You wrote the book. Now what?

Writing and editing are hard enough. You got through that. Maybe you even figured out formatting, cover design, and ISBNs. Maybe not.

Either way, once you’re holding a copy of your book, or staring down the invoice from your printer, you’re suddenly staring at a bigger problem:

How do you actually sell it?

A lot of authors get stuck here. You’ve done the creative work, and no one can doubt how hard that it is. It’s a well-documented struggle!

But nobody tells you how to run the business side. Or they do, but the advice is vague. Or failing that, it’s expensive or they take the liberty of assuming you’re already famous, at least in the TikTok sense.

The truth is, selling a self-published book takes more than passion. It takes planning. You need the right storefront, a good understanding of your costs, and a plan for getting books into readers’ hands quickly, cleanly, and affordably.

This post will walk you through the big decisions: where to sell, how to print, and how to avoid mistakes that quietly kill your profit margins before your book ever leaves the warehouse.

Part 1: Choose where to sell your books.

There’s no perfect place to sell a self-published book. But there are a few great options—and each comes with its own pros, cons, and fulfillment challenges.

Option 1: Amazon KDP or FBA

Selling through Amazon is the easiest way to reach a wide audience. You can list your book through KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing), and Amazon handles the printing and shipping. That’s convenient. But it’s also expensive, and you have zero control over how your book is packed or delivered.

If you want to use Amazon as a storefront but ship your own inventory, you’ll need to use Fulfilled by Merchant (FBM) or Fulfilled by Amazon (FBA). Either way, be prepared for extra fees, strict rules, and limited branding options.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=baV7WY-Mh_k

Option 2: Shopify, Squarespace, or WooCommerce

Setting up your own storefront gives you full control. You can set your prices, use your own branding, offer bundles, and run your own promotions.

The tradeoff? You now have to handle payments, inventory, fulfillment, and customer service—or find a partner who does.

The upside is margin. Selling direct means you can keep more of each sale. And if you’re running a campaign on Kickstarter or directing traffic to your site from social media, this is often the best option.

Important Note: Fulfillrite integrates directly with Shopify, WooCommerce, and other platforms. That means when someone buys your book, we handle the rest.

Option 3: Kickstarter and crowdfunding platforms

Kickstarter is great for launching a book with built-in urgency. You get upfront money, clear deadlines, and a crowd of early adopters who care about what you’re making. But fulfillment can be brutal.

Most creators underestimate what it takes to ship hundreds (or thousands) of books all at once. If your campaign goes well, you’ll suddenly need help storing, packing, labeling, and tracking every order. And, of course, you’ll need to do it right, the first time.

That’s a big ask.

So what should you choose?

There’s no one-size-fits-all answer. If you need reach, Amazon works. If you want control, go direct. If you’re launching something new, crowdfunding could help you build up your name in the way that new authors often like to do.

What matters most is knowing what your choice means for fulfillment—and whether you’re prepared to handle that part on your own. If not, now’s the time to think about a book fulfillment partner who can grow with you.

Part 2: Plan your book’s print run and run the numbers.

Let’s talk money.

A beautiful book is worthless if it never reaches your customer. And it’s even worse if you’re losing money every time you ship one.

Printing is where things get real. And your decisions here have a direct impact on your profit margin, your timeline, and your sanity.

Print-on-demand vs. bulk printing

Most new authors start with print-on-demand (POD). You upload your files, and the printer ships one copy at a time when someone places an order. No inventory, no upfront costs, no warehouse.

Sounds perfect—until you realize you’re paying $6–$10 per copy and have no control over packaging, shipping speed, or quality. POD is fine for low-volume, low-risk experiments. It is not how you build a long-term business.

Bulk printing is the opposite. You print 500 or 1,000 books at once, often for $2–$4 per copy, depending on specs. That slashes your per-unit cost, gives you control, and opens up better fulfillment options.

But bulk printing comes with its own challenges: you need to store inventory, handle packing and shipping, and keep tight control of your numbers.

This is one place where Fulfillrite, and companies like ours, help. We receive your inventory, store it in a climate-controlled warehouse, and ship each book to your customer, and on your terms.

Margins matter. Know them cold.

Let’s do some back-of-napkin math.

You sell your book for $20.

POD printing: $8
Amazon fees: $4–5
Profit: $7–8

Bulk printing: $3
Fulfillment + shipping: $5–6
Profit: $11–12

Again, you’ll definitely want to run your own numbers. Every situation is a bit different and you can’t take anything for granted when it comes to basic revenues, expenses, and profitability.

But even at the quickest glance, you can see that the difference adds up fast. Especially if you’re shipping a few hundred books, or bundling with extras.

You need to think about book fulfillment and packaging before it’s a problem.

Books are heavy. They dent. They warp. One bent corner is all it takes for someone to demand a refund or leave a bad review.

Your print specs—spine width, trim size, paper weight—affect not just cost, but how the book fits in a box, and what kind of packaging you need.

Bad fit = extra padding or oversized boxes = dimensional weight fees from carriers.

Good fit = optimized packaging = real savings.

Fulfillrite, and fulfillment centers like ours, also help optimize your shipments to avoid those hidden charges and keep your margins intact.

Here’s how you build a fulfillment system that works for you, not against you.

Shipping self-published books is harder than it looks.

Now you’ve got stacks of padded mailers, a thermal printer you barely know how to use, and a growing pile of orders to pack before lunch. Every mistake—wrong address, bent cover, missed tracking number—feels like a small fire to put out.

That’s the reality for a lot of first-time authors. Selling the book is exciting. Fulfilling the orders is…not. But it doesn’t have to stay that way.

You don’t need to turn into a shipping expert. You just need a repeatable system—and maybe the right help.

Part 3: Prep your book fulfillment process.

Shipping is not just putting a book in a mailer and calling it a day. There’s a whole stack of decisions behind every package: where your books are stored, how orders are packed, how quickly they go out, and what happens when something goes wrong.

Let’s break it down.

What’s actually involved in fulfillment?

Here’s what goes into every single order:

• Pulling the right book (or books) from inventory
• Choosing the right packaging (mailers, boxes, bubble wrap)
• Packing it securely (no crushed corners, no sliding around)
• Printing and attaching the correct shipping label
• Adding tracking and updating the customer
• Handling returns if needed

Now do that 10, 20, 200 times. With speed. And accuracy. Across time zones and continents.

It’s not impossible. But it’s not free, either—not in time, energy, or money.

Many self-published authors start out packing boxes in their garage. That’s fine—until it isn’t. The moment fulfillment slows you down or starts hurting your customer experience, it’s time to get help.

Why books are trickier than most products

Books may seem simple. They’re not.

They’re heavy for their size. They have sharp corners and bendable covers. They’re often shipped in bundles or with extras—bookmarks, maps, signed inserts, stickers, you name it.

And they’re expectation-heavy too. A reader won’t be thrilled if your book shows up in good shape. That’s what they expect. But if it’s bent, delayed, or missing? You’re going to hear about it.

This is where working with a specialized books fulfillment center matters. Someone who knows how to pack media. Someone who has the materials and systems in place to ship on time, in good shape, and without drama.

Fulfillrite has shipped thousands of titles for authors, crowdfunders, and publishers. We’ve handled limited edition drops, press kits, subscription boxes—you name it.

Real-world fulfillment scenarios

Let’s say you’re launching a Kickstarter and need to ship 500 books to backers.

You’ve printed your run and stored it in your living room. Now the campaign ends and the clock starts ticking.

You spend your nights printing labels. Some addresses bounce. You run out of mailers halfway through. International orders stall at customs. Some backers get their books three weeks late. A few never arrive. You’re exhausted. And now you’ve got a dozen angry emails to answer.

Now rewind. Imagine those same books went to a 3PL that specializes in fulfillment for books.

Your backers receive their packages on launch day. No damage. No delays. You check a dashboard, see everything’s shipped, and spend your evening doing literally anything else.

That’s the difference a real fulfillment system makes.

Part 4: Plan for international book shipping.

International customers are loyal. They’re often your earliest fans. But shipping to them is a minefield. Especially if you don’t know what you’re doing.

Here’s what can go wrong:

• Delayed delivery: Packages get stuck in customs. Some never arrive.
• Unexpected charges: Your reader gets hit with VAT, duties, or handling fees on arrival.
• Damaged goods: Long-distance shipping increases risk of crushed corners and torn packaging.
• Lost trust: A single bad experience can turn a fan into a critic—and they’ll post about it.

These problems aren’t rare. They’re normal if you’re not set up for international shipping.

Fulfillrite offers international fulfillment with Delivered Duty Paid (DDP) options. That means you cover the costs up front, so your readers don’t get surprise fees or angry emails.

DDU vs. DDP: Know the difference

• DDU (Delivered Duty Unpaid): The buyer pays customs or VAT on delivery. Often leads to frustration, returns, or abandoned packages.
• DDP (Delivered Duty Paid): You, the seller, cover those costs. Slightly more expensive on your end—but a much better customer experience.

If you plan to ship overseas—and you should, because global readership is real—build international logistics into your plan early. Don’t treat it as an afterthought.

Fulfillment isn’t just domestic. And it’s not just boxes.

Book fulfillment isn’t about shipping paper. It’s about delivering experiences. Yes, it’s corny, but it’s true! And readers in the UK, Australia, Canada, and beyond expect the same quality as those in the U.S.

With the right books 3PL (third-party logistics company), you can serve international customers without fear of delays, damage, or surprise fees.

Staying Profitable After Launch Without Burning Out

Launch day is only the beginning.

You did it. You launched your book, made your first sales, maybe even ran a successful Kickstarter. You signed some copies. Shipped your first batches. Saw those early reviews roll in.

Then things changed.

A few weeks go by. Orders slow down. You’ve got half your print run still boxed up in the spare bedroom. A couple returns trickle in—wrong address, bent cover, buyer changed their mind. The momentum fades, and now you’re stuck in the least exciting part of the job:

Keeping the book available. Managing inventory. Handling problems.

This is where a lot of self-publishers fall off. The launch is exciting. The maintenance? Not so much.

But here’s the truth: most books don’t make money because of the launch. They make money over time. Weeks, months, sometimes years. That’s the long tail. And if you want to stay profitable, you have to treat fulfillment like an ongoing system, not a one-time task.

Part 5: Keep your profits (and sanity) as you grow.

Let’s talk about what happens after the hype dies down—and how to make sure your fulfillment process isn’t silently bleeding money.

Storage adds up fast.

Books take up space. And they don’t move quickly unless you’re on a bestseller list or constantly promoting.

Storing 50 copies? Easy. Storing 2,000? You’re suddenly talking about pallets, climate control, pests, and accessibility. That’s not a job for a closet—or even a rented storage unit—unless you want to be climbing over boxes every time you need to ship one order.

Fulfillrite stores books in a climate-controlled warehouse, which protects against warping, mold, and seasonal damage, all of which are things that a lot of new authors don’t consider until it’s too late.

Returns: small in number, big in cost.

Books have low return rates compared to apparel or electronics. But when they do come back, they hit hard.

A return usually means a refund plus lost shipping plus time spent fixing the issue. If it’s your fault (wrong item, damaged in transit), you lose even more: the buyer’s trust. That’s a problem if you only had one chance to make an impression.

A fulfillment partner with error rates below 0.1%, like Fulfillrite, helps reduce this risk. And if a return does happen, they’ll process it cleanly, without dragging you into a back-and-forth over one $20 book.

What about bundling? What if you want to add merch?

Many self-publishers add extras: stickers, bookplates, maps, pins. These aren’t just for fun. They boost perceived value, drive reviews, and can justify higher prices.

But here’s the catch: bundling adds complexity.

If you’re handling fulfillment yourself, you have to track stock for each item, pack orders carefully, and keep everything organized. One mismatched bundle means wasted postage and a disappointed reader.

It’s the kind of service that matters after you scale—not just at launch.

Don’t ignore the long tail.

Most indie books don’t blow up. They grow slowly. They reach niche audiences, get recommended, and sell a few dozen or few hundred copies at a time, often over the course of months or years.

That’s fine. That’s good, even.

But long-tail success requires long-tail systems.

You can’t ship every copy by hand forever. You can’t answer every tracking email. And you definitely can’t scale a business that needs you to tape every box.

What you can do is build a system that runs quietly in the background. Orders come in, they’re packed and shipped the same day, tracking is sent, returns are handled, inventory is updated—and you never touch a roll of tape.

