Playing Card Shipping & Kickstarter

[JacksonRobinson]

I have had enough people email and ask me how & how much I pay and or should charge for shipping, when thinking about starting a kickstarter. I put together a few lessons and tips that I think might help those of you who may have questions about shipping.

NOTICE:

All of the following info is for educational purposes only. Shipping and related cost vary per individual and per location. Use this info only to fashion a system that works for you.

Three Golden Rules of Kickstarter Shipping (if you following these rules, your likelihood of failure because of bankruptcy goes WAY down)

1. It is as sure as the law of gravity that people are going to get angry and bitch about your shipping prices, even if it is free.

You are NEVER going to make everybody happy, so don't live in a fantasy world in which you think you will. As longs as you are following these three rules your shipping prices are fair for both you and your backer. Most individuals don't realize the the WORST thing you could do for both YOU and your BACKERS is lower your shipping rates (below actual shipping rates) just because one or a few people are absolute jerks about life in general. Doing this will not only put financial strain on you, it will also greatly increase the chances of your project become one of those projects that funds but never delivers.

2. DO NOT try to make a profit from shipping.

Shipping with the USPS is already high enough. Make sure your product doesn't suck in the first place, that way you have collateral to justify your prices.

3. Charge people what shipping cost you.

Shipping rates are different for EVERYONE. Just because a Small Flat Rate costs $X for Joe Blow in Minnesota it doesn't mean it will be the same for you. ALL postage rates fluctuate depending on how you end up paying for the postage. If your the small project creator that has a 100 or so backers, walking up to you local USPS with a wheel barrel might be the way to go. But you will be charged a higher price for shipping than someone who sits at home in the skibs and pays for postage from a service like Stamps.com. Different companies get different bulk postage rates.

Any shipping rates that you are given (even mine) should be taken as a "good starting point". You MUST figure out what shipping will cost you in what ever form you are going to ship in.

To Fulfillment Center or Not to Fulfillment Center

Deciding weather or not to use a fulfillment center or not is up to you, and it always comes back to time and money. I personally think that EVERY project creator should at least to one project all by their self, so that they go through the process and learn the ins and outs of shipping playing cards. This way if you decide to go with a fulfillment center you will be the expert on shipping playing cards not them.

For the Federal 52 Part I I fulfilled it all by myself. This was and still is currently one of the worst experiences of my life. I am so thankful I did it, but I am so thankful that I'm NOT doing it for part II.

A cost that everyone overlooks and backers thumb their noses at is Shipping and Handling. Shipping and handling is an abstract commodity that you SHOULD NOT over look.

Time / Money Lost while fulfilling.

The following example is a crystal clear reason why I will be using a fulfillment center for my part II fulfillment. Your project may be different, so you should weigh the cost using your bank account and time as the bases.

Federal 52 Raised = $149,156.00 during it's 40 day campaign period
Backerkit Period = $15,728.00 during a two week post ordering period

Total Capital Raised in a 54 day period = $164,884

I worked an estimated 200+hours during that time period doing: Design, Answering Backers, Kissing Babies and Shaking Hands, making sure my wife didn't kill me.

$164,884 / 200hrs = $824.00 per hour

(obviously this number is different with EVERY project but the equation is the same)

Hour spent fulfilling packages = 140+ (2970 orders)

During the fulfillment time I was making $0 and could have been preparing for my next project.

Money lost while fulfilling = $115,360

That above number makes it a NO Brainer for me to pay a fulfillment house, even if they charge me double, it is absolutely worth my time.


How to estimate shipping cost

Shipping for your project will roughly come out to %16 - %18 of your total pledge raised.

I raised $164,884 for the Federal 52 Part I project and spent $27,000 on postage and fulfillment.

Below I have created a simple matrix of what I paid for domestic and international shipping.

Again, these are my rates and should NOT be taken as yours.

Allowances:

- These are postage rate calculated using Stamps.com
- All International shipping rates are calculated from a Texas Zip code of 78883 shipping to France, obviously shipping to somewhere like Canada will not be the same cost but you are only allowed to enter one dollar amount for shipping on Kickstarter, so you need to find a number that works for both France and your next door neighbor.

See the attachments for Shipping table. I don't know how to create tables so I had to just attach the doc.

[Lotrek]

Very good and useful post, Jackson!
Thanks for sharing your experience.

Although I know that packaging etc can be hell, I wish I could do that myself... But then I should charge each deck $30. Either to cover the cost of importing the decks to Greece and resending them, or to cover the cost of me and my wife traveling to the States in order to prepare the packages there! 

[RandyButterfield]

Thanks for posting the info Jackson!

