More often than not, shipping has been something that can be easily ignored by first time campaigners as it’s not what people deal with every day. Since we’ve been asked by a lot of our clients regarding shipping & fulfillment from time to time, Unicool has invited Brandon Rollins, Director of Marketing at Fulfillrite to lend his expertise. Below is what you need to know to ship your first board game according to Brandon.
Congratulations! Your first board game Kickstarter has successfully funded. In a few weeks, your game will start printing and in a few months, it will be time to start shipping it out to all your backers.
Here’s the trouble, though – order fulfillment is actually pretty tricky if you’ve never done it before. This is especially true for Kickstarter campaigns because you will need to fulfill hundreds and possibly thousands of orders all at once. That’s why a lot of Kickstarter creators choose to hire a fulfillment center to help them with the shipping.
But how do you know you need a fulfillment center? If you choose to ship on your own, how do you do that? If you choose to hire help – how do you find that help and give them what they need to succeed?
In this post, we’re going to answer all those questions.
Shipping On Your Own vs. Hiring A Fulfillment Center
When it comes time to ship out orders for your board game Kickstarter, you have one big choice to make first: will you ship on your own?
While shipping out your own orders might seem a little too ramshackle for a successful business, it can be appropriate. If you have less than 200 orders, it makes more sense to ship them out yourself. You might also choose to ship out orders on your own if you have more orders than that because you prefer having complete control over your fulfillment processes. Up to a certain point, it can even be cheaper this way.
On the flipside, outsourcing fulfillment to a fulfillment center has a lot of advantages. For one, you don’t have to actually work about packing individual boxes, printing postage, going to the post office or anything like that. You won’t pay full price for postage, since the fulfillment center will get a discount, and that means you might even save money in the long run if you have enough orders.
And if you’re shipping 1,000 orders or more and you’re not running a big company? Definitely hire help.
How To Ship Your Own Orders
If you decide to ship orders on your own, here’s what you will need to do.
First, make room in your home or office. A large batch of board games – even card games – takes up a ton of space. If you’re lucky, the truck will ship it right to your doorstep. If you’re not, you’ll have to go to a warehouse and start packing boxes into your car. Either way, it’s going to take space to store the games.
Shipping for a Kickstarter is, at a minimum, a weekend project. Make sure you have two full days off or, if you can’t manage that, at least get some friends or family to help you.
You would be wise to invest in a label printer or at least some adhesive labels. This will make it easier to print postage and apply to boxes. You’ll also want to make sure you buy all the boxes, bubble wrap, and packing supplies you need in advance.
Before you start printing off postage, look into discount postage providers like EasyShip – they can potentially save you a lot of money on postage.
At this point, the bulk of your time will be spent packing items into boxes, affixing the address labels, and then prepping them to drop off at the post office, UPS, or FedEx. Try not to drop off more than 100 packages during each trip, as it can take a long time to process them.
Be aware that no matter how well you pack boxes, 3-5% of the packages will be damaged or go missing. Make sure you provide your backers with a way to get in touch if this happens. Be ready to send a replacement, no questions asked when this situation arises.
How To Find A Fulfillment Center
Finding a fulfillment center can seem like a scary process, but it doesn’t have to be hard! Start by putting together a list of good fulfillment centers to consider and then narrow them down based on your research.
To find fulfillment centers to research, ask your friends and other Kickstarter creators. This can help you find a few fulfillment centers to research. Be sure to check out Reddit and do some Google searches to see if there are other options you have missed.
Once you have your list of fulfillment centers, then you can start to narrow them down. First, check their websites and confirm that they provide Kickstarter fulfillment services – not every fulfillment center does.
Next, check the online reviews on websites like Trustpilot, Google, and G2 – they should be consistently good. Be especially careful to look for negative reviews about quality of communication – poor communication is a sign of a bad warehouse.
At this point, your list has likely been narrowed down some. Then you can start requesting quotes. Pay attention not only to the prices you receive, but also the sales experience goes. They should be very clear in their communication and shouldn’t push any long-term contracts. They should be easy to reach and fast to respond.
And if you’re on the fence? Check out their website and find case studies. Try to reach out to the people in those case studies to make sure they really are satisfied. 
What You Need To Give Your Fulfillment Center To Ensure Their Success
Once you’ve settled on a fulfillment center, you can relax some since you won’t have to pack every box for every backer. However, you still need to provide your fulfillment center with what they need to succeed in order to ensure successful campaign fulfillment.
First, make sure you provide accurate product information in their system. That means information regarding the dimensions and weight of your product need to be accurate, as well as any information needed for customs. If you don’t enter this information in properly, it could lead to delays or surprise postage charges when their scales show that your 3 pound game is actually a 5 pound game.
Once you have ordered a print run of the game, you will need to submit a warehouse receiving order or advanced shipping notice to the warehouse. This will notify them of the incoming shipment, telling them how and when it is going to arrive, and how much of each item is in the truck. Make sure all this information is accurate, or else it could lead to substantial delays. (This is one of the easiest ways to ensure timely delivery.)
When entering in product information into the system, if given a chance to specify which packing materials to use, do so. Some fulfillment centers will try to ship board games in polybags. Request that they ship in boxes instead to avoid the “dinged corner” problem that ends up in so many angry social media posts.
Make sure you enter in all backer and order information before the inventory arrives. That way, you can troubleshoot any issues before it will actually cause delays.
Lastly, if you have a chance, build a relationship with your account manager. While the fulfillment center should bear responsibility for the timely delivery of your campaign, you may still improve your experience by knowing who to reach out to if there is an issue. So many technical and process issues can be avoided or quickly corrected just by knowing the name of a person who can fix them.
Final Thoughts
Fulfilling your first board game Kickstarter campaign might seem daunting, but it is exciting! You have options ranging from shipping on your own to hiring one of thousands of great fulfillment centers. If you ship on your own, label printers and postage discount software makes it easier than it’s ever been.
And if you hire help, you won’t need to worry about much other than hiring the right company, providing good information, and responding to the occasional service inquiry.
Need help fulfilling your orders? Click here to request a quote from Fulfillrite.
