What is Blind Shipping?
The concept of blind shipping is very simple, but it is important that you understand each and every information about it before processing a shipment. As the name suggests, blind shipping means shipping products blindly or shipping with the hidden supplier or customer information. That means here a shipper ships the products directly from the supplier to customers by hiding the details of the supplier from the customer. Similarly, the customer’s details can also be hidden from the supplier. Or even both their details can be hidden from each other. Still, confused? Let’s illustrate this concept with an example. Suppose John, a Canada based businessman, wants to ship household appliances to his customer in South Africa. John usually buys this product from a wholesaler located in London. And then resells the product to his customers. In order to make the order more cost-effective, John decides to ship the products directly from London to the customer in South Africa. Here John will have to hide the details of the manufacturer (address of wholesaler in London). This process is known as blind shipping. When the customer receives the product he will see John’s address in Canada.
How does blind shipping work?
In order to arrange a blind shipping or double-blind shipping, freight forwarder or the freight broker makes two Bill of Lads (BOL). The first BOL is the correct address and the second BOL is redacted with wrong details. The shipper swaps the bill before shipment so that the customer who receives the products can see only the second BOL. Even the customer’s details can also be swapped like this. So that the details of the customer will be hidden from the supplier. As multiple BOL s are used in blind shipping, it’s better to seek help from the freight forwarder, who is the only person who knows from where the shipment takes place and to where it is delivering to.
Blind Shipments for E-commerce Orders
Most of the e-commerce platforms these days depend on blind shipping in order to protect the details of suppliers and to ensure that the customers don’t buy products directly from the manufacturers. This method of shipment has helped e-commerce retailers to get a high reach of customers.
The blind shipping method is getting very popular in international trade. ALSI Oman, one of the sought after logistics and transportation companies provides project cargo services using a blind shipment method. Various distributors, especially in the e-commerce domain using this method of shipment to simplify their supply chain without revealing the information of the suppliers. We ensure that the identity of the supplier will be kept secret from the customers.