Luckily I haven't had to ship any Deck orders personally, but this really helps with the Shipping numbers. Back when the original ORNATES launched I had to get around 40 packages together for empty custom Brick Boxes. That experience, along with sending 10-15 Deck packages to family members and Forum confidants for each release, really opened my eyes to how much of a pain it is to get packages together. Just prepping the 40 Brick Box packages meant missing a week of working out, as I have to do any Card-related work at night. Which is also the only time I get a chance to workout as well! Just doing that small amount of orders made me realize I never want to ship a Deck release personally, and gave me a ton of respect for the Kickstarter designers who do it on their own while also working a full-time job.

thanks, Randy

[Lotrek]

What you both say guys is true. People (including me) often tend to think: "How much is that? "No thanks, I'll do it myself!" ,ending up losing time which costs a lot more that the money they would have spent to pay another person to do it.
But still, I love packaging! For me, it represents the "final touch" to a work. I like thinking of the recipient when packing something and it's the same for the backers. Of course things get really tough when you have 2500 backers!

[Don Boyer]

Very good and useful post, Jackson!
Thanks for sharing your experience.

Although I know that packaging etc can be hell, I wish I could do that myself... But then I should charge each deck $30. Either to cover the cost of importing the decks to Greece and resending them, or to cover the cost of me and my wife traveling to the States in order to prepare the packages there! 

Actually, a trip to the US isn't as crazy as it sounds, assuming you and your wife can get the time off from work...  I'm guessing that the math could work out in your favor, especially if you arranged shipping to a nice, inexpensive locale.  You could work out of the hotel, maybe arrange for the use of a small meeting room for a few days...  Just figure out the cost of the trip versus the cost of importing the decks into Greece and exporting them back out a piece at a time by mail...

[Ben Taylor]

I like the concept of this post, and I agree that more people should figure out shipping before they start a Kickstarter project. However I disagree with the way you're calculating time and money on this. You've also over-inflated your numbers by using gross revenue instead of net profit.

Federal 52 Raised = $149,156.00 during it's 40 day campaign period
Backerkit Period = $15,728.00 during a two week post ordering period

Total Capital Raised in a 54 day period = $164,884

I worked an estimated 200+hours during that time period doing: Design, Answering Backers, Kissing Babies and Shaking Hands, making sure my wife didn't kill me.

$164,884 / 200hrs = $824.00 per hour

(obviously this number is different with EVERY project but the equation is the same)

Hour spent fulfilling packages = 140+ (2970 orders)

During the fulfillment time I was making $0 and could have been preparing for my next project.

Money lost while fulfilling = $115,360

That above number makes it a NO Brainer for me to pay a fulfillment house, even if they charge me double, it is absolutely worth my time.


How to estimate shipping cost

Shipping for your project will roughly come out to %16 - %18 of your total pledge raised.

I raised $164,884 for the Federal 52 Part I project and spent $27,000 on postage and fulfillment.

These are all estimates, I don't know the exact numbers you actually paid

Kickstarter Revenue = $149,156.00
Kickstarter Fees (5%) = -$7,457.80
Amazon Fees (3%) = -$4,474.68

Backerkit Setup Fee ($299 + 1% of Kickstarter Revenue) = -$1790.56
Backerkit Revenue = $15,728.00
Backerkit Transaction Fees (3%) = -$471.84

USPCC Setup Fees ($710+ per deck design) = -$1,420.00
USPCC Printing Costs (~$3 per deck x 14,899) = -$44,697.00
USPCC Uncut Sheets ($10? x 450) =-$4,500.00
USPCC Shipping (No idea, and I may have overestimated the sheets, so I'll skip this one)

Postage and Fulfillment =-$27,000

Net Profit ~$73,072.12 (minus the production costs of non-card rewards)
Hours Worked = 340
Hourly Wage = $214.92 (↑)

You were paid to Design, Produce, and Ship the decks. The fact that the production and shipping occurred after you received payment doesn't mean it's time you weren't paid for. That's the attitude of every project that has failed to deliver.

In calculating the cost of using a fulfillment house, you need to look at how much they will take from your Net Profit, the difference that they get on shipping rates/supplies and if it's worth paying someone else to handle it. Let's say the fulfillment house charges you $8,000 for 3000 orders (you will still have to pay them for postage and supplies). Your hourly wage will go up, but your net profit goes down. At those numbers ($8,000 / 140 hours) you are now paying the fulfillment house $57.14/hr. If you can produce a design every other month, the fulfillment house is a great idea. But for most designers that are doing one deck a year at $12,000, they might be better off shipping it themselves.

[Don Boyer]

But for most designers that are doing one deck a year at $12,000, they might be better off shipping it themselves.

...assuming they've actually got the time to set aside for such an undertaking.  Often they think it's like painting a room when it's more like painting an entire house, inside and out.  Delivery dates slip to the wayside and, if they weren't careful with cost planning or didn't manage the money well after the decks are done, some if not most of the decks will end up never getting shipped.  They're "obligated" to deliver according to Kickstarter, but their obligation is worthless because KS never backs it up with any form of action at all, other than to direct people to report fraud to law enforcement agencies (a useless gesture for international backers).

