Kickstarter rising costs, the end to big box games What will the future be ?

[soulman 2945xp 0]

Watching videos on shipping from “China”.. there is NO contracts in place at all…. so no “locked in prices” Etc. You just have to pay whatever they say….. Madness and I will say crooks….

[limburger 21705xp 0]

that happens when a company completely dominates … they can and will ask for whatever they want.

As an industry that depends on China for 90%-ish of its manufacturing they should have seen it coming, but cheap production and short term profits trumped long term stability. It’s a shame we needed a pandemic for companies to rethink their strategies, but I’m afraid that the lesson has merely been postponed …

 

[orlandothetechnicolouredParticipant 4380xp 1]

@limberger

Companies used to be able to pay VAT on the manufacturing cost of the goods rather than the ‘retail’ price of kickstarter stuff due to a degree of fuzziness in the law (typically retail cost for board games is 6-8x higher than the manufacturing cost) so it was easy enough for companies to subsidise $7-10 on a $300 all in. This has now been eliminated meaning they’d have to pay $60 so they pass it all on to us

 

Container costs may be falling, but fuel prices rising fast means the courier costs to get the container to the distribution hub and the courier to deliver it are rising so shipping is still going to stay high

 

 

[ced1106Participant 6224xp 0]

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.)

[onlyonepinman 18060xp 2]

I don’t think Shipping will kill Kickstarter, it might change the way businesses work but I don’t think it’s going to end it as a funding route. Everyone everywhere who has products made abroad is paying shipping costs and in some way passing them on to us.  The only difference with Kickstarter is that you can see how much it costs and the amount is often much higher.

I do, however, hope that the world is taking stock of this and that we start working towards a world where manufacturing is more evenly distributed.  I am not say everyone should just make stuff in their own countries but having everything made in a single country is bad enough.  Having everything made in a rather aggressive and largely uncaring dictatorship is even worse – for many reasons.  When everything is in a single place, the world simply cannot react quickly enough to mitigate any issues that arise in that place.  My car is currently in for repairs and the garage is struggling to get the parts needed to complete the work because everything is made in the far east and essentially supply has dried up.  The car rental industry is struggling to keep up with demand because there simply isn’t the supply of new vehicles due to the same chip shortage.  The used car industry is seeing a boom because people simply cannot get new cars in reasonable time scales.  The ongoing Chinese approach to COVID-19 is still crippling the world’s economy.  And also, more importantly, disrupting my supply of plastic crack

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