That’s what real fulfillment does. And it’s what lets you stay focused on what comes next: marketing, writing your next book, building your catalog.

Final Thoughts

Selling a self-published book isn’t just about writing well. Or designing a good cover. Or even launching strong.

You’re getting into business, and that means you need to make sure every piece of the business works—especially the parts that readers never see.

Fulfillment isn’t the fun part. But it’s the part that keeps your customers happy, your margins intact, and your time protected.

If you’ve reached the point where packing boxes is taking too much energy, or mistakes are eating into your profits, or you’re just ready to hand off the shipping side of things to someone who actually enjoys it, then here’s your sign: reach out for help.

Fulfillrite handles book fulfillment for self-publishers, small presses, and crowdfunded campaigns. We specialize in fast, accurate shipping with real-time tracking, transparent pricing, and low error rates. You stay focused on writing—we’ll handle the rest.

Running a subscription box business is more than just having a clever idea and cool products. Once the orders start rolling in, the real work begins: getting those boxes out the door on time, packed correctly, and shipped to the right place.

This is where a lot of companies stumble.

You can have the best curation and the slickest branding. But if a customer opens their box to find it late, melted, or missing something? You’ve probably lost them for good.

That’s why choosing the right subscription box fulfillment partner matters so much. It’s not just about finding someone who can “handle the shipping.” It’s about finding a team that can do it consistently, without excuses.

In this post, we’ll walk you through exactly what to look for when choosing a subscription box fulfillment partner and how to know if you’ve found the right fit.

Fulfillrite is one such provider, trusted by brands across the U.S. to deliver accurate, on-time shipments every month.

But we’ll get back to that later. First, let’s talk about the kind of things you need to consider when choosing a partner to trust with your business.

What is subscription box fulfillment?

At its core, subscription box fulfillment is everything that happens after a customer hits “Subscribe.”

That includes:

• Receiving your products into the warehouse
• Safely storing your inventory
• Picking and packing the right items each cycle
• Kitting boxes if needed (that is, assembling multiple pieces into a single shipment)
• Shipping to customers—whether in batches or on a rolling basis
• And sometimes, handling returns

Subscription box fulfillment is a special beast. Unlike traditional eCommerce, where orders come in one at a time, subscription boxes tend to ship all at once. You’re sending hundreds or thousands of identical boxes in a narrow window. The timing has to be perfect.

There’s also a presentation factor. Unboxing matters. A bent corner or messy label can ruin the whole experience.

That’s what makes reliable subscription box order fulfillment so essential. You’re not just mailing stuff. You’re delivering an experience, and your fulfillment partner has to treat it that way.

What to look for in subscription box fulfillment services

There are a lot of fulfillment companies out there. But not all of them are built for subscription boxes.

Here’s what to look for:

Same-day shipping capability

Even if your boxes go out monthly, you’ll want a partner that can move quickly—especially if you offer one-off or replacement shipments.

Batch shipping support

You need someone who can handle volume. If you ship 3,000 boxes in a day, they better have a system built for that.

Kitting and assembly

Subscription boxes often contain multiple products, inserts, and packaging materials. Kitting is the process of assembling that into a single unit. Not every fulfillment center does this well.

Climate control

If your products can melt, freeze, or spoil—like chocolates, beauty serums, or supplements—you need a partner with temperature-controlled storage.

Inventory tracking and expiration management

For perishable goods or regulated products, lot tracking and expiration date control aren’t optional.

Real software integrations

You should be able to sync orders automatically from platforms like Shopify, BigCommerce, WooCommerce, and more. If your provider doesn’t integrate with your eCommerce tools of choice, keep looking.

Transparent pricing

You don’t want to be surprised by extra charges for “manual handling” or “odd-shaped packaging.” A good subscription box fulfillment services provider will give you a clear rate sheet with no hidden fees.

Red flags to watch out for?

Slow replies. Confusing reports. Vague answers when you ask, “How do you track expiration dates?”

These are all signs that the provider isn’t built to handle subscription box order fulfillment—and that’s a risk you can’t afford.

Domestic vs. overseas subscription box fulfillment

Plenty of fulfillment companies operate overseas, especially in places where labor is cheap. And yes, that can mean lower upfront costs.

But here’s the tradeoff:

Shipping times. U.S.-based fulfillment can usually get boxes to your customer in 2–5 days. International fulfillment? You’re looking at 10–30+ days, depending on customs and carriers.

Returns and exchanges. Returning a box to a warehouse in New Jersey is easy. Returning one to Shenzhen? Not so much.

Customer support. When something goes wrong, you want to talk to someone who can fix it. Language barriers and time zones don’t help.

Customs delays. If your product gets flagged at the border, you could be weeks late. That’s death for a subscription box brand.

That’s why many brands stick with subscription box fulfillment USA-based partners. You’re paying for speed, predictability, and happier customers.

And when churn is always one bad shipment away? That’s worth a lot.

Questions to ask before signing with a subscription box 3PL

Before you sign any fulfillment contract, ask real questions—and expect real answers. If a provider can’t speak clearly about their own systems, that’s a red flag.

Here’s a straightforward checklist:

Can you handle my volume now and in six months?

Some fulfillment centers are fine with 100 orders a month but collapse at 500. Ask about their capacity, staffing, and how they handle growth.

Do you support kitting and batch shipping?

If they hesitate, or if they charge sky-high fees for anything beyond “insert product A into box,” they may not be the right choice for subscription box fulfillment services.

What eCommerce platforms do you integrate with?

Shopify, WooCommerce, BigCommerce, Amazon—if you’re using any of these, your fulfillment partner should connect to them directly. No manual order uploads. No duct-tape workarounds.

What happens if something goes wrong?

Ask how they handle shipping errors, damaged goods, or inventory discrepancies. If they don’t have a clear process in place—or if they push blame every time—it’s going to be a headache later.

Can you keep up during peak season?

Holiday months are brutal. Inventory spikes, demand doubles, and shipping carriers fall behind. A reliable partner plans for this. Ask what they do to avoid delays when volume surges.

Do you offer climate-controlled storage or lot tracking?

Even if you don’t need it now, it’s useful to know whether they support these services. That flexibility can help you scale into new products later.

It’s easy to get wowed by cheap rates or shiny software. But what you really need is a team that can ship your boxes accurately, on time, and with minimal drama. A provider that takes subscription box fulfillment seriously. Anything less will cost you more in the long run.

Why Fulfillrite is a strong fit for subscription box brands

We’ll keep this quick.

Fulfillrite specializes in accurate, fast, and flexible fulfillment. That’s what we do. We’ve worked with hundreds of subscription box companies across categories—wellness, hobby, kids’ crafts, you name it.

Here’s what makes us a good fit:

High accuracy rate.

We get orders right. Not 98% right. Really right. Because that’s what your customers expect, and it’s what keeps them subscribed.

Batch shipping and kitting.

We can prep and ship thousands of boxes in a single day, all packed to your exact specifications.

Climate control.

Have temperature-sensitive products? We’ve got you covered. Our facility supports proper storage and handling to protect product integrity.

Real-time software integrations.

We integrate with platforms like Shopify, BigCommerce, Amazon, WooCommerce, and more. Our dashboard gives you full visibility into orders, inventory, and shipping status. No guessing.

U.S.-based.

We’re located in New Jersey. That means fast domestic shipping and easier return handling. But yes—we ship worldwide.

Fulfillrite handles the nitty-gritty of subscription box fulfillment so you can focus on growing your business. We don’t design your box. We don’t choose your products. But once you’re ready to ship—we make sure your box gets there, on time, every time.

Final Thoughts

There’s a lot to think about when choosing a subscription box fulfillment partner. It’s not just about price. It’s about performance. Can they consistently deliver, without mistakes, and without making your life harder?

Look for providers that offer:

• Batch processing and kitting
• Reliable software integrations
• Real-time inventory tracking
• Climate control if needed
• Transparent pricing

And ask the right questions. Don’t assume every 3PL understands what makes subscription box fulfillment unique.

If you’re ready to take fulfillment off your plate—and do it without losing sleep—talk to us at Fulfillrite. We’re happy to walk you through our process and help you decide if we’re the right fit for your brand.

When it comes to subscription boxes, a little preparation goes a long way. But the right fulfillment partner? That’s what keeps the whole thing running.

If you’re planning a global Kickstarter, you probably already know that international fulfillment is complicated. It’s no overstatement to say it can quickly become the most complex part of your campaign.

I sat in on a panel at GAMA 2025 called International Fulfillment and Logistics, featuring experienced partners from across the world: Matt Goldrick (Quartermaster Logistics, USA), Chris Matthews (ZATU, UK), Floris Toorenberg (Meeples Group, EU), and Paul Johnson (Aetherworks, Australia & New Zealand).

Together, they broke down what creators need to know about shipping products to backers in different regions, including tax registration, customs, biosecurity, and the paperwork that can make or break your campaign.

This post contains 8 of my favorite takeaways from that panel. Here, you’ll find practical advice drawn from years of experience handling Kickstarter campaigns large and small.

If you’re new to international fulfillment for Kickstarter, or just want to avoid costly mistakes, this is a great place to start.

1. You might end up working with multiple order fulfillment companies.

If you’re shipping a Kickstarter campaign worldwide, don’t expect a single fulfillment partner to handle everything. As Matt Goldrick from Quartermaster Logistics (QML) explained, even large, experienced U.S. companies outsource international fulfillment.

QML doesn’t handle UK, EU, or Australian fulfillment directly — instead, they rely on trusted regional partners: ZATU (UK), Meeples Group (EU), and Aetherworks (Australia and New Zealand). At Fulfillrite, we operate the same way, sometimes even sharing our clients with some of the companies mentioned in this post.

Each region has unique rules, import processes, and tax requirements. For example, what’s legal and simple in Australia might be a bureaucratic nightmare in the EU. Even two countries in Europe may require different paperwork. “It’s not just the EU,” said Floris from Meeples Group. “Norway and Switzerland aren’t part of it. You’ll need to know the difference or you’ll get double-taxed.”

Trying to manage each region on your own is technically possible, but time-consuming and risky. “You can work with all of us individually,” said Matt, “but then you’re managing four sets of taxes, four sets of paperwork.”

For most creators, it’s smarter to work with a central partner who coordinates across trusted local experts. These teams know the terrain — literally and figuratively — and can save you from expensive mistakes.

2. The UK has unique rules. If you ship there, you need someone who knows them.

Shipping within the UK is fast, reliable, and relatively inexpensive. As Chris Matthews from ZATU put it, “You can ship around the UK in one to two days max. Couriers are fairly reliable, and there’s no volumetric pricing — only actual weight matters.” You can even use large letter sizing for small items like spare parts or mini-expansions, which keeps postage costs low.

But creators still run into trouble. Why? “Speed issues are usually from lack of preparation,” Chris explained. “If your fulfillment partner doesn’t have your product data or SKU list in advance, things fall apart.” He also warned that some UK partners are slow to adopt new tech. “Ask them what tools they use. Can you see live updates? Do they have service-level agreements?”

Import rules are another sticking point. “Do not use your fulfillment partner as the importer of record,” Chris stressed. “It’s illegal.” You must register for a UK VAT number and an EORI number — even if you’re only selling one game. Both are easy to get, or you can hire a VAT agent to handle it for you.

Lastly, don’t reuse barcodes across different language versions of your game. “Same barcode on the English, German, and French versions? That’s a recipe for mistakes.”

3. The European Union has even more complex rules than the UK.

Shipping into the EU comes with a whole new set of challenges. As Floris from Meeples Group explained, many creators mistakenly assume the EU and UK work the same way — but they don’t. “The UK is not the EU. Norway and Switzerland aren’t either. They all have different rules, and if you don’t understand that, you’ll pay double tax or get stopped at customs.”

Like the UK, selling in the EU requires a VAT number and an EORI number. The EORI application is simple — just a 10-minute online form. You’ll also need to appoint a GPSR representative, which is essentially a local point of contact in case there’s a product issue. “It’s not about who’s at fault,” Floris clarified. “It’s about who can be reached in Europe if something goes wrong.”

Another key point: barcode hygiene. Make sure every SKU has a unique barcode — and don’t reuse the same code across language editions or product variants. Fulfillment centers need to identify items clearly and quickly.

Above all, zoom out. “Think about the big picture,” said Floris. “What’s your post-campaign strategy? Retail? DTC? Your fulfillment plan should support that long-term model, not just ship a few boxes.”

4. Australia & New Zealand: easy to ship in terms of tax, tough in terms of biosecurity.

Shipping to Australia and New Zealand is more straightforward than most people think — at least on the tax side. “You don’t need to register for VAT in Australia unless you’re doing over $100,000 AUD in sales,” said Paul Johnson of Aetherworks. “We can act as the importer of record and settle the GST on your behalf.” That alone simplifies the process for most Kickstarter creators.

But what Australia lacks in tax red tape, it makes up for in strict biosecurity. “Between September and April, anything coming from the Northern Hemisphere may need to be fumigated,” Paul said. “Books and games are low-risk, but it still helps to pre-treat the container.”

Creators must also include a timber declaration — pallets must be heat-treated or plastic. If not, the shipment can be held at port, and you’ll start paying demurrage fees: hundreds of dollars per day while customs sits on your container.

Other watchouts: lithium batteries, aerosols, and other “dangerous goods” are expensive to ship and best avoided.

And don’t forget geography. “Australia is big,” Paul warned. “Getting something from Sydney to Perth is like going from New York to San Francisco. Plan accordingly.”

5. Paperwork is the real work.

Shipping games internationally isn’t just about packing boxes—it’s about paperwork. All four panelists made it clear: documentation is what actually moves product through customs. “I’ve got great people in the warehouse to put tape on boxes,” said Paul Johnson from Aetherworks. “That’s not the hard part. This is the hard part.”

Every shipment should include a commercial invoice—not based on your retail price, but the cost of manufacture. Customs wants to know what the goods are actually worth, not what you’re selling them for. You’ll also need a packing declaration that details what’s inside each box and how many units.

If you’re manufacturing in China and shipping to Australia, a Certificate of Origin can help you take advantage of trade agreements like CHAFTA (China–Australia Free Trade Agreement), which can waive duties.

Beyond that, you’ll need the proper registrations: VAT numbers for the UK and EU, EORI numbers for importing, and a GPSR representative for Europe. Don’t forget scannable barcodes, either. “You don’t need a UPC unless you’re going into retail,” said Matt Goldrick. “But you do need a unique barcode that matches what’s in the system. That’s how pickers know what to pack.”

6. Avoiding common mistakes is half the battle.

Plenty of crowdfunding creators learn these lessons the hard way. The panelists shared a long list of common pitfalls that can derail fulfillment—or worse, cause customs to hold your shipment and charge you thousands in fees.

One of the biggest? Waiting too long to set up paperwork. VAT registration, EORI numbers, and GPSR reps all take time. “We’ve all had the Hail Mary container,” said Matt. “A call out of nowhere, saying ‘I think I shipped you a container six weeks ago—can you help?’ That’s when it’s too late.”

Another major issue is barcode confusion. “People put the same barcode on the English, German, and French versions,” said Chris from ZATU. “Then the warehouse can’t tell them apart.” That leads to mix-ups, delays, and angry backers.

Failing to plan for damage and overage is another risk. Paul from Aetherworks recommends always sending at least 5% extra stock. “Sometimes a forklift goes through the middle of a pallet. It happens. Better to be ready.”

And while some creators try to manage multiple fulfillment centers themselves, the overhead quickly adds up. Without a coordinator like QML or Fulfillrite, you’ll spend more time tracking tax filings than running your business.

7. You probably shouldn’t do DIY VAT registration.

You can register for VAT yourself—but should you? That depends on your time, comfort with bureaucracy, and risk tolerance.

In the UK and EU, VAT registration is legally required to sell to customers in those regions. “It doesn’t matter if you sell one game or a thousand,” Chris said. “If you don’t have a VAT number, it’s illegal.” You’ll also need an EORI number to import goods and a GPSR representative in the EU.

VAT registration is free if you do it yourself, and the process usually involves filling out a few forms online. But it’s easy to make mistakes. Some creators hire VAT agents to handle registration and quarterly filings for a flat fee—Chris mentioned his company charges around £400 for registration.

“It’s not that hard, but there’s a time cost,” said Floris. “If you like handling logistics and forms, go for it. But if your strength is creative work, it’s worth paying someone to do it right.”

A good fulfillment partner may even include EORI assistance as part of their onboarding process. Either way, get started early so your paperwork is ready before your games hit port.

8. Know when to consolidate and when to segment freight.

If you’re running a smaller campaign, you might assume international fulfillment is out of reach. Not true. The panelists emphasized that networks like Quartermaster Logistics can help creators of all sizes take advantage of consolidated shipping and regional fulfillment.

Paul Johnson explained that Aetherworks is part of Australia’s Trusted Traders Program, which allows them to consolidate goods from multiple creators into a single pallet. “I can have 10, 20, even 30 suppliers on one consolidated run,” he said. That way, you don’t have to ship a full container on your own just to reach Australian backers affordably.

This same principle applies in the EU and UK, where partners like Meeples Group and ZATU can integrate smaller shipments into broader fulfillment pipelines.

Of course, some campaigns are big enough to ship directly to each region. But if you’re under that threshold, the smarter move may be to work with a central partner like QML who routes inventory to regional experts.

“Find a company that can build your infrastructure,” said Floris. “It doesn’t matter if you’re sending 1,000 games or three per month. The network is already there—you just need to plug in.”

Final Thoughts

Kickstarter fulfillment doesn’t mean you have to become a freight expert or tax consultant. It does mean you need the right partners and a plan that goes beyond your campaign’s delivery date.

What stood out most from this panel wasn’t the complexity—it was the clarity these experts offered. The systems are in place. The networks are built. The biggest risk isn’t ignorance—it’s silence. Start conversations early. Ask questions. Double-check your assumptions.

You can’t eliminate every surprise, but you can avoid most disasters by treating fulfillment like the business function it is. That’s not glamorous, but it’s how campaigns turn into companies—and how creators stay in the game long after the first project ships.

If you’re thinking about making your board game in the United States, you’re not alone. Between rising overseas shipping costs, supply chain delays, and the threat of tariffs, a lot of board game publishers are considering manufacturing games in the US.

That’s why I sat in on a panel at GAMA 2025 called Domestic Manufacturing in the United States. The panel featured three experienced voices in the industry: Tavis Parker from The Game Crafter, Nick Haas from Delano Games, and Hung Le from Cartamundi. Each brought a unique perspective, from print-on-demand and small-run jobs to high-volume mass production.

In this post, we’re sharing 8 key pieces of wisdom from their discussion—covering everything from turnaround times and tooling to sourcing materials and setting realistic expectations.

Whether you’re a first-time creator or a seasoned publisher, this post is here to help you better understand what domestic manufacturing can (and can’t) do for your next project.

1. There are many reasons to consider manufacturing in the USA.

Manufacturing your game in the U.S. can help you avoid some of the biggest risks in the industry today—delays at sea, customs holdups, port strikes, and rising political tensions. “You don’t want to put all your eggs in one basket,” said Hung Le of Cartamundi, stressing the importance of diversifying your manufacturing sources.

Domestic production also gives you a major speed advantage. Nick Haas from Delano mentioned fulfilling a 25,000–50,000 unit order in just three weeks—something that would be impossible with a trans-Pacific supply chain. Shipping from a U.S. facility takes days instead of months, and eliminates overseas freight altogether.

Communication is also much easier. You’re in the same time zone, speaking the same language, and can often visit the factory in person. Finally, domestic production can reduce your environmental impact, especially as European markets push for stricter sourcing rules. FSC-certified paper is becoming more important—and harder to get.

2. U.S. manufacturing can do a lot — but there are some places where overseas manufacturers still shine.

The biggest challenge with U.S. manufacturing is cost. “The average Chinese worker makes in a day what an American makes in an hour,” said Nick Haas, pointing out the 7x wage difference.

Domestic plants use automation and tech to close part of that gap—but some labor-intensive tasks are still more feasible overseas. That includes things like stuffing tokens into cloth bags or assembling small parts by hand.

Certain components—especially plastics, bags, and novelty items—are hard to source domestically. Even Cartamundi, with full molding capabilities, still imports some specialty pieces.

There are also technological gaps. While U.S. printers are catching up, China still leads in gang-running multiple SKUs, swapping art mid-run, and producing at massive scale with extreme efficiency. “They’ve built entire systems around it,” said one panelist.

U.S. factories can often match the quality—but not the tooling or labor structure that makes it cost-effective at volume.

3. Different manufacturers have different specialties.

When considering manufacturing in the US, it’s important to recognize that different manufacturers perform better at different tasks.

The Game Crafter focuses on low-volume, custom-friendly manufacturing. Tavis Parker described their service as “the stepping stone” for game designers.

With 28,800 components in stock, no MOQs, and full online ordering, they’re ideal for prototypes and early-stage launches. They also offer a crowdfunding tool, custom 3D printing, and a concierge team for complex projects.

Delano Games shines in the 2,000–20,000 unit range. Nick Haas emphasized their speed and flexibility, including the ability to fulfill directly from the production floor to Kickstarter backers. Delano provides offset printing with attentive support.

Cartamundi handles the biggest jobs. Hung Le spoke about their 1.2M sq ft Massachusetts facility, built for large-scale runs of cards, packaging, and molded plastics. They print high-profile games like Pokémon and Monopoly, with strong security protocols and efficient logistics. They’re ideal for publishers who need scale and speed.

4. Paper is a huge part of board games, and sourcing it is about to become more complicated.

Starting in late 2025, new EU regulations will require proof that your paper products don’t contribute to deforestation. FSC certification will likely become the standard—but only about 15% of U.S. pulp currently qualifies.

That’s a concern for any publisher looking to export to Europe. Nick Haas from Delano Games raised the issue during the panel, noting that the change will especially affect smaller domestic forests for pulp, many of which are family-run and not set up to provide this documentation.

The scramble for certified stock could drive up prices and limit availability. Some manufacturers are already preparing. Tavis Parker mentioned buying larger paper reserves months in advance, not just to hedge against costs but to ensure they can meet demand without delays.

While not an immediate crisis, it’s a trend publishers need to watch closely if they plan to sell in Europe.

5. Domestic plastics and component limitations

If your game includes plastic pieces or metal tokens, domestic manufacturing may hit some roadblocks. As several panelists pointed out, the U.S. simply doesn’t have the same depth of component options as overseas manufacturers.

Plastics are a particular challenge—U.S. factories tend to focus on large-scale industries like automotive and pharmaceuticals. That leaves games with fewer affordable suppliers.

Cartamundi has 31 injection molding machines and can produce many standard pieces in-house, but even they acknowledge limits. For anything out of the ordinary, some turn to 3D printing farms, like those at The Game Crafter, to fill gaps.

Still, if your game requires labor-heavy assembly—say, sorting tokens into bags—expect higher costs or slower lead times. “That’s where China still wins,” said one panelist, referring to the ability to assign 50 people to an assembly line if needed.

Domestic capacity is improving, but specialty parts and fine assembly remain difficult to scale affordably in the U.S.

6. Game complexity impacts manufacturing decisions.

Not every game is a fit for domestic production. The more complex your components and assembly needs, the more likely you’ll need to look overseas. “If your game has punchboards with tokens that go into bags, that’s tough to do here,” said one speaker.

It’s not about quality—U.S. plants like Cartamundi and Delano can hit high standards—it’s about cost and logistics. When a game requires many steps, hands-on labor, or unique materials, Asian factories are still more equipped to handle the process efficiently.

Even high-capacity U.S. manufacturers sometimes recommend offshoring when a project exceeds what can be done cost-effectively in-house. On the flip side, if you’re working with a streamlined format—standard cards, simple boxes, or a single mold—it’s much easier to keep production local.

Complexity itself isn’t the issue. It’s whether that complexity requires resources and workflows that domestic facilities can handle at your scale and price point.

7. U.S. manufacturers can provide consulting services for complicated issues like file prep.

Interest in U.S. manufacturing has surged since COVID exposed the fragility of global shipping. Delays, lost containers, and skyrocketing freight costs pushed many publishers to explore domestic options. But that shift brings its own learning curve—especially for first-time designers.

“Design your files in CMYK, not RGB,” said Nick Haas from Delano. “300 DPI, full bleed, proper dielines—these are basic things that avoid disappointment later.”

The panelists agreed: better file prep saves time, money, and sanity. The Game Crafter’s platform helps with this through automated file checks and online pricing tools, but even then, early-stage creators often need help.

