I know I wrote about the recently with Navigating the New Crowdfunding, you can read that here. The cost of shipping, containers, materials, everything is much higher. And, unfortunately, that isn’t going to change any time soon. In fact, I think the only change that will happen is that it’ll stop going up eventually. Right now, I think prices might be kind of stable, but if you are a board game company that funded a Kickstarter or Gamefound in the past year, they might be much higher than planned.

Demonstrating The Problem

Why am I thinking about this now? Well, I just had my CMON Marvel Zombies pledge manager open. And I thought about getting Galactus, I really did. But when one wave shipping for what I got, and now it is a ton of stuff, is $90, and it’d be over $100 adding Galactus, I couldn’t pull the trigger on that. That is almost double of what the original shipping projections were. So, now can companies who were funded before the price hike make it work?

And I don’t want this to be a negative on CMON, Marvel Zombies any of these things. Shipping is completely crazy right now. And with parts of China being closed for chunks of time, including ports, because of COVID cases, it is going to get worse. And even though it might not make that much sense, anything that is getting worked on now or soon, you have to start to think about holiday shipping as well.

Basically, even massive companies that can ship a ton at once, Marvel Zombies had 29,000 backers and more will late pledge, shipping is still expensive. There is no volume discount. Then you think about smaller companies out there for shipping. What does something like Grimlord Games do with Village Attacks. Now, they messed up for another reason, they took too long and producing it. But what is a solution for them since they did?

Possible Solutions

Wait on Shipping

So, one option is for a company just to wait. I dislike this solution a lot. Backers rightfully do expect you to try and get the game out in a given time frame. Now, smart backers understand that the time frame is probably 6 months to a year longer than expected. And maybe even slightly over that right now. But as I said, I don’t think shipping is going to improve. It might stabilize or improve slightly, but not majorly. So waiting means that either it’ll cost you more, or it’ll ship for the same cost they are seeing now.

Eat The Cost

Next up the company could just eat the cost. There are massive problems with this one as well. The main thing is that some companies cannot eat the cost of $100,000 or more in additional shipping charges. So, let’s look at Grimlord Games. They are not printing right now because of costs, but like I said, the costs probably won’t go down. And they are a small operation that is not the designers fulltime gig, so they can’t eat the costs without going under. Shipping to 50% of the people and saying tough luck to the other 50% and shutting your doors is a horrible option.

Raise More Money

I have seen this option out there. Another one that I don’t love because it doesn’t incentivize the backers to join in. Setting up a GoFundMe might be what you need to do, though. And I think for a company that can offset some of the costs, but having that little bit extra to help, this is a solid option. Especially if you have good will in the community. A company that is always open and transparent, plus has delivered on time with products people like, you can probably get people to chip in.

On the flip side, I do think that Grimlord Games is going to have issues if they want people to support for more shipping via a GoFundMe sort of things. I might toss in a few bucks to help offset new shipping costs. But their inability to do regular updates on their projects, plus then the massive delays on their projects, they don’t have the good will. And to be fair, this is on them, not the community having undue expectations. Delays are fine, but then you need to communicate, so what other options are there.

Ask For People To Buy Directly From You

Let me explain what I mean here. When I backed Roll Player Adventures as a late pledge and had backed Cartographers Heroes, Thunderworks Games reached out to say that shipping was more expensive than expected. But they could eat the costs, things would be shipped no matter what. However, they asked that if people wanted to help offset the cost, they order something directly from their webstore. Why, because that is product that had already shipped more cheaply and selling it at MSRP would give them some influx of cash for shipping the new stuff.

So I got a few things from them, not much, but some to help support them. Now, this only works for some companies. Some companies do not have webstores. That means that even if their stuff is at retail, they are seeing less of the money on an MSRP sale. Because whole sale to the retailer is already the price they get, a sale doesn’t do anything more for them. This can be a solution for some companies to help offset but not all of them will it work.

Offer Merchandise

So, then, you could do what Boardcubator did, which is offer merchandise, hoodies, t-shirts, things like that. And I do think that this is a clever enough solution, but not one without it’s flaws. The main flaw for me is that I don’t do too many branded t-shirts. And when I do, it is fairly specific. I have a Marvel one and Dragonball Z. And having Boardcubator branded gear didn’t interest me, nor did it look that great.

But I do think this is a decent solution. And using some of the more print on demand sorts of services for shirts or things like that could work. But, and I think this is important, offer more than just apparel items. Like I said, I don’t generally want a branded t-shirt or hoodie. And depending on the person’s figure, a print on demand t-shirt might not fit well. For me, I generally should wear a t-shirt that is a tall.

So offer other things. There was no Boardcubator coffee cup, but had their been one, I might have ordered that. Do I need more coffee cups, no, but it’s something I don’t need less of, so I might have backed it. Instead, they only offered apparel, so I passed. But merchandise is a solid idea.

Offer A Bonus

Finally, and this is my top option, offer a bonus item. Two examples of this, El Dorado Games is printing a pack of cards. Why, because for their games, like Legends Academy, shipping is about $240,000 more than expected. That is insane. So they are offering a pack of 10-20 cards of promos for their games. $20 for a pack of cards, or so, but you get something extra for a game you are getting, albeit two cards, and you can help offset the shipping. Similar to that, Nemesis Games, who did Uprising: Curse of the Last Emperor, asked their backers to help the same way. I supported them by picking up their bonus pack of cards for $20.

Now is this a good way because cards are more cost? Well, yes, it is good, in my opinion. Firstly, you are giving the backers the option to get something more. This is an add-on basically but done outside of a pledge manager in the came of Nemesis Games. So printing cards is cheap, doesn’t add much cost for them. Air shipping 2000, let’s say, packs of 20 cards is also cheap. And then distributing those cards after the fact via post is cheap. So of those $20, most went to help offset shipping.

Final Thoughts on Crowdfunding Shipping

Like I keep saying, shipping is not going to get better. It might ebb a little and stabilize or spike once in a while depending on the time of the year. But pre-pandemic shipping prices are not reasonable. And I worry when I see shipping numbers that seem too low.

I see more and more games of Kickstarter and Crowdfunding that will give a very general ballpark for shipping. Or it will be stated as, shipping right now is $X, but it is presented not as a price for what my shipping cost will be. That is going to be determined later in the pledge manager when closer to the date for shipping. Chronicles of Drunagor did this. Edgeguard is doing this. And I believe all crowdfunding campaigns for the next year should do this.

Does that suck for me as a backer? Yes. I want to know what I need to set aside for shipping right now. However, I prefer that you give me that ballpark for what the shipping is right now. Then, not locking yourself into the price, calculate a more specific shipping at the time you open the pledge manager. I want to get my product, and I don’t want to wait or even lose my money, because shipping went too high and you can’t print without going under. I want more board game companies and more small ones. But setting your shipping can be the thing that puts a company under if they aren’t careful.

What is a creative solution you’ve seen, if you’ve seen any I haven’t mentioned?

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