Charles Eliot (Collaborator) from the Anastyr comments: “Last mile costs have increased significantly especially in the USA/NA -traditionally year to year last mile delivery costs tend to trend at around 2% increase, so when financially planning that tends to be a baseline figure to use to determine your overall cost increases, even if you add some % padding to account for other contingencies, it’s challenging to plan for a situation where those costs increase not by 2% in one year, but by 3-5% in 2 months. To be clear this % increase is just for the USA/NA, however, there are​ still last-mile increases globally.”

So it’s not just the containers. Last-mile are the guys you see in the trucks who bring your stuff to the door. I did remember talking to a FedEx customer service a few months ago (“WHERE’S MY CAR WARS KS” 😛 and they said their shipping location was overwhelmed. You already know how much fuel prices are increasing. One article I read said last-mile delivery costs *50%* of parcel delivery.

Old USPS article: https://reason.org/commentary/last-mile-delivery-tough-road-for-usps-opportunity-for-private-sector/

fwiw, I looked up how Amazon offers free shipping. Basically, merchants pay for it. “One of the main mechanisms that makes free shipping feasible is that merchants are paying fees on the back end that you do not see as a consumer. Presumably, merchants have already priced those fees into their products. … Why do merchants pay the fees? Because Prime membership and free shipping moves a lot more product. The increase in sales justifies the increase in costs.” KS creators sometimes subsidize shipping, meaning that the cost of shipping is paid through the “profits” of the product. But since the KS product has pretty much been pre-ordered by backers by the time the funding is over, creators don’t have much incentive to provide free or discounted shipping — for now. Lower number of backers for subsequent projects (“I’m not backing another project from this creator again!”) and refunds are about the only real feedback backers have, I think.

Amazon: https://www.wric.com/news/money-tips-how-does-amazon-pay-for-free-shipping/

CMON usually passes on cost before other plastic miniature boardgame companies (eg. VAT during Massive Darkness 2), yet their Marvel Zombies raised $9M. Plenty of MZ backers were upset about the high shipping costs, although I don’t know how many refunds CMON processed. I guess the amount backers pledge for CMON’s next KS will tell us how well KS can survive the current increase in shipping costs. (Myself, after the unannounced shipping increase in Bloodborne, I switched to $1 pledging whenever possible.)