That’s why some companies offer concierge services or hands-on consulting. The goal is to guide publishers through the print process before costly mistakes happen. If you want your game to look great in print—and stay on budget—it pays to get familiar with production standards, or at least work with someone who is.

8. Think twice about pricing.

Domestic production is rarely cheaper—but many publishers are underpricing their games anyway. “If you’re selling a game for $20 and it costs you $9 [per unit] to print 2,000 copies, how do you make money?” asked one speaker.

Inflation, labor costs, and materials are all up—and it’s not sustainable to ignore that. Still, nobody wants to be the first to raise prices and risk losing sales. One solution: be transparent. “Spell it out,” said Tavis Parker. “Tell your customers the five reasons your game costs more now—paper, packaging, shipping, wages, benefits.”

If you’re clear and respectful, many people will understand. To paraphrase one panelist, consumers routinely spend $60 on takeout. A well-made board game should be worth that and more. If you believe in the product and you’ve run the numbers, don’t be afraid to charge what you need to. It’s not about gouging—it’s about survival, sustainability, and respecting your own work.

Final Thoughts

Domestic manufacturing isn’t a silver bullet—but it’s no longer a fringe option, either. It’s a viable path for many creators, especially those who value speed, flexibility, and long-term resilience.

The key is knowing what each manufacturer does best, understanding your game’s specific needs, and building relationships that go beyond simple transactions. The best results come from collaboration, not just cost comparison.

Every panelist emphasized one thing: this is still a people business. Whether you’re prototyping a passion project or shipping 50,000 units, your manufacturing choices shape more than your margins—they shape how quickly and reliably you can deliver what you’ve promised.

If you’re serious about publishing, it’s worth investing the time to learn the possibility of producing games in the U.S. It may not be a good fit for your business, but it’s worth considering all the options available to you before committing to manufacturing in China.

We asked 8 eCommerce operators and strategists a deceptively simple question: when do I need a 3PL? Their answers reveal that the decision is far more nuanced—and the stakes far higher—than most brands realize.

Every eCommerce founder hits the same inflection point, or at least hopes to.

You’ve heard many variants of this story. Orders keep rolling in, and the garage (or spare bedroom, or rented storage unit) is bursting. It’s the Shopify dream, come to bear fruit.

But shipping errors start to add up, and they go from rare to routine. And somewhere between packing boxes at midnight and fielding another angry customer email, a question starts nagging: is it time to outsource fulfillment?

There’s no universal answer, which is the frustrating part. The right time depends on a lot of different factors, including your business model, your operational maturity, and your product complexity. But chief among them all is whether fulfillment is helping you grow or quietly arresting your momentum.

Desiree Shank was an early hire at Shopify, co-founded the Just Startup Community, and now works at the intersection of TikTok live shopping and social commerce. She doesn’t mince words: “If fulfillment complexity is slowing growth, you’re already paying too much to keep it in-house. The real question isn’t, ‘Is a 3PL cheaper?’ It’s, ‘Does outsourcing unlock more revenue, stability, and scale than it costs?'”

Not everyone we talked to agreed. Chris Carroll is an Ecommerce Director at STARK. In the course of his career, he’s driven double-digit revenue growth across DTC and marketplace channels. That means he’s spent a good deal of time personally overseeing warehouse operations. His take runs counter to the prevailing wisdom: “in-house will get you better margins, faster problem resolution, and tighter inventory control and that is hard to argue with.”

Both are right. The question is which argument applies to your business, right now, at this stage, and for your goals.

That’s why we reached out to eight eCommerce professionals. These are all people who’ve collectively touched hundreds of millions of dollars in online sales. And they’re here to help you make the right call.

We asked them when to outsource fulfillment, and what goes wrong when companies wait too long. Then we asked them to help us run the math on whether a 3PL actually pencils out.

Here’s what they told us.

How Many Orders Do You Need Before Outsourcing Fulfillment?

Founders love a clean threshold. Give me a number, and I’ll know when to make the call. The experts we spoke with did offer numbers. But they all qualified those numbers with caveats.

Faheem Khalid is the COO and Head of Growth at Accelero, an Amazon Certified Marketplace Strategist. He’s spent 10+ years scaling DTC brands across Amazon, Walmart, and Shopify. He puts the range at the lower end: “I tell clients that they should seriously evaluate 3PLs around 500–1,000 orders per month (or 50–100/day consistent). If you have the space and the team, in-house typically wins the cost battle [below] 300–500/month.”

James Coccaro specializes in scaling DTC brands from early-stage through $50M+ in revenue. He has deep expertise in supply chain and fulfillment infrastructure. He’d start the conversation earlier than Khalid: “Most brands should start evaluating 3PLs around 15–25 orders per day consistently. By 50+ orders/day, you’re usually already behind if you haven’t modeled it.”

This lines up well with our experience as a fulfillment center. But others set the bar higher.

Jaime Hill has spent over two decades as an eCommerce and digital director across brands like Monsoon, Oak Furnitureland, and Avis. She’s a frequent speaker and judge in the UK eCommerce space. Her take is that “there isn’t one singular magic number, but in my experience most brands typically begin evaluating 3PLs somewhere between 1,000–3,000 orders per month.”

Deepankar Singh, an eCommerce growth advisor who specializes in Amazon 1P (first-party) and 3P (third-party) strategy across Indian, European, UK, US, and global markets, has a comparable take. “From what I’ve seen, brands usually start considering it around ~1,000 orders/month. That’s when fulfillment starts taking a lot of the team’s time and space and it begins pulling focus away from growth.”

So at this point, you’ve no doubt noticed that this range—roughly 300 to 3,000 monthly orders—is enormous. Asking “how many orders before outsourcing” is a bit like asking how many miles you should run before hiring a coach.

Forget About Order Volume (At Least For Now)

“It’s less about a specific order number and more about operational strain,” says Shank. Everybody we talked to echoed some version of this.

Coccaro rattles off the real trigger points. The list includes: multiple SKUs with variants, bundling or kitting, growing wholesale/retail alongside DTC, international shipping, and the founder spending more time shipping than selling.

Let’s focus on the founder-as-warehouse-worker problem. This came up in almost every conversation. And that’s absolutely as it ought to be. If your CEO is making post office runs instead of closing deals, the order count is beside the point. Something structural needs fixing.

Hill adds triggers that volume alone won’t surface: brands that “launch international shipping, start selling on marketplaces such as Amazon, or TikTok shop, need faster delivery options such as next day delivery, or introduce subscription or repeat shipments.” These are complexity triggers, not volume triggers. A brand doing 400 orders a month across three countries and two marketplaces might need a 3PL far more urgently than one doing 1,500 orders a month of a single SKU shipped domestically.

An Alternate Path: Dropship → 3PL → 1PL

Roy Steves brings a perspective that none of the other experts share, and it’s worth wrestling with even if you don’t fully agree.

Steves co-founded Poolaroo, a pool supplies retailer, and StatBid, a profitability-minded PPC and SEO agency for eCommerce brands. Before that, he was CMO of PoolSupplyWorld and VP of Digital Marketing at Leslie’s Poolmart. The detail that matters here, because he personally built the warehouse-management platforms that moved tens of millions of dollars in product per season. He’s seen fulfillment from the code level up.

His mental model isn’t “in-house vs. 3PL.” It’s a three-stage progression: “Dropship -> 3PL (because you need margins, but can’t handle a warehouse) -> 1PL (first-party logistics, because you’re big and sophisticated enough for a warehouse). 3PL is first party inventory with less direct overhead, but it doesn’t replace 1PL.”

In Steves’ world, 3PLs are a temporary means to an end. You start in-house, get big enough to outsource the work, grow more, and then get big enough to take it back in-house.

We included this take because it shows just how many ways there are to solve what looks, on the surface, like a pretty standard-issue supply chain problem. Most of the content you’ll find on when to outsource fulfillment treats a 3PL as the endgame. It’s the thing you graduate to, goes the logic.

Steves sees it as something many brands will eventually graduate through. It’s a minority view among our experts, but it’s grounded in direct experience scaling a company to two warehouses and 130,000 square feet of space.

The disagreement is narrower than it looks, though. Nobody here is arguing that 3PLs aren’t valuable. The question is whether the most successful eCommerce companies eventually bring fulfillment back in-house. For the vast majority of DTC brands, that’s a question for another year (or perhaps decade), if it ever becomes relevant at all.

Non-Obvious Signs You Need a 3PL

It’s not hard to spot the obvious signs that you need a 3PL. You’re out of space, shipments are late, and customers are furious.

Those aren’t hard to misread. By the time those hit, you’re already in triage mode. The signals worth watching are subtler: the kind you rationalize away or simply can’t see because you’re too busy taping up boxes.

1. Your Leadership Is Drowning in Operations

Every expert we spoke with mentioned this one. Every single one.

Coccaro’s version is the most vivid: the “founder or ops lead packing boxes at 10pm.”

Khalid frames it as an organizational disease. “Operational responsibilities consume the founder’s/team’s time, undermining product and marketing efforts.”

Singh describes the same thing from the customer-service side. “Shipping delays during promotions, rising support tickets about deliveries and founders spending too much time managing packing, inventory and dispatch instead of marketing or product.”

What makes this so dangerous is the compounding. A founder buried in logistics isn’t just losing hours. They’re losing the capacity to think about anything other than logistics. Product development stalls, and marketing campaigns don’t launch. Partnership conversations don’t happen. The business doesn’t slow down, but it does stop evolving.

2. Marketing Spending is Capped Because of Operations

You might not clock this one at first, because it disguises itself as caution. Sounds like good judgment. It’s not.

Shank flags it directly: “You’re holding back marketing because you’re afraid fulfillment will break.” Hill describes the same dynamic from the UK perspective: “[Marketing becomes] constrained by operations and the business avoids running campaigns because fulfillment cannot handle any spikes in demand.”

Sit with what that actually means for a second. You have a product people want. You have a marketing team (or a founder with a plan) ready to drive demand. And you choose not to because your backend can’t handle success. That’s not prudence. That’s your operations department setting a ceiling on your revenue.

3. Shipping Errors are Piling Up

Coccaro offers specific benchmarks. “Shipping errors creeping past 1–2%… Inventory accuracy below 98%… Cash stuck in inefficient reorder cycles.”

None of those numbers sound alarming on their own. But run them out and the picture becomes clear (and scary). A 97% inventory accuracy rate means roughly 3 out of every 100 orders might have a problem. Those 3 orders spawn customer service tickets, negative reviews, refund costs, and—worst of all—customers who simply don’t come back. You never see a dashboard alert for “quietly lost a loyal customer.”

Khalid highlights how insidious the decline can be. “Error rates are rising slowly (e.g., wrong picks), which will impact reviews and repeat rate a lot more than visible delays.”

That word slowly is doing heavy lifting. A sudden spike in errors gets noticed and fixed. A gradual creep? That one sneaks into your repeat purchase rate and your review average and lives there for months before anyone connects the dots.

Mark Taylor, a UK-based eCommerce CEO and managing director with deep expertise in digital strategy and business transformation, adds warning signs that are less metric-driven and more organizational. “Difficulty in recruitment and finding expertise. Negative customer feedback and poor reviews. Costs becoming disproportionate. Product margins shrinking.”

4. Your Staff Can’t Call Out Sick

Shank offers a gut-check that’s worth stealing: “If one warehouse employee calls out and everything falls apart, the system isn’t scalable.”

No need to belabor the point on this one. This question tells you something that a KPI dashboard might otherwise bury.

5. Inventory is Aging

Steves contributes a diagnostic that the other experts didn’t mention, drawn from his years building warehouse systems.

“The way I’ve approached it is to look at their inventory aging reports. If they’re struggling to manage their fulfillment efficiently, it’s going to show up as boxes that have been on shelves too long.”

Aging inventory is a proxy for operational friction, which includes problems like slow turns, inefficient picking, or forecasting problems. And all of these compound over time.

6. Fulfillment is Constraining Growth

Coccaro identifies “the biggest one” in his mind: “When fulfillment decisions start constraining growth strategy.

Khalid describes the same phenomenon from a channel perspective. “You reject wholesale/multichannel deals since your firm can’t scale up quickly enough.”

Hill quantifies the scaling problem. “Your unit economics cease improving and you need to hire more warehouse staff for each sales spike, leading to temporary labour cost increases and your scaling becomes inefficient.”

