b'VOX POPREADY,One of the most important considerations for business ownersissimplygetting products into their customers SET,hands. For businesses selling their products online, navi-gating the costs and logis-tics of shipping can be a big SENT part of the challenge.Aboriginal Business Report reachedouttoseveral By Matthew Bradford Indigenous business owners W h a t i s y o u r b i g g e s ttodiscusstheirshipping s h i p p i n g c h a l l e n g e t o d a y ?obstaclesandstrategies. We asked them to elaborate I n s i g h t i n t o s h i p p i n gon their biggest challenges l o g i s t i c s f r o m e - c o m m e r c etodayandhaveshared b u s i n e s s o w n e r s their responses.MUIN CLOTHING is the smaller business and the indi- without a problem, but if theres a small Derek Lewis, Owner vidual consumer have to subsidize bigbusiness trying to do the same, then it www.muinclothing.com business to be able to operate effec- somehow becomes an issue. tively in this cutthroat, next-day, zero Heritage clothing that tells shipping world. This issue with shipping across borders the full story of Canadaactually speaks a lot to the 92nd Call to Just recently, I had to ship something toAction in the Truth and Reconciliation a customer and it cost me $700. It wasprocess. Indigenous peoples werent absolutely unbelievable. I create clothing,brought up in a system that knows the so I screen print and I embroider. Myins and outs of international exporting wholesale supplier can ship me fourbecause, as someone who is Indigenous, boxes for $50 shipping, but when I trytheborderbetweenCanadaand and use the exact same company to shipAmerica is an artificial colonial construct. to the end customer, they want $700.My territory, Mikmaki, extends into what Thats the problem. It doesnt matter if Iveis known as the state of Maine. made $10,000 in that sale when nearly 20 per cent of those profits are going to myWe didnt grow up with a friend down shipping. Theres an inequity. It has to go. the street with a dad who works in ship-ping and logistics. We didnt have thoseAnother consistent hurdle Ive expe- connections or mentors, so we dont rienced with shipping is getting myhave that business expertise and expe-T he predominant challenge I see isproduct across the Canada-U.S. border.rience to draw on, nor do we have that that shipping costs are being pushedIt got to a point where I had to limit wheremindset because the border is an arti-downwards onto the small suppliers,I ship because it doesnt matter what I doficial construct. And we dont learn it, whereas the larger multinational corpo- in terms of my U.S. shipping, my productseither. There are difficulties in terms of rations are given below-market ratesare always held up at the border. Othergetting information to us, so we have to that are lower than the actual cost ofpackages from larger exporters magi- operate within the colonial framework of doing business. And then what happenscally get shipped off all over the worldborders in order to grow our business.58A CCAB PUBLICATION2023'