2020 Holiday Season Shipping Update

UPDATE as of Dec 8, 2020: Any order placed today onwards is unlikely to deliver by Christmas. Our sincere apologies for this.

We wish so badly that we could guarantee a delivery date for you but there are factors outside of our control - thanks, 2020 - that are stopping us from being able to do so. Namely: short-staffed warehouses and forwarders (UPS, USPS, FEDEX) due to COVID exposures and quarantines, an overburdened postal system due to unprecedented online demand, and starting this week, emergency orders that mandate that freight forwarders prioritize the distribution of vaccines worldwide above all other freight.

If you’ve recently placed an order and have a question for us, please reach out at connect@kooshoo.com.

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In a normal year, customers to KOOSHOO.com would be able to make a purchase right up to the week before Christmas and be fairly certain their goods would be delivered in time to be under the tree on the 25th.

This may be stating the obvious but: 2020 is not a normal year.

So we’re here today to let you know that as of this, the 2nd of December, we are not able to guarantee delivery of any orders placed today and onwards for a Christmas delivery. That’s not to say they won’t deliver in time for Christmas (they very likely will); we just can not guarantee it.

Here’s why:

We use a wonderful 3rd party fulfilment centre to ship all of our products to direct customers (we have other warehouses around the world to ship to our wholesale partners). We searched high and low to find this particular partner because it was important to us that the partner shared our focus on minimal waste. This particular partner ships everything 100% plastic-free - right down to paper tape on the boxes.

The thing is, they also ship for many other companies too. In a year where more people are shopping online than ever before, they’re the front line team trying to keep up. Under normal conditions, they’d hire more people and work in tighter spaces but now due to COVID, it’s more challenging to get help and social distancing and safety measures limit efficiency. Safety for both workers and customers (you) is the number one priority all around, so we support them in the decisions they’re having to make to ensure they stay safe when working and the orders are handled with the utmost care.

This incredible team who we’ve worked with for years has been very transparent with us. Right now, their whole team are working 6 days a week, 10 hour days, and doing their very best to catch up and keep up. As of writing, they are currently 4-5 business days behind on orders, meaning that if you placed an order on Black Friday (Nov 27), it is likely to ship on Dec 3rd or 4th. By contrast, in normal times they guarantee to us shipping within 1 business day.

They want you to know that every order is extremely important to them and that they’re going to have it shipped soon!

But wait… there’s more.

Once your package ships there are a few other factors at play:

1. FedEx has the capacity for 17 million packages to be shipped each day. Yesterday, they had 26 million in the queue. According to our shipping partner, UPS and USPS have even more. This means delays in their processing facilities as well.

2. There is now a severe shortage of delivery vehicles, as well as labor, across the US for making deliveries.

3. FedEx, UPS and other freight companies have now been tasked with shipping new COVID-19 vaccines globally starting late next week. What does this mean? More delays. Our partner warehouse and every distribution centre in the U.S. has been warned of pending delays with shipping due to "emergency authorization" by the U.S. and other international governments basically commandeering jets and trucks for this global distribution event.

2020 has been challenging in so many ways for everyone. We just want to take this moment to say: thank you for choosing to support small, independently owned companies like KOOSHOO this year. It sounds cliched, but your support really does make a difference in the lives of so many. These differences are felt not only in our little team working to bring KOOSHOO products to life and to you around the world, but also to all the farmers picking the organic cotton and tapping the natural rubber we use, the sewers and the dyers caring for your goods as they come together and so many more that benefit from your support of a consciously-operated business.

We deeply appreciate your patience with your order and please know we always guarantee delivery - it’s just that this holiday season, we can’t promise when that will be.

If you have any specific questions about your order, please get in touch at connect@kooshoo.com.

Wishing you all a happy, safe and abundant holiday season.

In gratitude,

Jesse & Rachel
KOOSHOO founders

Here’s to more of this: