Shipping & origins

Physical orders need two things from you: where they ship from and what shipping costs to each part of the world. Set both once and every release and merch item uses them. Here’s how it fits together — and why shipping from stock close to your fans is worth the effort.

Where you ship from — your origins

A shipping origin is a place your parcels leave from — your home, your distro, a fulfilment warehouse. You set these up under Dashboard → Settings → Shipping. Most sellers have one; you only need more if you genuinely hold stock in more than one country.

One origin is your default — it’s where anything ships from unless a closer origin applies. If you add a second (say a UK origin alongside a US one), each order is priced from whichever origin serves that fan best.

If you only ever ship from one place, you can ignore all of this beyond setting that one origin’s country — it just works.

Pricing shipping per item

Shipping is priced per item, per region — a heavy LP and a slim cassette shouldn’t cost the same to send. You set rates on each physical format (in the release editor) and on each merch item (in the Merch tab), for the regions you ship to: domestic, then the wider zones.

When a fan buys more than one item, the platform combines them into one parcel estimate rather than charging shipping on each separately — so a shirt plus a record isn’t double-billed.

Shipping from local stock — border-free

If you hold stock inside a fan’s region — a UK origin serving UK fans, EU stock serving EU fans — that order never crosses a customs border. No import bill, no customs delay, nothing for the fan to settle on the doorstep. That’s the whole point of setting up an origin close to your audience: it removes the friction that makes people abandon an international order.

Note

Shipping locally removes the border, but it doesn’t always change your VAT position — that depends on where you’re established, not just where the stock sits. The VAT & import charges guide covers exactly when the platform collects VAT and when it’s your own affair.

Countries you don’t ship to

Each origin can block regions you can’t or won’t send to. A fan in a blocked country simply can’t check that item out to there — better an honest “we don’t ship here” up front than a cancelled order later. Set blocks per origin under Settings → Shipping.

For fans: two shipments & the import line

Occasionally an order arrives in two shipments. That happens when the items you bought ship from two different places — for example a record held in a UK warehouse and a shirt sent from the band’s home country. Each leg travels the shortest sensible route to you; you’re never charged twice for the same parcel.

If something ships across a customs border to you, checkout shows one plain line: “Ships from [country]. Import charges (customs duty/handling) may be collected by the carrier on delivery.” It’s there for honesty — not a charge the band or the platform adds — and it only appears when the goods genuinely cross a border. Local orders show nothing. See VAT & import charges for the detail.