After operating from the hometown of the Discmania brand (Tampere, Finland) as Discmania Store Europe since spring 2021 and for years and years longer through other online store entities, the time has come to move to the next chapter in Discmania's saga.
As those following us closely probably know, our production has been running from Skellefteå, Sweden, for some years already. This is where the overwhelming majority of our products are being made, aka where the true magic happens. In very near future, our Skellefteå warehouse will also become the place where the Discmania Store Europe will keep its inventory. This means that after the transition, your orders will be shipped to you from Skellefteå instead of Tampere.
Exciting new opportunities
In all likeliness this change won't come without some growing pains, but correspondingly we'll also gain the advantage of being effectively at the source where new products are being made. Our aim is to use this move as a springboard into new opportunities in terms of offering more unique products to you, our valued customers. We'll also no longer have to lose time and resources on shipping products between Sweden and Finland, which allows us to shorten the lead times on new product releases and hopefully also the fulfilment times of things like preorder products.
Product availability
Short-term, however, this change will likely affect at least the availability of certain products in our store. As we want to minimize any downtime for the online store itself, we've chosen to start operations from Sweden with fresh inventory. This means that as the transition happens, the inventory held in Tampere will go offline and fresh inventory in Skellefteå will take its place.
As at the moment we have somewhat limited selection of products at hand in Sweden, this will mean also that our store selection will be momentarily slimmed down. We will be moving the existing Tampere inventory to our warehouse in Skellefteå though, so everything will be back sooner or later. Effectively the products should start trickling back to stock over the days and weeks onwards from the transition.
More shipping options
Besides momentary shortages in product availability, it's also possible that you'll be able to notice some changes to the operation in terms of shipping options and times. Our plan is to start offering a more robust selection of shipping options from the Skellefteå warehouse compared to what we've had in Tampere, which we hope to be a welcome change for many customers. The shipping rates for standard options will match those we've had so far.
For our large Finnish customer base however, it's good to acknowledge that the exceptionally fast fulfilment rate we've been able to maintain with Posti's domestic parcel services won't unfortunately likely be something we're able to fully match going forward. However, our early test results with Postnord shipments have been pretty promising - We should be able to offer 2-3 day shipping for most Finnish locations at a very competitive price. Our Swedish customers will be able enjoy faster shipping times than before.
The store management and customer service will remain at the hands of our Tampere staff, so you'll be able to get service in both English and Finnish in the future as well.