[Ben Taylor]

...assuming they've actually got the time to set aside for such an undertaking.

The Total Eclipse project proved that a smaller project can be done in less than a week.
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2134501481/eclipse-playing-card-deck/posts/588331
If he had paid $1200 to a fulfillment house, it would have been much more devastating to the net profit than Jackson paying $8000.

[Don Boyer]

...assuming they've actually got the time to set aside for such an undertaking.

The Total Eclipse project proved that a smaller project can be done in less than a week.
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2134501481/eclipse-playing-card-deck/posts/588331
If he had paid $1200 to a fulfillment house, it would have been much more devastating to the net profit than Jackson paying $8000.

Well, there's a huge difference between the two projects.  Total Ecilpse was 16% the size of Federal 52!

For smaller projects, there's no doubt that it can be done as a home operation in a fairly short time.  But we've had a few Kickstarters run by college students - people who really don't have a lot of free time in the first place, if they're spending it wisely.  It's not the kind of thing, even on a smaller project, that can easily be shoehorned into "a few hours here, a few hours there" without some serious delays in shipping.  A small project and a handful of FREE days, sure, no sweat.  A mammoth project like Fed52 needs either more time or a fulfillment center to do the heavy lifting.  Remember, as a designer, hours spent shipping KS rewards are not billable hours spent working on projects for one's day job.  Jackson was fortunate in that this was a major windfall for him - not all projects get quite that lucky, especially if they're a little closer to the bone on the profit margin.

[Lotrek]

Very good and useful post, Jackson!
Thanks for sharing your experience.

Although I know that packaging etc can be hell, I wish I could do that myself... But then I should charge each deck $30. Either to cover the cost of importing the decks to Greece and resending them, or to cover the cost of me and my wife traveling to the States in order to prepare the packages there! 

Actually, a trip to the US isn't as crazy as it sounds, assuming you and your wife can get the time off from work...  I'm guessing that the math could work out in your favor, especially if you arranged shipping to a nice, inexpensive locale.  You could work out of the hotel, maybe arrange for the use of a small meeting room for a few days...  Just figure out the cost of the trip versus the cost of importing the decks into Greece and exporting them back out a piece at a time by mail...

No, it's not that crazy, it's just that we could never come to the States without coming to NY and staying there as much as it would be needed for a perfect bankruptcy! 

[Don Boyer]

Very good and useful post, Jackson!
Thanks for sharing your experience.

Although I know that packaging etc can be hell, I wish I could do that myself... But then I should charge each deck $30. Either to cover the cost of importing the decks to Greece and resending them, or to cover the cost of me and my wife traveling to the States in order to prepare the packages there! 

Actually, a trip to the US isn't as crazy as it sounds, assuming you and your wife can get the time off from work...  I'm guessing that the math could work out in your favor, especially if you arranged shipping to a nice, inexpensive locale.  You could work out of the hotel, maybe arrange for the use of a small meeting room for a few days...  Just figure out the cost of the trip versus the cost of importing the decks into Greece and exporting them back out a piece at a time by mail...

No, it's not that crazy, it's just that we could never come to the States without coming to NY and staying there as much as it would be needed for a perfect bankruptcy! 

Well, there are places to stay other than the heart of the city that are considerably more affordable...  There's a reason it's called the New York Tri-State Metropolitan Area!

[Rob Wright]

I think if you are going to a project. You have to be realistic about how long the shipping process is going to take. What is a fair balance of time for the designer, and the backer. 
For someone like me that has a full time job, a small project of 1000 backers or less. I think a couple hours a night, and a couple weekends would be a reasonable time. All of your backers would have their cards in a fairly short period of time 
Now increase that to 2-3000 backers- still working that 40hr job. Now I'm busting my ass several extra hours a day, and weekends for a month. I think I would still tackle it, maybe coincide a vacation as part of it. I don't mind sacrificing some sleep and vacation to reach a dream.
Any project bigger than this, I would get help.

One of the biggest fails I see is underestimating production time-USPC says 2 weeks for approval, and 4-6 weeks for production. Great, I'll have the cards in 2 months and shipped in a week. Wrong!  KS/Amazon takes 2 weeks to release your money.How many times is USPC going to ask for design changes. Oops there goes another month. I didn't order enough packaging . Do I go to Walmart and pay 5 times what it should cost, or wait for a bulk purchase to be shipped to me? there's another week or so.

[Lukeout]

I like the concept of this post, and I agree that more people should figure out shipping before they start a Kickstarter project. However I disagree with the way you're calculating time and money on this. You've also over-inflated your numbers by using gross revenue instead of net profit.

Federal 52 Raised = $149,156.00 during it's 40 day campaign period
Backerkit Period = $15,728.00 during a two week post ordering period

Total Capital Raised in a 54 day period = $164,884

I worked an estimated 200+hours during that time period doing: Design, Answering Backers, Kissing Babies and Shaking Hands, making sure my wife didn't kill me.

$164,884 / 200hrs = $824.00 per hour

(obviously this number is different with EVERY project but the equation is the same)

Hour spent fulfilling packages = 140+ (2970 orders)

During the fulfillment time I was making $0 and could have been preparing for my next project.

Money lost while fulfilling = $115,360

That above number makes it a NO Brainer for me to pay a fulfillment house, even if they charge me double, it is absolutely worth my time.


How to estimate shipping cost

Shipping for your project will roughly come out to %16 - %18 of your total pledge raised.

I raised $164,884 for the Federal 52 Part I project and spent $27,000 on postage and fulfillment.

You were paid to Design, Produce, and Ship the decks. The fact that the production and shipping occurred after you received payment doesn't mean it's time you weren't paid for. That's the attitude of every project that has failed to deliver.

I agree here, you were paid for a product and a service. When doing the math, you need to load all costs (isn't backer kit only 1%?) including shipping supplies, etc... That said, there has to be a break point where fulfillment is just better for life quality. I'm going to run with the "family plan" on my project (i.e. get the whole family to help and pay my kids some to show them what work is).

To me, the worst part of shipping isn't the packaging and mailing, it's the after shipping customer service. Getting emails from all over the world about an occasional dented box, ripped package, etc... You just never know when a mail man is going to put a bass guitar amp on top of your box in the truck. Even if it's 3-4%, that can be a lot of headaches. For our last game kickstarter, my other company created a game box that fit exactly into a USPS medium flat-rate box just to reduce damage. We got some odd looks for our box size (a bit larger than it needed to be), but our external damage issue rate dropped to 0.

[Don Boyer]

To me, the worst part of shipping isn't the packaging and mailing, it's the after shipping customer service. Getting emails from all over the world about an occasional dented box, ripped package, etc... You just never know when a mail man is going to put a bass guitar amp on top of your box in the truck. Even if it's 3-4%, that can be a lot of headaches. For our last game kickstarter, my other company created a game box that fit exactly into a USPS medium flat-rate box just to reduce damage. We got some odd looks for our box size (a bit larger than it needed to be), but our external damage issue rate dropped to 0.

You need not go to using a box so large for the game, just to make the post office flat rate packaging.  Television sets made of fragile glass and liquid crystal diode and light-emitting diode components make it across the ocean intact all the time.  Notice when you open a new TV, there's all these special styrofoam blocks fitted to hold the TV firmly while in the box and fixed into place with pieces of cardboard.  It's almost like a jigsaw puzzle in there - the easiest way to remove the TV is lifting the box up with the bottom opened, sliding everything out in one piece.

It wouldn't be too hard to craft similar "buffer" pieces to perform the same function for your games, allowing you to use a smaller size.  Styrofoam isn't even needed - folded cardboard glued together to prevent shifting, done right, can perform the same function.

[Lukeout]

To me, the worst part of shipping isn't the packaging and mailing, it's the after shipping customer service. Getting emails from all over the world about an occasional dented box, ripped package, etc... You just never know when a mail man is going to put a bass guitar amp on top of your box in the truck. Even if it's 3-4%, that can be a lot of headaches. For our last game kickstarter, my other company created a game box that fit exactly into a USPS medium flat-rate box just to reduce damage. We got some odd looks for our box size (a bit larger than it needed to be), but our external damage issue rate dropped to 0.

You need not go to using a box so large for the game, just to make the post office flat rate packaging.  Television sets made of fragile glass and liquid crystal diode and light-emitting diode components make it across the ocean intact all the time.  Notice when you open a new TV, there's all these special styrofoam blocks fitted to hold the TV firmly while in the box and fixed into place with pieces of cardboard.  It's almost like a jigsaw puzzle in there - the easiest way to remove the TV is lifting the box up with the bottom opened, sliding everything out in one piece.

It wouldn't be too hard to craft similar "buffer" pieces to perform the same function for your games, allowing you to use a smaller size.  Styrofoam isn't even needed - folded cardboard glued together to prevent shifting, done right, can perform the same function.

Don, the reason it works for games well, is that those boxes tend to get stacked on top of each other. Odd shaped boxes get stacked wherever. And a tight fit strengthens the overall box. It means a dent in the outbox definitely dents the box inside, but the odds of that dent happening are substantially less. We went from 3-4% shipping damage to zero. And the box was free, and we didn't need additional packing stuff like bubble wrap or styrofoam! I don't think any of this directly translates to playing cards of course, but it worked for us!