why doesn't lego offer free shipping all the time?

[onions]

i just don't understand this. in this day in age when internet retailers are vying for your money, free shipping is one of the easiest ways to draw in a sale. amazon, apple, dell, barnes&noble, and countless others offer free shipping. why doesn't lego?

[cas]

Who is shop.lego.com competing with though? They sell one primary product online and have several retail outlets where the most of the same product is available. How much does shop@home matter to the point Lego needs to offer continuous free shipping outside of pre-holiday and stock update windows?

[banthafodder]

Yes, TLG has several retail options including their stores, Target, TRU, and Walmart. However, I do not live near any brick and mortar lego stores. If I want to buy an exclusive or want VIP points, I have to use shop@home. If I want to buy a regular set or even one of the $100 sets, I now buy them from one of the local retailers because I will only get hit with the sales tax. I would prefer to buy them from shop@home so I could get more reward points but I don't want to be hit with tax and shipping. In order to increase overall revenue it would behoove TLG to offer free shipping over a certain dollar amount all the time. I know I would buy a lot more from shop@home if they did.
Just as an example let's take a set that is $100 MSRP. If TLG sells it to a retailer for $65 they take a potential profit loss of $35. Let's assume that shipping is $10 and they give free shipping, that's an additional $25 profit they could earn versus selling via another retailer. I think it is a win for TLG to offer free shipping year round.

[MrCRskater]

Just as an example let's take a set that is $100 MSRP. If TLG sells it to a retailer for $65 they take a potential profit loss of $35. Let's assume that shipping is $10 and they give free shipping, that's an additional $25 profit they could earn versus selling via another retailer. I think it is a win for TLG to offer free shipping year round.

This. It's astounding that TLG hasn't done the math on this. I am one of many who are not within range of a B&M store, so the best alternative is their online store. Even with the disappointing payback on their VIP rewards program, I would be much more willing to purchase directly from them via S@H at MSRP if shipping were free. As it is, it's always at least $12 cheaper to buy ANYWHERE but S@H because virtually nobody else will charge for shipping. Add in that it's fairly easy to come by sales and deals at lots of other retailers, and I only end up buying direct from LEGO (S@H or B&M) maybe 2 or 3 times a year.

If they don't want to offer free shipping, the other alternative would be to sweeten their VIP program to a 10% or 15% return. But shipping charge + nominal rewards = I'm virtually always buying elsewhere. Are they still getting my money? Sure. But they could easily be pulling an extra few hundred annually from me alone, so multiply that by 5% of their customer base and you're talking at least a noticeable (if not substantial) increase in total profit.

[GIR3691]

They're charging for shipping because they can. They make more money by not eating the shipping costs, so they won't offer it unless they have to. As it is now, it's an occasional treat.

Something like free shipping on orders over $____ for VIP members would probably be a good idea, but again, they don't really have to since their product is popular and people are buying it.

I agree that a larger VIP discount would definitely be cool.

[bigospedros]

I use a cashback site which generally gives me more cashback than the cost of postage (because I only order the larger, more expensive, exclusives from S@H), so I'm always getting free postage anyway. For reference, I use Quidco and that gives me 5% cashback.