Shipping Strategies
almost 5 years ago
– Tue, Nov 26, 2019 at 02:26:14 AM
Introduction
Hello everyone, my name is Marshall and I’m the Operations Director here at Leder Games. Usually, our operations are fairly “behind the scenes” but due to the nature of crowdfunding and the scale of Root Underworld we’d like to give you all a peek behind the curtain in regards to shipping logistics. My goal today is to share some fairly comprehensive information about how Root Underworld will be shipped to backers. I will also talk a little about some general shipping logistics that aren’t common knowledge. If you’d like to skip the “how” and go straight to the “when,” see the timelines at the bottom of this update.
Shipping and Scale
Root Underworld is a BIG project, and our factory estimated that once complete, if left together on pallets, the products would fill a city block. This presents a number of challenges, the first being that manufacturers don’t generally have continual storage for this much product. Our solution was to plan the manufacturing and shipping in such a fashion that we could take waves of product directly from the factory to the ocean freight and international fulfillment lanes. Basically, this means that we'd start shipping the product out as soon as we received it rather than waiting for the entire stock to arrive. This plan solved the issue we had with capacity concerns at the factory and both warehouses that prep our products for fulfillment. It also allowed us to get around some of the potential delays that can occur in customs.
Getting Stuck in Customs and Split Containers
Shipping a project as large as the one I’ve just described presents a number of barriers and potential delays, one of which is customs inspections. In a situation where we had a warehouse big enough to hold a city-block’s worth of games, it would still be an incredibly risky practice to ship all products under one bill of lading. If customs at the port of arrival determines the need for inspection, then all 15 cargo containers would need to be pulled. This can mean weeks of delay!
I’ve worked with a number of freight companies over the years, and one recurring issue with customs inspections in certain ports is that inspection sites can be in entirely different locations. This means the customs officials must truck containers to another location for inspections, and if you have 15 containers it’s going to take exponentially longer than if there were, say, two containers. Of the ports we ship to regularly, about half of them have off-site inspection facilities. Limiting our liability in the case of a customs shipment or delayed ocean passage is one of the ways we are working to ensure backers are being sent products as quickly as possible.
Basically, we're shipping Root just a few containers at a time. This doesn't significantly alter the speed at which the product will move across the ocean, but it does change how our products will make their way through customs. When it came to deciding the priority of containers, we sorted the backers into groups based on the complexity of their order and coordinated those groups with our general logistics plan. The result is that, in general, folks with simpler orders will get their packages before those with more complicated orders. Of course we do our best to make sure that everyone gets their games at about the same time, but we have limited bandwidth and we want to make sure we can start shipping the moment we receive the first container. This means that in practice those who ordered just the Underworld Expansion will get their games a little before those who ordered multiple products.
We want you to be aware of this now so it isn’t a surprise, and it’s solely due to the logistics of moving this much product through our fulfillment pipelines. Our expectation is that most backers will receive products in a span of roughly 5-6 weeks barring any delays related to customs, ocean freight, or port traffic. Our fulfillment centers will be moving products through as quickly as possible, and they must, or else the products will overfill their facilities. We have two separate pipelines for fulfillment depending on region, and I’d like to share some of the specifics about how those differ.
Domestic vs. International
Our two major pipelines for fulfillment are Domestic (US/CAN) and International (The rest of the world; “ROW” for the purposes of this explanation). These two pipelines could not be more different. The graphics above and below detail some of the differences. As you can see, our Domestic pipeline sends full containers of product directly to Atlas Games here in Minnesota. Atlas sends the Canadian products to Quiche Games, and each entity sends orders to backers directly.
You can see that the ROW shipping is considerably more complicated. Our international fulfillment center prepares packages in Hong Kong, then sends them out via ocean, land, and air couriers depending on region. Those packages arrive with various international carriers, some of whom have to ship to regional hubs whose postal carriers deliver directly to backers. It’s an incredibly complex process that also has to account for regional taxes, fees, import and export regulations, and more aspects that I’m sure our fulfillment partners would be quick to remind me of.
International Operations
The ROW pipeline presents many more challenges than the Domestic one for a number of reasons. Our warehouse in Minnesota was a short drive from our office until recently (Atlas has recently grown and moved a few hours away to Duluth). If there were any issues, we were just a short drive away and could often address problems in real-time. Our ROW pipeline starts in Hong Kong, where all of our communications are remote, and often require one party or the other to take calls far outside office hours. In many cases, our ROW product will not fill a container which calls for a different type of container shipment.
The difference between full and partial containers is referred to as "FCL" (Full Container Load) and "LCL" (Less than Container Load). Often due to the scale of ROW shipping, we will not have full containers of product, which means we share a container with other products our consignment agent is shipping to the same locations. This can present delays if another company sharing a container hasn’t paid for passage, or takes extra time to unload their products, or is on vacation, or “their warehouse manager is out sick,” etc.
We have very few ways of auditing delays like this that are presented to us, and a certain level of trust has to be employed. Once packages leave Hong Kong there is another step removed when it comes to oversight. In the US/CAN we can track packages that are missing or lost in real-time, but in certain regions around the world tracking is simply not available or is prohibitively expensive. This is in addition to the use of “third-party” shipping models in some areas, where the local or municipal postal services aren’t standardized and use various carriers for one region. The reason to point these potential issues out not as a preemptive excuse, but to try to temper expectations and make sure that we are transparent with what we can and can’t control.
One Hub vs. Many
In the past Leder Games used multiple hubs for international shipping, and we had similar issues arise with one outlet being able to fulfill swiftly while others took longer. Our goal in using a single hub is to try to minimize the delays between regions as well as control the process as much as possible. Our current solution is to use a single hub, but we are constantly looking for ways to expedite ROW shipping and regularly meet with new potential partners. At our scale, we’ve got to be careful about shifting a process before it’s had time to settle. We assure you, ROW shipping is one of the things our operations team constantly talks about improving whenever we can find ways to do so.
Timelines
By now you’re probably saying to yourself, “Enough talk about the exciting and alluring world of shipping logistics, when do I get my stuff?”
Currently, we’ve got the first two U.S. Bound containers of Root Underworld Expansions on the ocean, and it’s set to arrive in Early December. The first ROW container is awaiting transport to Hong Kong where it will be prepared for shipping. We are working with our ROW fulfillment outlet to ship the majority of the Root Underworld products together at once, but we will update once that shipping date has been finalized. The subsequent US Bound products are set to go on the water approximately every two weeks with a travel time of roughly 35 days. This means that our current plan has folks starting to see packages as early as late December with fulfillment wrapping up around the first week of February. Please note that there are two major Holidays during this time, including Christmas, which puts heavy stress on postal carriers worldwide.
The Timeline Short Version
- If you are in the U.S./CAN and solely bought “The Kickstarter Edition Root Underworld Expansion” your orders are expected to ship to you between December 2019 - January 2020.*
- If you are in the U.S. and bought any products other than “The Kickstarter Edition Root Underworld Expansion” your orders are expected to ship to you between January - February 2020.*
- If you are in the ROW products will all ship together, and your orders are expected to ship to you starting in January.*
*All of the above dates are estimates based on information given to us by our vendors. Delays are of course possible and we will update as we gain more detailed information on each region’s timeline.
We appreciate all of your continued support, and as always if you have any questions or need help, email [email protected] directly!
