Domestic Fulfillment
"My logisticians are a humorless lot … they know if my campaign fails, they are the first ones I will slay." – Alexander
One of the main logistical challenges for a small publisher is fulfillment - “the packing and dispatch of a customer's order.” In this post I am going to focus on domestic (US) fulfillment as international fulfillment provides a whole different set of challenges.
The Shores of Tripoli (Quartermaster Logistics)
We partnered with Quartermaster Logistics for the fulfillment of our first campaign for The Shores of Tripoli. They were very helpful with assisting in our overseas fulfillment and their prices for domestic fulfillment were very reasonable. A single copy of The Shores of Tripoli was $14.41 delivered to anywhere in the continental United States. A case (six games) was $24.08. A larger order, nine cases (fifty-four games) was $18.64 per case. All of these numbers are for delivery in December 2020. Ignore the 120 games sent to North Carolina - that is an Amazon shipment that I will discuss in a bit.
I also want to note that Quartermaster always does an excellent job of packing the games and protecting them. They really are the gold standard when it comes to packing games. However, this excellence is somewhat wasted on Fort Circle because we are not fond of Kickstarter exclusives - the most we have done is a pair of promo cards for Votes for Women.
Unfortunately, Quartermaster’s prices have increased significantly. A single copy of The Shores of Tripoli is now $22.82. That is an increase of $8.41 for shipping a single game. Keep in mind The Shores of Tripoli only weighs 2.6 pounds, so a single copy of the heavier Votes for Women would be even more. Because we do not charge for shipping on our website, it became cost-prohibitive to ship individual games with Quartermaster Logistics.
I will note that a case of six is now $30.63, a more acceptable increase of only $6.55 - but this included a switch to re-using our pre-packaged cases of six instead of packing them all nice into a new box with bubble wrap. Regardless, we continued to ship cases of The Shores of Tripoli to retailers, but used Amazon to ship individual games. Our stock at Quartermaster is now completely exhausted.
The Shores of Tripoli (Amazon FBA + MCF)
So let’s talk about Amazon. We participate in two separate programs - Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) and Multi-Channel Fulfillment (MCF). FBA is selling on Amazon and having Amazon fulfill the order on your behalf. The economics of this are amazing - they charge 15% plus a very discounted shipping rate. The 15% includes the credit card processing fee. We were running a sale price of $40 to clear out the last of the first printing of The Shores of Tripoli. For the order on 2/11, Amazon charged $6 (15% of the $40 sale price) plus $6.81 to ship the game from their warehouse to the customer and our net on the $40 purchase was $27.19. The only downside is that we do not receive the name and email address of the customer.
MCF is where you take an order elsewhere - Shopify, Kickstarter, PayPal, a free review copy, whatever - and use Amazon to fulfill the order. For the order on 2/9, I sent a copy to someone in the continental United States. The cost of that was $10.81.
There is a cost of sending games to Amazon. Amazon charges a $0.55 per game labeling fee, plus shipping costs that are usually less than $1.00 a game - the below is for 216 copies of Votes for Women. The rule of thumb is that the total cost is $1.50 per game sent to Amazon if I am the one sending them to Amazon. The only other cost is the shipping label and my time to go to UPS. When I had Quartermaster ship cases of games to Amazon, there was an additional ~$1.50 per game ($1 per case, plus time and materials shown up above).
Votes for Women (Amazon & Self)
In Fall 2022, Quartermaster was simply overwhelmed with orders and could not commit to timely delivery of received games. Because I wanted to deliver Votes for Women to all the US Kickstarter backers prior to the holidays, I airmailed 672 copies to the United States from the factory and fulfilled using USPS Priority Mail. We wisely decided all of our games should fit snugly in a USPS Regional A2 Priority Mail box, so we were able to pack and ship all the games in one day. There were a few cases shipped and those were sent via UPS. (I should note that in early 2023, USPS cancelled the Regional A2 box - just my luck.)
The price for an individual copy of Votes for Women ranged from $8.11 to $14.34. Cases varied from $15.18 to $37.01.
Of course, there were additional costs. For the airmailed games, I had to rent a truck and crew for about $1200 - about $2 per game. For the rest of the first printing that arrived later, I rented a storage unit which was a few hundred dollars a month. And, of course, my time is better spent on game design, marketing, and all the other parts of the business instead of doing physical labor.
The FBA and MCF numbers for Votes for Women are roughly similar to The Shores of Tripoli. On FBA, 15% of $75 is $11.25, plus $8.17 in subsidized shipping. On MCF, the shipping cost was $10.74 - although this number is from 2023 - it is more like $11.25 now.
The Future
So I have four options for the future and I need to make my decision fast because the second printing of Votes for Women is about to ship from the factory.
Option #1: Quartermaster Logistics + Amazon
I could use Quartermaster as a warehouse and case shipper, but use Amazon for individual game fulfillment. I doubt I can push Quartermaster down much on price for single game fulfillment. Quartermaster can also offer their Quartermaster Direct program as a way to sell to smaller retailers, although I have been leery of working with US distributors for reasons I will discuss in another post.
Option #2: Consortium of Publishers
This is an option I discussed with a few other small publishers with the idea to run a cooperative warehouse that could also perhaps grow into our own specialized distribution company. I think this idea has potential in the future, but for now we have shelved the idea.
Option #3: Self-Shipper + Amazon
I could store games in both my basement and a small warehouse and ship cases to retailers and to Amazon and then use Amazon to fulfill our individual orders. This is probably the least expensive option, but it also ties me to Washington, DC. I am at the age where spending two months in Europe in the summer is pretty appealing, but I cannot do that if I need to be at Fort Circle Intergalactic Headquarters to ship games every week. Yes, I know I could hire someone, but that is more overhead.
Option #4: New Partner
There is another publisher - I won’t mention their name yet - that has entered the fulfillment space and might be a better version of Quartermaster with more competitive individual shipping rates. I could see this being the best option if the numbers are right.
When using FBA, are those games available worldwide?? I mean, could they be sent to another country?
Great read! Have you tried Bridge Distribution? They have been around for a good while now. I'm partnering with them to fulfill We're Sinking in the US.