UK Shipping and Brexit

For now, the shop will no longer be shipping to the UK due to Brexit. 

There are several reasons for this, but I'm sure anyone living in the UK who purchases online is aware of the changes Brexit is causing to online shipping.

Customs slowdowns and shipping delays are an unfortunate inevitability when shopping overseas, but with Brexit this is expected to get even worse. One of the reasons we will no longer be shipping to the UK is that we know many packages will either get lost, or arrive months later than they should. We closed international shipping altogether for a few weeks last year due to the international mail slowdowns, but it's not something we're willing to put our customers through.

Tax confusion is another, very large, reason why we will not be shipping to the UK for now. With the new VAT regulations, there's a lot that online shops have to do, and it's particularly overwhelming for small businesses. There's a lot of overseas registration to be done, changes that need to be made to the platform to ensure VAT is calculated properly, and a lot of responsibility for VAT which we aren't familiar enough with at the moment to take on. 

Once we become more familiar with how Brexit is affecting other small businesses, there is the chance we will reopen our shipping to the UK. For now, with everything we've got going on with the shop, we don't have much extra time to sort everything, and I apologize for this inconvenience to our UK customers and supporters. 

Please know that I do not want this to be permanent, and that we both appreciate all our UK customers incredibly. We know that you're frustrated by this too. We don't want to possibly get you, or ourselves in a mess by going in to the new Brexit shipping changes without being fully knowledgeable. I've personally gone through and done a lot of reading on what this means for e-Commerce shops like us, but I want to wait and see how it plays out for other e-Commerce shops before taking everything on. 

Customs in general is frustrating, the wait for international shipping is frustrating, the cost for international shipping is frustrating - which is why we want to thank all of our UK customers who have shopped with us before, despite the frustrations. Again, please know that we do not want this change to be permanent, we just want to be absolutely and fully confident in what we're doing before we start shipping to the UK again. It's all new, overwhelming, and a bit daunting. If and when shipping to the UK reopens on our shop, we will have a banner stating so!

I hope that you are all well, and that your online shopping with other small business isn't too affected by this change. We will figure things out eventually.