If you recognize yourself in more than two or three of these signs, the question has probably shifted from “when do I need a 3PL?” to “what took me so long?”

What Happens If You Wait Too Long to Outsource Fulfillment?

Delay has a cost. Most founders underestimate it, because the damage doesn’t arrive all at once. It accumulates, like interest on a debt you didn’t know you had.

1. Operational Chaos Becomes Normal

Coccaro has watched this movie enough times to name the three acts:

“They normalize chaos. What feels ‘scrappy’ is actually margin erosion.”

“They underprice fulfillment internally. Labor is treated as ‘free’ because it’s salaried.”

“They delay systems maturity. By the time they move to a 3PL, they’re migrating broken processes instead of clean ones.”

That third one deserves its own spotlight. A 3PL can’t fix bad processes. It can only execute the processes you hand off.

If you wait too long and outsource a mess, what you’ll get is a professionally managed mess. The onboarding will be rockier, the error rates will stay elevated longer, and you’ll be tempted to blame the 3PL for problems you baked into your own workflows.

2. Your Reputation Takes a Hit

Steves, who has watched this play out from both the operator and agency side, puts it starkly. “Reputation is everything, and slow time to ship and damage in transit tank that from customers you’ve already paid to attract. If your fulfillment isn’t supporting your reputation, that’s a sign that you should have considered fixes earlier.”

Shank catalogues what the customer actually sees. “Customer experience quietly declines: late shipments, wrong SKUs, slow refunds, limited tracking visibility.” That word quietly matters here, too.

Nobody calls you screaming about a package that arrived one day late. They just don’t order again. A thousand of those small, silent defections—spread over six months—will hollow out your customer base without ever triggering an alarm.

Singh sees the same dynamic. “The biggest one is operational stress during peak periods. Errors increase, delivery slows down and the team ends up firefighting logistics instead of focusing on scaling the business.”

3. You’re Forced to Hire a 3PL in a Crisis

The worst version of “waiting too long” plays out like this: a brand finally cracks under the pressure and tries to onboard a 3PL right in the middle of the crisis that forced the decision.

Shank has watched it happen. “The worst scenario is panic-migrating to a 3PL during Q4 or right after a viral spike. Onboarding while drowning is never ideal.”

Hill reinforces this from her experience across major UK and international brands: “Moving to a 3PL during a crisis is the worst possible moment, closely followed by migrating just before or during peak season.”

There’s a world of difference between the brand that evaluates providers calmly in February, runs a pilot in the spring, and migrates during a slow summer stretch—and the brand that panic-signs a contract in October. Hill notes that “brands that move early can design their ideal 3PL partnership.” The ones that move late are negotiating from desperation.

See Also: How To Choose An Ecommerce Fulfillment Partner

4. Your Growth is Slowed Down Arbitrarily

Here’s what delay actually costs in concrete terms. Coccaro: “I’ve seen brands lose 6–12 months of growth because fulfillment became the bottleneck.”

Six to twelve months. For a brand growing at 30–50% annually, that’s not a rounding error. That’s a material loss of revenue, market position, and momentum—the kind of setback that permanently bends a company’s growth curve.

Hill spells out the downstream effects: “Poor fulfillment quietly caps your revenue growth with poor delivery experiences reducing repeat purchases, slow shipping times reduce conversion and your international expansion ends up being delayed.”

The Case for Keeping Fulfillment In-House: When You Don’t Need a 3PL

Here’s where we need to pump the brakes.

Everything above might lead you to think that outsourcing fulfillment is always the right call. But that’s not always so. And in fact, Chris Carroll makes the strongest case we heard for keeping operations in-house.

This is not a theoretical argument, either. It comes from direct experience overseeing warehouse operations while simultaneously managing DTC and marketplace channels at scale.

Carroll’s position: “Most of the time, [brands are better off keeping fulfillment in-house], provided the business has wholesale and/or DTC channels. If they need to be competitive on Amazon, they can go FBA to gain Prime sales.”

1. In-House Fulfillment Gives You Greater Control

“In-house will get you better margins, faster problem resolution, and tighter inventory control and that is hard to argue with,” Carroll says.

He backs this up with operational specifics that anyone who’s run a warehouse will recognize: “I’ve overseen a WHS operation and a tremendous amount of issues can happen on the daily. Inbound damage, missing inventory, freight not picking up, etc. You need someone you can trust to remedy quickly and report back so you can move forward.”

In practice, that means if there’s a problem in your warehouse, you can walk over and fix it.

If you have a problem in a 3PL’s warehouse, you open a support ticket and wait. Even with high-touch, easy-to-reach companies, you still need to call or email.

Maybe it gets resolved in an hour, maybe it takes a day. And if you’re shipping perishable goods, high-value items, or anything with tight delivery windows, that gap in response time is the kind of thing that costs you customers.

2. Nobody Cares About Your Business Like You Do

Carroll’s bluntest observation: “Where 3PL’s can sell you on a strong program, ultimately, it is not their business or goods. There is a difference in level of ownership, from small execution errors like wrong packaging to bigger strategic calls.”

This is the argument that 3PL advocates tend to wave away, but it’s stubborn. A 3PL is running your fulfillment alongside dozens (maybe hundreds) of other clients. Your 3PL might be hitting every SLA on paper while still eroding something you can’t easily measure: the feeling a customer gets when they open the box.

You can mitigate this to a large degree by choosing a fulfillment partner carefully, should you choose to outsource. But Carroll’s point is nevertheless one worth sitting with before you sign papers.

3. Outsourcing Can Be Expensive (If You’re Not Careful)

Carroll challenges the assumption that outsourcing is inherently cheaper, pointing to costs that tend to materialize after the contract is signed. “They don’t understand the all-in costs of outsourcing, whether added storage fees, adding new service levels or even that of disposal.”

(We’ll talk about all-in costs a little further in this post.)

Then there’s inventory reconciliation. “It is often unknown that it may take two weeks for inventory reconciliation for a specific SKU. That two-week reconciliation window has real downstream consequences for reordering and cash flow, and it rarely shows up in the initial pitch.”

Two weeks is a long time to not know exactly what you have on shelves. You can’t reorder confidently. You risk overselling. Your working capital sits locked in stock you can’t properly account for. And you might just see that reality reflected in your next statement of cash flows.

4. In-House Scales, Too

Carroll pushes back on the assumption that 3PLs are inherently more scalable. “If you’re doing 30% more shipments than expected, in-house labor is generally easier to scale than renegotiating service tiers with a 3PL mid-contract.”

And he closes with an observation that no spreadsheet captures: “Visibility and control of your stock and warehousing operation is a competitive asset that rarely shows up in a spreadsheet comparison.”

Carroll’s argument is strongest for brands that have the operational chops, the capital, and the leadership bandwidth to do fulfillment well. Not every brand has those resources. And for many founder-led DTC companies, the honest truth is that their in-house fulfillment will never reach the level Carroll describes. That gap is precisely what a 3PL exists to fill.

Steves—who, remember, sees 3PL as a stepping stone toward eventually running your own warehouse—validates the trajectory Carroll describes. “My last company grew to two warehouses and 130k sqft and was only going to keep growing till we were acquired by a national brick and mortar chain… But as we grew, our warehouse operations improved, but as the engineer building those systems, I’ve only ever seen it work well.”

Carroll and Steves are both describing what happens when a company has the resources to invest in first-party logistics at scale. It’s a real destination, although not likely the next stop for most eCommerce businesses reading this article.

How to Calculate the True Cost Before You Outsource Fulfillment

Whatever you decide—whether it be 3PL, in-house, or some hybrid—the decision needs to be grounded in accurate numbers. And the single most consistent finding across our expert interviews is that most brands are working with bad numbers.

Beware Underestimation

Three experts, independently, arrived at the same figure.

Coccaro: “Most brands underestimate in-house cost by 20–40%.”

Hill: “Most growing DTC brands discover that their true cost for in-house fulfillment is between 20–40% higher than they first thought.”

Shank frames the same problem from the comparison side. “Most brands compare a 3PL’s pick-and-pack fee to ‘what we pay our warehouse guy.’ That’s incomplete.”

We collected this information by direct messages with professionals, and these operators have no relationships with one another. Yet they arrived at very similar figures, which is not a coincidence.

The 20–40% gap isn’t a rough guess. It shows up reliably, every time, when someone finally sits down and tallies all the costs instead of just the obvious ones.

What to Count

Coccaro breaks in-house cost into five buckets:

1. Fully burdened labor (wages + payroll tax + management time)
2. Rent + utilities + insurance + equipment depreciation
3. Packaging + waste + damage replacement
4. Software stack (WMS, shipping tools, inventory systems)
5. Opportunity cost (what leadership could be doing instead)

He then compares it to:

1. Pick/pack fees
2. Storage
3. Inbound receiving
4. Freight optimization leverage
5. SLA performance

Hill offers a complementary framework with four cost layers.

1. Direct labor – including warehouse staff salaries, any temporary staff costs, and management time allocation
2. Warehouse overheads – [including] rent, business rates, utilities, insurance and equipment costs
3. Packaging and shipping materials
4. Shipping costs – often completely underestimated, but savings alone can often offset most fulfillment fees.

Taylor insists on total-cost accounting, including “a complete costs comparison analysis, including everything. For example, for people; salary, NI, bonus, overtime, absence, sickness, recruitment costs, recruitment time, downtime, etc.”

Singh offers a practical summary, saying that “I usually encourage brands to look beyond shipping costs and include labor, warehouse space, packing materials, tools and the time the team spends managing fulfillment. When you add everything up, the real cost is often higher than expected.”

That fifth bucket in Coccaro’s framework is opportunity cost, which many founders are tempted to omit entirely. If the CEO is spending 15 hours a week managing fulfillment instead of closing a wholesale deal, launching a new product, or building a marketing channel, what’s that worth? It doesn’t show up on any invoice. It might be the single largest expense in the operation anyway.

What to Compare Against

Once you have your real in-house cost per order, you compare it against the total 3PL cost—not just the pick-and-pack fee. That means storage, receiving, returns handling, shipping rates, technology fees, and any value-added services.

But a straight cost comparison still misses something. Coccaro reframes the question. “The decision isn’t just ‘is 3PL cheaper?’ It’s ‘does 3PL unlock scale, speed, and margin expansion?'”

Shank illustrates why that reframe changes the math. “Sometimes a 3PL looks $1 more expensive per order on paper. But if it unlocks 30% revenue growth, faster shipping, better CX, and founder time back, the math changes quickly.”

Carroll’s Counter (Again, It’s a Fair One)

Carroll argues that in-house costs are actually easier to project. “Keeping fulfillment in-house should be an easier projection based on your space, headcount, and the freight charges. You know when carriers usually raise rates and plan for those updates. Outsourcing comes with more variables as service levels are added as volume, SKU count, or service requirements shift.”

He’s not wrong, as 3PL contracts introduce variable costs that can surprise you. This is particularly the case as you scale and start hitting new service tiers or adding capabilities you didn’t anticipate at signing. The predictability of in-house costs is a genuine advantage for brands that can manage the absolute level of those costs.

Or Reframe the Fulfillment Cost Question Entirely

If you get nothing else from this section, take this.

Hill suggests the most useful reframe. “You can reframe the question by asking whether fulfillment needs to be a core competency of your brand or not, rather than [whether] a 3PL solution [is] cheaper.”

Coccaro puts it more directly: “If fulfillment isn’t a competitive advantage, it shouldn’t live in your garage.”

For some brands—the ones Carroll describes, with sophisticated operations and strategic reasons to maintain direct control—fulfillment absolutely is a competitive advantage. For the rest, it’s a necessary function that’s eating resources better spent elsewhere.

So When Should You Outsource Fulfillment? A Decision Framework.

Eight experts. Wildly different backgrounds—agency operators, DTC scalers, marketplace strategists, eCommerce directors who’ve personally run warehouse floors. Here’s what we’d distill from all of it.

The volume benchmarks are starting points, not gospel. Most experts land somewhere between 500 and 3,000 monthly orders as the evaluation window. “How many orders before outsourcing” is the wrong question asked at the right time. Instead, use that range as a trigger to start researching, not a trigger to sign a contract. Then let your own spreadsheets and analysis help you make the final call.

The real signal is operational, not numerical. When fulfillment constrains your growth strategy, consumes leadership bandwidth, or degrades customer experience, you’ve probably already waited longer than you should have. Multiple experts used some version of the phrase “you’re already behind.”

