Dreaming of a Grey Christmas: The Latest on Logistics
over 4 years ago
– Sat, Dec 14, 2019 at 12:18:39 AM
Winter decided to hit us hard and early this year, with a Thanksgiving weekend blizzard that shut down local schools for two (or sometimes more) days, as well as businesses and delivery companies. We felt it on some big incoming delivery delays (such as boxes for our direct international shipments, which took a week longer than expected to arrive), but things are back on track.
The short synopsis of where things are:
- USA: Everyone who has filled in Backerkit has had their order sent, though tracking info is sometimes slow to come back from Amazon (and may even show up after the game). I believe a majority of the Deluxe games have now been delivered. Enjoy!
- ELSEWHERE: Except for two odd orders that need special handling, all of our non-US backers (if they have responded through Backerkit) have now been packed and shipped. Most are going through consolidation services that will have final delivery by your local postal service (more on this below).
IF YOU HAVE NOT FILLED IN YOUR BACKERKIT SURVEY, PLEASE DO! We would love to ship your rewards right away! Everyone deserves a Grey Christmas!
The longer rambling commentary:
Thankfully our shipment to Amazon left before the bad weather. After coming home from the Thanksgiving holiday, delaying our return by a day so as not to drive through much of the actual storm, my family had to park two blocks from home and trudge the rest of the way through 19" of new fallen snow, and plowed snowdrifts across the side street entrances that were taller than our kids. But then I was able to log in and remotely command all those US orders be sent thanks to the miracle of internets!
As many Kickstarter backers realize, international shipping is the bane of many projects. I've spent a lot of time researching and exploring options and making contact with various vendors. We have settled on a combination of methods to get the Deluxe games to backers. In a handful of cases we found that our best option was still direct US Mail or an air shipment UPS service. For the overwhelming majority of these rewards, we are shipping through a consolidation service.
Here's the first of two pallets of Gloom Deluxe sent by this method:
What you see here is a pallet loaded with boxes, each one individually labeled to a backer somewhere outside the USA. This pallet is on its way by freight truck to a distribution center in Chicago, where it will be broken down and sorted to all the different countries around the world (along with parcels coming in from other shippers). Then the packages bound for each country are taken directly to the airport, handed to the US Postal Service, and flown to destination countries for insertion into the local mail system just like regular mail.
Employing this bulk method, as opposed to directly mailing individual packages, saves us quite a bit. As I mentioned in the last update, we were looking at spending $67 to mail a package to each UK backer who had paid $65 total for the deluxe game plus shipping. Using this method we reduced our cost to $47. It's still plenty expensive shipping, but at least it leaves something to cover the cost of the goods being sent!
Yes, we should have been charging quite a lot more for international shipping in the first place; I think we ran our original projections with an assumption that the Deluxe box would be much smaller and lighter. But then it was so fun to design and it grew to be huge and kind of heavy and, well, I guess a reason to do a Kickstarter is so you can make something that you wouldn't or couldn't otherwise? It's here, we like it very much (and hope you do too), and we're selling it at what I think is a real bargain price...while copies last.
Speaking of which...if you didn't get a Deluxe and are wishing you did, you can now order it from our website at https://www.atlas-games.com/product_tables/AG1336 (share the link far and wide!). The standard version should be in stores all over the world by now. In addition, stores of extraordinary taste and discernment are notable for having backed this Kickstarter, and thus acquired the limited Deluxe edition to put on sale for their local game connoisseurs.
If you are such a discerning store's proprietor, and have found that your local market's appetite for dreary tales of regicide, incest, dragons and whatnot exceeded your expectations, please do reach out to us at [email protected] and we would be happy to arrange to resupply you as quickly as our loyal sled dogs can haul your goods south from this godforsaken land of endless snow.
-John Nephew; President, Atlas Games
