V4W 2E: CAN Fulfillment
This is the third of five posts about fulfillment costs for the Kickstarter campaign of the second printing of Votes for Women. The previous posts covered fulfillment to “Rest of World” backers and to Australia and New Zealand backers.
To recap, we charge a flat $15 rate for a single copy of Votes for Women for shipping and any fees or taxes for all non-US backers. There is also a built-in subsidy of up to $15 in the cost of a single game. For a case of six games, we charge a flat $50 and there is a built-in subsidy of $30. So our shipping budget means we need to be below $30 total shipping costs for an individual game and we need to be below $80 total shipping costs for a case of six games.
Our partner for fulfillment in Canada is Board Game Bliss. However, unlike with Aetherworks in Australia, we do not have games shipped directly from China to Canada - instead we ship from China to the US to Canada. That means there are three buckets of costs - China to US, US to Canada, Canada to individual backers.
We shipped 3834 copies (639 cases on 21 pallets) of Votes for Women from Yantian to Tampa on the Zim Wilmington and then overland from Tampa to Quartermaster Logistics (QML) headquarters in Orlando. QML is our third-party warehouse partner and minor fulfillment partner - more on that in the post about US fulfillment. The total cost was $12,809.30 - or $3.26 per game.
We then sent 24 cases (144 games) from QML to Sanborn, NY to then be taken to Board Game Bliss headquarters near Toronto in Canada. The cost via FedEx was $672. The tax, transport to Canada, wages and materials from Board Game Bliss total $640.06, so the total cost from US to Canada is $9.11 per game.
The final cost is the Canada Post cost. Since Canada is a rather large country, the shipping cost varies widely depending on where the game is being shipped. Below shows a range - the lowest cost, a standard mid-range cost, and the highest cost for both an individual game and a case of games. On the whole, individual shipping is within our budget with only a handful of backers in far flung parts of Canada going over budget. The cases, on the other hand, are all quite a bit over budget. Something to consider when we determine how to price shipping for the next campaign.
Next up, the United States. Boy is there a story to tell there.