Don’t wait for a crisis. Scrambling to onboard a 3PL during Q4 or after a viral moment came up as the worst-case scenario in nearly every interview. The best time to outsource fulfillment is during a calm stretch when you can evaluate partners strategically and migrate without the building on fire around you.

Calculate the full cost. In-house fulfillment is 20–40% more expensive than most brands think. Include burdened labor, overhead, packaging waste, software, and the opportunity cost of leadership time. Then compare against total 3PL cost, not just the pick-and-pack rate.

Know when in-house is the right answer. Some brands genuinely have the capital, the operational expertise, and the strategic reasons to keep direct control. If fulfillment quality is a true brand differentiator for your company, Carroll’s argument deserves serious consideration.

Consider the trajectory, not just the moment. Steves’s dropship → 3PL → 1PL framework is a useful mental model even if you never reach the 1PL stage. It reminds you that the fulfillment decision isn’t permanent. A 3PL that serves you well at 2,000 orders a month might not be the right fit at 20,000—and that’s okay.

Shank captures the throughline that ran across nearly every conversation we had. “Fulfillment isn’t just a cost center. It’s a growth lever. The goal isn’t to spend less—it’s to build a system that supports the scale you’re aiming for.”

And Steves, characteristically, resists the binary entirely. He says he “rare[ly] think[s] about it as a matter of exclusivity,” noting that dropship, 3PL, and first-party fulfillment all have their advantages and can coexist within the same operation.

The right answer for your business might not be “outsource everything” or “keep everything in-house.” It might be a hybrid—FBA for Amazon, a 3PL for DTC, and in-house for wholesale or custom orders. Build the fulfillment infrastructure that lets your business do what it does best.

And if packing boxes at midnight isn’t what you had in mind when you filed your LLC paperwork? Then you now have a framework for figuring out what comes next.

International eCommerce is an exciting opportunity for businesses to reach customers around the world. But how do you provide high-quality shipping service to the world at large?

You need to build a fulfillment network. This is especially true given recent changes to global trade policy and U.S. tariffs.

Making a fulfillment network requires connecting multiple regional or national 3PLs (third-party logistics providers) through software. Doing this properly can make a big difference to backend store operations. But that doesn’t mean it’s easy to start!

To help you get started, we’ve put together this step-by-step guide to help you build a top-notch fulfillment network.

Why Establish a Fulfillment Network?

A fulfillment network is a system of logistics providers that handle storage, packing, and shipping of products. As mentioned earlier, 3PL providers are crucial in eCommerce since they can take care of these logistics functions without the eCommerce store owner’s constant input.

A single fulfillment center is a partner. Multiple fulfillment centers working together is a network. Having a network helps businesses scale operations and make sure products reach customers efficiently.

When set up properly, a multi-location fulfillment network offers four key advantages:

1. Faster Delivery Times: Localized 3PLs can ship products quickly to nearby customers. For instance, if you have a 3PL in Germany, your customers in Europe will receive their orders much faster.
2. Reduced Shipping Costs: Strategically placed 3PLs minimize shipping distances and costs. This means if you have a 3PL in the US and another in Australia, you can serve customers in those regions without paying exorbitant shipping fees.
3. Improved Customer Satisfaction: Faster deliveries and lower shipping costs make customers happy. When customers get their orders on time and don’t have to pay high shipping fees, they are more likely to shop with you again.
4. Trade Policy Benefits: With warehouses in multiple countries, you may be able to avoid or reduce customs duties by shipping from within a given trade zone. This can help you reduce your exposure to tariffs and lower your overall landed costs.

Put more simply, if you have the right warehouses in the right locations, you can ship your orders to far more places for much cheaper.

The 2 Parts of a Fulfillment Network

To create a successful international fulfillment network, you need to focus on two main components. The first component are 3PLs, who will handle the physical act of shipping. The second component is software, which will send each order to the right 3PL.

#1: Regional/National 3PLs

To build a fulfillment network, you need different 3PLs to act as nodes.

When selecting 3PLs, consider factors such as:

• Location: Choose 3PLs that are strategically located to cover your key markets. For example, if you sell a lot in Asia, you could have a 3PL in Hong Kong or Singapore.
• Reliability: Partner with 3PLs known for their reliability and good track record. Check reviews and ask for references.
• Cost: Make sure the 3PLs offer competitive pricing without compromising on quality.
• Services Offered: Look for 3PLs that provide a range of services, from storage and packing to shipping and returns management.

You want to be strategic with where 3PLs are located. For instance, a US-based eCommerce business might work with 3PLs in New York, Los Angeles, and Miami to cover the entire country with cost-efficient two-day shipping.

#2: Fulfillment Software

Having different 3PLs is a huge part of building a fulfillment network. But when the orders come in, someone – or something – needs to divide up the work. Software can do that for you.

Here is what you would need to consider when choosing software:

• Order Routing: The software should automatically route orders to the nearest 3PL to the customer. For example, if a customer in the UK places an order, the software should route it to your UK 3PL.
• Inventory Management: Keep track of stock levels across all your 3PLs. This will help you avoid stockouts and overstocking.
• Real-Time Tracking: Provide customers with real-time tracking of their orders. Nervous customers like to check their order status. Being transparent with them will help build trust.

The right fulfillment software, such as Orderhive or Cin7, to name some examples, can help streamline operations. When set up correctly, this can seamlessly divide up orders, sending them to the warehouses best equipped to handle them.

How To Build Your International Fulfillment Network in 5 Steps

Building an efficient international fulfillment network is obviously a large project. But you can still break it down into smaller, more manageable tasks.

Here are five straightforward steps you can follow to get started.

#1: Research and Select Regional/National 3PLs

Start by identifying potential 3PL partners in the regions you want to serve. Research companies that have a good reputation and offer the services you need, such as storage, packing, and shipping. Look for companies that are known for reliability and efficiency.

• Evaluate Capabilities: Make sure the 3PLs can handle your product types and volumes. For example, if you sell electronics, ensure the 3PL has experience in handling and shipping such items.
• Negotiate Contracts: Once you find suitable 3PLs, negotiate contracts and service level agreements (SLAs). Clear SLAs help set expectations and ensure that both parties understand performance standards.

Choosing the right 3PLs helps you lay a strong foundation for your fulfillment network. No matter how well you set up your software, if something goes wrong with the physical shipping process, the result is the same: late packages that cost too much to ship!

#2: Choose the Right Fulfillment Software

Next, you need to select order routing software that can manage your network efficiently. Explore popular options like Salesforce, ShipStation, NetSuite, and others.

A few factors you will need to consider include:

• Compatibility: Ensure the software works well with your existing systems. That includes your eCommerce platform and other existing inventory software you use.
• Scalability: Choose software that can grow with your business. As your order volume increases, the software should be able to handle the extra load without slowing down.
• Ease of Use: The software should be user-friendly for your team, making it easy to manage orders and track shipments.

#3: Integrate 3PLs with Your Fulfillment Software

Set up integrations between your 3PLs and your order routing software. You want seamless data exchange. That’s how you make sure orders get processed smoothly.

Set up the software to route orders based on factors like location, stock levels, and shipping costs. For example, an order from a customer in France should be routed to your European 3PL, while an order from Australia should go to your Australian 3PL.

Once you do this, you can use the software to automate and streamline your fulfillment process. This reduces errors and speeds up deliveries.

#4: Test the Network

This is not a flashy tip, but it’s expensive to ignore it! Before launching your network fully, you need to test it carefully.

Steps in the testing process include:

• Simulate Orders: Create test orders in your system to simulate actual customer purchases. Test various scenarios, such as different regions and shipping methods. You want to make sure the network can handle all possibilities.
• Run Pilot Programs: Start with a small group of real orders to gauge performance. Watch key metrics like delivery times, accuracy, and customer satisfaction.
• Collect Data: Gather data from test and pilot orders to identify any issues or bottlenecks. Use this information to refine your network before a full rollout.

During your testing process, you might find out, for example, that orders to Asia are taking too long. This could lead you to choose a different 3PL in that region or adjust your order routing rules.

#5: Launch and Monitor the Network

After testing, you can roll out the fulfillment network. For best results, gradually scale up operations to include all regions and handle more orders. You want to make sure all 3PLs and software are fully integrated and operational.

Again, you will need to use your fulfillment software to track performance metrics like delivery times and order accuracy. This is, ultimately, about making sure items get to the right people in the right place, on-time and intact.

Keep an eye on this data and that will help you track trends and see what can be improved. Keep tweaking order routing rules and stay in touch with your 3PL partners. Optimization and communication go a long way!

Common Fulfillment Network Challenges

Building and maintaining an international fulfillment network can be quite challenging. But if you’re smart about how you approach it on a strategic level, your main concern will be handling day-to-day operational issues.

Here are some common obstacles and how to overcome them.

#1: Complex Logistics Coordination

Managing multiple 3PLs across various regions can get complicated. Each 3PL might have different systems and processes, making coordination a headache.

Using centralized fulfillment software as we’ve stated earlier will help you coordinate logistics seamlessly. The main thing you need to do once selecting and rolling out good software is to regularly test and monitor it.

With enough order volume, small quirks in routing can lead to big additional expenses in postage. It’s worth making a habit of routinely monitoring your order routing software to make sure it’s working well.

#2: Customs and Regulatory Compliance

Different countries have varied customs regulations and compliance requirements. This can be a hassle to navigate, especially if you’re shipping to multiple countries.

Work with 3PLs that know how to handle international shipping and customs. They can keep your company compliant and help you avoid costly delays.

#3: Cost Management

Shipping internationally can be expensive, with fluctuating costs due to factors like fuel prices, tariffs, and currency exchange rates. To keep shipping costs down, make sure your order routing is optimized to choose the most cost-effective route. This is one of the biggest things you will want to get right.

Plus, once you consider the recent U.S. tariff increases in 2025, it’s more important than ever to monitor landed costs. That is, the total cost of getting a product to the customer, including duties and customs fees. If you’re shipping internationally, use HS code optimization and work closely with customs brokers to keep costs down.

Once you have enough leverage, it might also be smart to negotiate favorable rates with the 3PLs in your network. If you ship enough orders with them, they will likely want to keep you as a client and may be more flexible. Those price breaks can add up!

#4: Inventory Management

Keeping track of inventory across multiple locations can be tough. You need to know exactly what’s in stock at each 3PL to avoid stockouts and overstocking.

To that end, the best thing you can do is make sure your order routing software also has robust inventory management functions. This is something worth vetting before you commit wholeheartedly to using a system as a core piece of your fulfillment network.

#5: Technology Integration

Fulfillment networks are built on computer networks. That means keeping up a smooth data exchange between your system and your 3PLs. But ask any IT person you know, and they’ll tell you – different systems don’t always communicate well with each other.

From time to time, run and test and make sure all your 3PL integrations are working properly. The last thing you want to see is orders going out late because of some obscure technical hiccup. Much better to be proactive here!

#6: Customer Satisfaction

You know what it’s like to get a package late! As you can imagine, any delays and errors in fulfillment can negatively impact customer satisfaction. Customers expect fast and accurate deliveries, and any glitch can make them mad.

Use your fulfillment software to track how long orders take to be processed and delivered. If you see delays, look into the problem and address the root cause, such as switching to a faster 3PL or improving your order processing system.

#7: Trade Policy Changes

International trade policies can shift rapidly, impacting duties, tariffs, and shipping regulations. The U.S. tariff increases in 2025 are a perfect example of how sudden changes can raise costs and complicate fulfillment logistics.

To protect your business, stay informed about major trade developments and maintain flexibility in your fulfillment network. Working with multiple 3PLs in different regions gives you more options if tariffs or regulations make one shipping route less viable.

Depending on how big your business is, you might also want to consider diversifying suppliers and fulfillment partners across multiple countries. This can be a good way to hedge against future trade disruptions.

Final Thoughts

For large eCommerce shops, having a well-connected fulfillment network is incredibly important. Having the right software and the right 3PLs is what makes it possible to ship across the world quickly and cost-effectively.

If you set up your fulfillment network properly, you can keep customers happy and expand your global reach. All while keeping costs down too!

Yes, setting up a fulfillment network is a huge task. But if you break it down into its two main parts – picking the right software and picking the right warehouses, it’s a lot easier to understand.

