? What have you been doing?
Brace yourself for some logistics. Before this year, your boxes were planned roughly 4 months in advance of launch. It takes time to decide on exactly which products feel right for the season, which combinations of choices will make the most members happy, and then of course it takes time to have the products made and shipped to us. For simplicity, on average it takes 1 month to curate a box, 1.5 months to make the products, and 1 month for the product to arrive to us by sea. And finally, we aim to have products in our warehouse two weeks before our target shipping times (to give ourselves a buffer in case anything goes wrong). That’s how the system is designed to work. Unfortunately the pandemic caused a lot of problems at almost every stage. Here is a general idea of how recent supply chain disruption changed things: making the products began taking 2-3 months (because of factory closures, covid related precautions, labor shortages, and more), and shipping began taking 2 months. These are huge and disruptive changes (especially when you have a seasonal product), and we quickly realized we needed to adjust our schedule. So in order to offset these delays we extended our planning timeline to 6 months. It was very hard to do this, because it meant that our merchandising team had to plan multiple boxes and markets at the same time, so we doubled the size of the team, and they came together and pulled it off (and curated some of our best boxes yet) — but all of that work was offset by even longer delays and bigger challenges in shipping and production. So again, we’ve gone back to the timeline and adjusted it even further back and we’re hopeful that we’ll finally be able to normalize shipping timelines. Of course, things continue to change and we’re reacting quickly to those changes — and we’ll communicate as we’re working through any future challenges. Hopefully that provides a sense of how seriously we’re taking this!
What is Alltrue?
Alltrue is a quarterly socially conscious subscription box. As part of this membership, you’ll receive their quarterly, seasonal curation of 6-8 products that are community focused, ethically made, environmentally conscious, and impact driven. This curation is included in an artist-designed box and comes along with an issue of Good News Magazine, which shares more about the impact that your membership is making.
Cost: $59.95/quarter
Category: Green Living / Eco-Friendly
Reviews: CAUSEBOX (Alltrue) reviews
