Ups Strike Takes A Bite Out Of Small Businesses Shipping Costs Up, Stock And Revenue Down As Walkout Ends Second Week

For Kaygeeco Inc., a producer of organic pet shampoo and hotel cleaning products, the United Parcel Service strike has left the 14-person firm cleaning house.

After the 12th day of Teamsters members striking for better benefits and more full-time work, Kaygeeco and other small businesses in Kootenai County are beginning to feel the pain.

Earlier this week, Kaygeeco laid off two employees because shipping costs nearly doubled after it moved its UPS service to the U.S. Postal Service.

What was once $425 a day for shipping, has now moved up to $700.

“It’s costing us so much more, so much quicker, and we’re not getting paid on time,” said company President Glenice Sackman.

Not only have shipping costs almost doubled, but c.o.d. checks for their products, which UPS sends Kaygeeco after a delivery, have slowed down. Before the strike, the company received an average of two envelopes of payments a day. This week, Kaygeeco received only one delivery.

Kaygeeco will “definitely” hire back its two employees after the strike ends, but now the company’s profit margins are low and timing hiring depends “entirely on the duration of the strike,” Sackman said.

Kaygeeco is just one of many small businesses in Kootenai County affected by delays in its shipments. Kootenai County’s employment relies heavily on firms with nine or fewer employees. In 1996, such small businesses made up 78 percent of all Kootenai County employers, according to the Idaho Department of Labor.

“Outside of government and a few sawmill operations and a few manufacturing operations, we definitely don’t have the large employers,” Tacke said.

Those large employers who have spread out shipping orders to other companies may be holding up during the strike’s second week.

However, small-business owners like T-Shirts Plus in the Post Falls Factory Outlet stores are down to their last threads. Walk into Peggy Eash’s T-shirt shop at the factory outlet mall, and you’re likely to be greeted with low stocks and empty shelves.

Popular colors like white, gray and turquoise are down to the last sizes.

Normally she has 800 shirts in stock. Now she’s down to less than half of that.

Eash’s franchise has received only one shipment from another shipping company since the UPS strike. Three orders are sitting in a UPS warehouse in Spokane.

“It gets old real fast,” she said. “When they walk in the door and see an empty place they think, ‘Why bother?”’

Customers walk in and ask if she’s low on selection or going out of business. “We’re on a shoestring budget as it is,” Eash said.

Meanwhile, at the headquarters of the Post Falls and Coeur d’Alene Visitors and Convention Bureau, employees are hanging tight to the few maps they have of the area.

Tourism, like retail and sales, is a mainstay in Kootenai County, and maps of the region are popular - and low in stock.

The Visitors Bureau, which relies almost exclusively on UPS and the the U.S. Postal Service, has only received one shipment this week, said Nancy DiGiammarco, head of the bureau.

So the bureau is cutting back distributions to hotels, bed and breakfasts and other outlets until they receive more shipments.

“It’s a challenge to the business-person,” DiGiammarco said. “It’s like anything when you’re used to something and it stops working. It’s like when the power in your house goes out, and you’re going through rooms still flipping switches.”

For both small businesses T-Shirts Plus and Kaygeeco, a continuation of the strike will hurt. Said Sackman of Kaygeeco, “To be perfectly honest, I don’t know how long we can last for this strike to go on.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color photo