Don’t let the complexity scare you. There are a lot of good software options and a lot of good 3PLs in the world. If you find the right ones to work with, you can get a fulfillment network built out in record time.

Getting your board game in stores isn’t just about making a great product—it’s about understanding how retailers think. At GAMA Expo 2025, a board game convention for industry folks in the know, I sat in on a panel called Things Retailers Wish Publishers Knew.

The panel featured Andrea Robertson of Rain City Games, Kylie Primus of Games Unlimited, and Courtney Hartley of Bonus Round Café.

Each panelist brought a different perspective—from traditional hobby stores to game cafés that focus on teaching and playing. What they all had in common: years of experience figuring out what sells, what sits on shelves, and what frustrates the people doing the selling.

In this post, we’ve pulled together 10 key takeaways from the conversation. If you’re a publisher looking to build strong retail relationships and actually move units, this is a must-read.

Getting your board game in stores successfully starts with listening.

1. Retailers Get More Email Than They Can Answer

Retailers get buried in emails—Kylie mentioned getting 64 solicitations in a single week. If they didn’t ask for it, chances are it’s going to spam or a filtered folder they might check once a week.

And even if it gets seen, many emails say the same thing or offer no clear next step. What retailers want is simple: clarity and action. Can they order now? Can they flag a reminder? Is there a direct link?

One retailer said, “If I can’t do something about this now, I’m not going to remember your game in November.”

Sending multiple emails about the same game without adding anything new can actually turn them off. So before you hit send, ask yourself: is there a clear reason for this email to exist? If not, it’s just adding to the noise.

Tip: If your email doesn’t give the retailer a clear action they can take, rewrite it so that it does.

2. Retailers Learn About New Games The Same Way Players Do

Solicitations are just one piece of the puzzle—and they’re not exactly as important as a corner piece in a traditional puzzle. You might be surprised to hear that retailers learn about new games the same way players do: conventions, staff picks, reviews, customer requests, and social media buzz.

A game that comes recommended by staff, gets demoed at a convention, and shows up in multiple places is much more likely to get on the radar. One retailer said they rely on a staff member who “watches pretty much every board game review podcast there is,” while another emphasized listening to customer chatter.

Going after multiple touchpoints matters. Being seen more than once builds interest and credibility. You can’t rely on one email to carry all the weight.

Tip: Think like a marketer—frequency builds familiarity. One email won’t do it.

3. Packaging Needs To Be Practical

If your box doesn’t tell the story, the game won’t sell. Retailers want customers to pick up the game and immediately understand what it is and whether it’s for them.

That means a strong back-of-box layout with visuals of what the game looks like on the table—one retailer said they’d flip a box over and be forced to pull up BoardGameGeek just to explain what it is. That’s a lost sale waiting to happen.

“Can your demo team sell the game using just the back of the box?” one panelist asked. If not, something’s missing. The sides of the box matter too—many stores shelve spine-out, not face-out. If the game name isn’t visible, it gets ignored.

Non-standard box sizes also create headaches. “If it doesn’t fit on the shelf, it goes on top… and no one sees it.”

Tip: Ask your demo team to try selling the game only using the box. If they can’t, fix the box.

4. Release Timing: Avoid the Holiday Black Hole

If your game hits shelves between mid-October and mid-January, it’s likely to be ignored. Retailers are swamped—managing inventory, restocks, holiday traffic, and end-of-year admin.

“Anything we get during that window is probably never going to be seen,” said one panelist. That doesn’t mean the game won’t sell at all—but retailers won’t have the time to learn, demo, or actively promote it. Exceptions are titles they’ve already preordered or expansions to games with a strong existing presence.

For everything else, timing is critical. Want to make a push for the holidays? Hit retailers in September or early October with a short list of your top games to stock. Make it easy to pick, easy to order, and ideally, easy to sell.

Tip: September and early October are ideal for pitching holiday titles. Send a clear list of your top 3 SKUs—make their job easier.

5. Direct Sales: Some Do It, Many Don’t

Some retailers will order directly from your website. Others won’t touch direct ordering at all. The reasons vary—time, logistics, staffing, and habit. “I love ordering direct,” one panelist said, “but a lot of stores are too small or too busy to manage it.”

Offering direct ordering is still worth doing—but don’t assume all retailers will use it. You need to offer multiple paths: distribution, direct sales, preorder portals, bundles, whatever works. Just avoid bundle structures that force a 1:1 ratio of base games to expansions—that causes inventory headaches.

And never assume what “every retailer” will or won’t do. As one panelist put it, “Retail is not homogenous. If someone tells you no store will ever do X, ignore that advice.”

Tip: Offer multiple options for ordering. Even if only a few stores use them, those few may be your champions.

6. Be Smart About Expansions

Retailers are cautious with expansions—especially for games they haven’t sold before. If the base game has a proven track record or an active local fanbase, bringing in expansions makes sense. But if the game is new to the store, most retailers will only take a chance on the core box.

One panelist explained they’ll sometimes bring in expansions at a 2:1 or 3:1 ratio to base games—but only when demand is already there. Packaging matters too. If the expansion comes in a blister pack or small format that has to hang far away from the base game, it might not sell at all. Ideally, the expansion should shelve next to the original—clean, simple, and obvious.

Tip: Don’t bundle expansions in ways that force retailers to sell them with the base game. Give them flexibility.

7. Know Your Pricing Sweet Spots

If you’re pricing a game for retail, the consensus was that $40 is a magic number. That’s the average ticket price in many stores, and it’s what customers are most comfortable spending on a casual visit.

Games around $70 are still viable but need to justify the cost—retailers will hesitate unless they already believe in the title. And once you cross into triple-digit pricing, the sales drop significantly.

Games at $100+ need to be special to move. Meanwhile, sub-$20 games fall into impulse-buy territory, especially if they’re easy to demo or explain.

Licensing complicates this: if adding an IP pushes a $35 game up to $50, you’ll lose customers who like the brand but not enough to pay a premium.

Tip: Price smart. IPs that inflate cost too much can tank sales, even if the game’s good.

8. Respect the Game Café

Game cafés aren’t just places to play—they’re powerful sales channels. A demo copy in a café might get played dozens or even hundreds of times. That kind of exposure builds familiarity and turns casual players into buyers.

But publishers often overlook cafés or saddle them with case minimums to access demo copies. That’s a mistake. One panelist explained that cafés act as long-tail ambassadors, especially for evergreen titles.

They don’t want free product—they want a fair way to buy demos without hoops. And they need them at the same time as the sellable inventory, not weeks later. If you wait, they’ll open a sellable copy themselves. That’s one fewer game on the shelf, just because you didn’t ship things together.

Tip: Let cafés buy demos at a discount with no hoops. It pays off long-term.

9. Promos & Marketing Materials: Tread Carefully

Promos can help—but only if they’re handled right. If a publisher advertises a promo item and the store doesn’t have it, customers may walk away. “Do you have the promo?” is a question that can cost a sale. And if the retailer didn’t even know a promo existed, that sale’s gone.

Materials matter too. Posters are hit or miss. Many cafés and premium stores want clean aesthetics—bold or poorly designed posters won’t go on the wall. What works better? Coasters, clever leave-behinds, and materials that feel native to the space.

Café owner, Courtney Hartley, suggested dual-purpose materials: evergreen on one side, new product on the other. Don’t just print and ship stuff—think about where it’s going and whether it will actually get used.

Tip: Make promos store-friendly, and offer marketing materials that actually suit the store type.

10. Final Advice: Just Talk to Retailers

There’s no substitute for a real relationship. GAMA panels are great, but one-on-one conversations are better.

Want to know how your packaging lands? Ask.

Want to see if your bundle structure works? Ask.

Some publishers do this well—reaching out to trusted stores for a private Zoom or quick call with their team. Those sessions are invaluable. Just be respectful of time.

Cold calls won’t get you far, and walking in unannounced during peak hours is a sure way to get ignored. Build relationships early, and keep them going between shows. It’s worth it.

Tip: Pick 3–5 retailers to build real rapport with. Zoom calls go a long way.

Final Thoughts

Retail is messy, inconsistent, and deeply human. No two stores run the same way, and no one approach works for every buyer. That’s not a flaw—it’s the reality of selling games through people instead of algorithms.

If you want to succeed in retail, you need more than a great game. You need to think like a partner. Make things easier, not harder. Stay curious. Listen more than you pitch.

And remember that retailers aren’t gatekeepers—they’re allies. Their feedback isn’t just critique — it’s insight into what actually moves units in the real world.

Most consumer packaged goods (CPG) brands aren’t rolling in venture capital. And that’s okay.

You don’t need a million-dollar ad budget to succeed. But you do need focus. Clear strategy. The willingness to test things fast helps, as does a little grit.

To help you understand what CPG marketing looks like on a shoestring budget, we’ve brought in Alison Smith and Karin Samelson. They are the Cofounders of UMAI Marketing and have worked with dozens of CPG brands. They know what it takes to grow, without breaking the bank.

I sent them a bunch of questions by email, and they were kind enough to provide thorough responses. You can find their expertly written thoughts below, cited extensively throughout the post.

1. What’s the biggest challenge CPG brands face when trying to stand out?

“Money is number one, then time,” say Alison Smith and Karin Samelson, co-founders of UMAI Marketing.

It’s not that you can’t grow without outside funding. But it’s harder. Much harder.

“If a CPG brand doesn’t have the funds to hire help to sell and market their brand,” they explain, “then they are going to need to invest their own time to do so.”

There’s no shortcut around it. Either you’re hiring experts or doing the work yourself. And that means wearing every hat in the business—founder, marketer, operations, finance, customer service, and more.

“It’s not impossible to grow a successful brand without raising capital,” they add, “but it’s going to take a founder who is willing and has the time to wear all the hats.”

That’s the tradeoff. Cash or time. If you don’t have one, you need a whole lot of the other.

2. How has digital marketing changed how CPG brands sell their products?

A lot has changed in just the last few years. Long gone are the days when you needed a slick commercial and a big ad spend to make an impact.

“Less traditional advertising with overly thought-out (and EXPENSIVE) ad campaigns,” the co-founders say, “and more of a focus on of-the-moment, user-generated content that’s social first.”

That’s good news for smaller brands. You don’t need a creative agency or a big media buy. You need a phone, a little time, and a willingness to try things.

“CPG brands need to be nimble,” they explain. “Willing to test content. Not be afraid to have pieces of content fail. And have a human element to their marketing.”

This isn’t about getting it perfect. It’s about getting it out there.

When something resonates, double down. When it flops, move on quickly.

Being small gives you an edge here. Big brands have layers of approvals and brand guidelines to get through. You don’t. That means you can move fast, ride trends, and talk like a real person—because you are one.

Want to start simple? Share a founder video. Show your product in action. Repost customer content, ask questions, and answer comments. Or put another way: keep it real.

It doesn’t have to be polished. It just has to be you.

3. What’s the best way for CPG brands to drive sales in retail stores?

Digital and physical sales are more connected than most people think. If you want your product to move off the shelf, you have to do more than just get into the store—you have to drive people there and make sure the staff knows what they’re selling.

“Geo-targeted social ads with retailer coupons are one of the best ways to get people into stores and actually buy your product,” the co-founders say.

They recommend platforms like Aisle, which help brands offer digital coupons tied to specific retail locations. When a customer redeems the coupon, you get proof of purchase. That’s real ROI.

But don’t stop there.

“In addition to running ads,” they add, “have a good relationship with your buyer, schedule store demos, and educate store staff on your product.”

That last part often gets missed. If a store employee doesn’t understand what makes your product special, they’re not going to push it. But when they do understand? You’ve got an ally in the aisle.

“You have to build support both outside and inside the store,” they say. “That’s how you drive sales.”

4. How much does brand storytelling really matter for CPG marketing?

“A lot,” the co-founders say. “Especially if you don’t have million-dollar budgets.”

You can have the best product in the world, but if people don’t know your story—or worse, don’t feel anything about it—you’re just another jar on the shelf.

“If you don’t build that know, like, trust with your audience,” they explain, “then you’ll never achieve quality growth.”

This isn’t just about having a good origin story. It’s about giving people a reason to care. A reason to buy from you instead of the bigger, cheaper, or more familiar brand next to you.

“Give people a reason to support and rally behind you,” they say. “Even if you already have an awesome product. That reason is usually your story.”

And that story doesn’t have to be flashy. It just has to be real.

Did you start this company because of a personal need? Are you obsessed with your ingredients? Is your family involved? Are you fighting to stay independent?

Tell that story.

5. Does influencer marketing actually work for CPG brands?

Short answer: yes. But only if you do it right.

“Well, Poppi just got acquired for almost $2B,” say Alison and Karin. “So I think that answers your question!”

Poppi’s success with influencer marketing is impressive. But the co-founders make it clear—you don’t need VC money to make this strategy work.

“If you’re tight on cash,” they say, “find partners who really believe in your brand story + product, and may be willing to promote it for commission only (to start).”

That’s the key. Don’t chase big-name creators. Focus on real fans with loyal, engaged audiences.

And avoid the one-off $10K video trap.

“Stay far (far) away from influencers who immediately come to the table with ‘It will cost $10K for 1 video,’” they warn. “It’s absolutely outrageous what some of these content creators are charging.”

Even if you could afford it, it’s rarely a smart bet.

“Content quantity is important in this day and age,” they explain. “The odds aren’t in your favor for success with ONE video.”

Instead, think long-term.

“Negotiate a longer-term partnership to show their audience that they’re a true fan,” they say, “and not just peddling a new weekly product that doesn’t stick.”

That kind of repeat exposure builds trust—and trust leads to sales.

6. How can CPG brands use customer data to make better marketing decisions?

Good news: you probably already have a lot of what you need.

“There are plenty of platforms that you’re likely already using,” the co-founders say, “like Shopify, Meta, TikTok, Google Analytics. These give you a broad idea of who your customer is.”

But that’s just surface-level. To go deeper, you have to ask questions.

“To go deeper,” they advise, “survey your customers post-purchase. Use an app like KnoCommerce, or send an email.”

And make the questions count.

“Ask them: How they first heard about you. What they like or dislike about your products. What’s important to them in your category. What brands they also buy. And any additional feedback.”

That kind of insight is gold.

“Knowing who your customers are is essential to crafting marketing campaigns,” they say. “You can’t make smart decisions if you’re guessing.”

So stop guessing. Ask—and then actually use what you learn.

7. What’s an underrated CPG marketing strategy that more brands should try?

“There’s not a one-size-fits-all strategy that works for every CPG brand,” the co-founders explain. “Our approach is to at the very least, use a platform to create a community (like IG or TikTok), have a way to acquire new customers (like Influencers or Social advertising), and have a way to further indoctrinate and increase lifetime value (like through email marketing).”

That’s not flashy. But it’s effective.

Community. Acquisition. Retention. Miss any one of them, and you’ll stall out.

Community means showing up on social and giving people a reason to connect. Acquisition is how you bring new people in—whether through ads or creator partnerships. And for retention?

“Email marketing,” they say, “is a way to further indoctrinate and increase lifetime value.”

It doesn’t have to be complicated. But it does need to be consistent.

8. How can smaller CPG brands compete with big-name companies?

Let’s be honest—big brands have a lot of advantages. But speed and authenticity usually aren’t on that list.

“Big-name companies have to jump through hoops when it comes to creating content,” the co-founders say. “Endless chains of approval and watered-down ideas.”

That’s where small brands can win.

“Smaller CPG brands can be quick to react to trends,” they explain, “and be a part of the conversation with their fans + audiences.”

You don’t need corporate approval. You don’t need a six-week rollout. You can post now.

“Show up where they are on social,” they say. “And chat with them.”

That might mean replying to comments, responding to DMs, or hopping into a live video.

It sounds simple. That’s because it is.

This isn’t about glossy branding. It’s about trust. And trust is something big brands can’t buy—but you can earn.

9. What’s the biggest difference between marketing for DTC vs. retail CPG brands?

“More real-time data to help you optimize and grow quicker with D2C brands,” say Alison and Karin.

When you’re selling direct-to-consumer, you get instant feedback. You can tweak your ads, adjust messaging, and see the results in real time.

“With retail,” they explain, “we use a lot of the same channels, but our store data is delayed and not as transparent, so we have to be very aware of what we’re testing in these periods between receiving store data.”

That slower feedback loop makes testing trickier—but not impossible. It just means you need a plan, and you need to be patient.

10. What CPG marketing trends should brands pay attention to in the next few years?

“While we wish we had a crystal ball and knew of the newest, hottest social channel before everyone else,” the co-founders say, “right now we are completely focused on marketing & spending efficiently on the social platforms that work for CPG (like Instagram & TikTok).”

No need to chase every shiny new platform. If something’s working, get better at it.

“That being said,” they add, “we do share what we’re seeing as social trends each month in our Trend Report!”

The point is to stay aware without getting distracted. Keep your marketing grounded in what already moves the needle—and test from there.

Final Thoughts

There’s a kind of freedom that comes with being a small brand. You can move faster. Speak more honestly. Build a real relationship with the people who buy from you.

That advantage disappears the moment you start playing by someone else’s rules—chasing trends that don’t matter, copying campaigns that don’t fit, or spending like you’ve got cash to burn.

What Alison and Karin lay out here isn’t complicated. But it is disciplined. It’s about showing up, testing ideas, staying human, and knowing your customer better than anyone else.

If you’re willing to do that work—consistently—you’ll build something that not only lasts, but grows.

Not through hype. Not through luck. Just through good marketing, done right.

Want to get organic traffic to your store so you can make some sales? Ecommerce search engine optimization, or SEO, is how you do that.

Optimizing your website for search engines will help increase visibility, attract potential customers, and improve your chances of turning those visitors into buyers.

SEO can be broken down into a bunch of smaller disciplines. There’s technical SEO, which is about your site’s speed, structure, and security. Then there’s on-page SEO which is focused on making individual pages more searchable. Then there is content marketing and link building, which is about making pages people want to read and then getting those pages in front of readers.

It’s a lot to take in, especially if you don’t have a technical background. It’s for that reason that we compiled this guide to give you some actionable tips to help you get started.

So let’s begin with a quick definition of eCommerce SEO.

What is Ecommerce SEO?

Ecommerce SEO is all about optimizing your online store to rank higher in search engine results. Unlike general SEO, eCommerce SEO zeroes in on product and category pages, optimizing for relevant keywords, and enhancing the user experience to turn visitors into customers. It targets specific search terms to attract shoppers actively looking for the products you sell.

Good SEO impacts your store’s visibility, making it easier for customers to find your products. High search rankings lead to increased organic traffic and better conversion rates. Effective SEO strategies also boost your online presence, helping you attract and retain customers, which ultimately drives sales and growth.

In this guide, we’ll provide tips on how exactly you can optimize for SEO.

Technical SEO Tips

Optimizing the technical aspects of your site is crucial for better search engine rankings. But technical SEO can get complex if you research it online.

To help you get started, here are some concrete steps to help you optimize your technical ESO.

#1: Optimize your site structure.

A well-organized site structure is a must for SEO. As Nikola Baldikov, CEO of Inbound Blogging, suggests, “start with defining your categories. They should be logical and intuitive, so both users and search engines can browse the website easily.”

He continues, saying, that “if you don’t know where to start, try checking what your competitors are doing and gathering some ideas. Simply uploading products without considering the organization can cause your visitors to get confused and hurt your sales.”

#2: Make sure your website is mobile-friendly.

Mobile optimization is key since search engines prioritize mobile-friendly sites. After all, 45% of web users shop through their phones.

Brandon Schroth, Founder at Reporter Outreach, emphasizes that “mobile phones are the most popular form of devices used to perform online shopping.” He goes on to say that “if a website is not mobile optimized, user experiences may be imperiled, in addition to search rankings being affected.”

Make sure your site is responsive and adapts to different screen sizes. This is because a mobile-friendly site enhances user experience, reduces bounce rates, and boosts search performance. Or, put in a less technical way, people stay on your site for longer and are more likely to buy.

#3: Improve site speed.

Fast-loading websites rank higher and offer a better user experience. “Speed matters more than you think,” says Nathaniel Miller at The SEO Marketing Dad. “Make sure your site loads fast and looks great on mobile. Customers expect quick, seamless experiences, and Google rewards it too.”

If you want to improve your site’s load time, then optimize images, turn on browser caching, and minimize HTTP requests to improve loading times. Use tools like GTMetrix to find and fix speed issues.

#4: Secure your site with HTTPS.

Security is a ranking factor, and HTTPS ensures that data exchanged between your site and users is encrypted. Make sure you have a valid SSL certificate to secure your site. Additionally, HTTPS improves user trust and can lead to better search engine rankings, as search engines prefer secure sites.

If you have trouble doing this, use Why No Padlock to troubleshoot.

On-Page SEO Strategies

On-page SEO is all about optimizing individual web pages to rank higher and attract more relevant traffic from search engines. Here are some specific tips you can apply today to improve your on-page SEO.

#5: Optimize product pages with targeted keywords.

Make sure to incorporate relevant keywords naturally in your product titles and descriptions. Use keywords that your potential customers are likely to search for. Be sure to also include them in headings, subheadings, and bullet points. This helps search engines understand your content and rank your pages higher for those specific terms.

But that said, avoid the temptation to stuff keywords into product titles and descriptions. You instead want to incorporate relevant keywords naturally. Tom Jauncey of Nautilus Marketing advises that you “optimize product pages with unique, keyword-rich descriptions and high-quality images. Too many eCommerce sites rely on manufacturer descriptions, which can hurt rankings. Make sure each product page offers value in terms of content.”

#6: Use high-quality images and optimize alt text.

“The first SEO tip for an eCommerce site is image optimization,” says SEO consultant, Jase Rodley. “Since eCommerce is all about visuals, make sure all product images are high quality and have descriptive alt text with relevant keywords. This helps with SEO and accessibility.” He also recommends using user-generated content like customer reviews and testimonials, which he says, “adds fresh unique content to your product pages and builds trust with potential buyers.”

#7: Create compelling meta descriptions.

Meta descriptions are short descriptions of your page that can be sent to search engines. Usually, they are 160 characters at most.

You need to write concise and compelling meta descriptions for each page. This will involve summarizing the page content and including targeted keywords.

Now you should know – meta descriptions not always appear in search results. It depends on the search terms used and, frankly, whether or not Google feels like using your meta descriptions.

But all the same, well-written meta descriptions increase the odds that searchers turn into visitors.

#8: Optimize URL structures for clarity and keywords.

Create clear, concise URLs with relevant keywords. Avoid long, complex URLs. Google, and other search engines, tend to dislike long URLs or ones that contain irrelevant information like random numbers.

Additionally, as Ross Kernez from SEO Meetup suggests, building links from trustworthy websites in your industry can further enhance your site’s rankings by signaling credibility and relevance to search engines. “Aim to get links from well-known, trustworthy websites in your industry,” says Kernez. “These good links help boost your site’s ranking in search engines.”

Content Marketing for SEO

Creating valuable content is a good way to improve your search rankings. Sometimes, this means improving the quality of your product pages with reviews or FAQs. Other times, it means creating blog posts, videos, and other forms of content to help answer questions that your customers may have.

No matter how you choose to go about it, content marketing is a proven way to help boost your SEO.

#9: Start a blog related to your niche.

It’s not relevant for every niche, but it works like a charm when it is! Regular blog posts can improve your search rankings and also help you establish your site as an authority in your industry.

Blogging allows you to create keyword-rich content that attracts organic traffic. In order to do this, write about topics relevant to your niche, addressing common questions and sharing useful knowledge.

#10: Use user-generated content.

Encourage customers to leave reviews and testimonials on your site. User-generated content (UGC) adds credibility and naturally incorporates relevant keywords.

“Feedback and reviews from your existing customers offers social proof and helps to convince and convert new customers,” says Michelle Symonds, CEO of Ditto Digital.

It’s not hard to understand why search engines like UGC. Much like human beings, search engine bots like seeing proof that your brand is as good as you say it is!

Positive reviews can also improve your search rankings and attract more visitors by showing that you have satisfied customers.

Building up UGC takes time. But one way you can speed up the process is by remembering to ask customers to leave reviews. Many will if you remember to ask!

#11: Build a keyword-rich FAQ page.

Create an FAQ page that addresses common questions and concerns related to your products. As you answer questions, you will naturally use keywords in the questions and answers.

“I would recommend that sites prioritize their product descriptions,” says Kim Butler from Online Optimism, “being sure to answer any potential questions their customers might ask. You could also include this in frequently asked questions after descriptions to add more value.”

In addition to being good for SEO, adding FAQs improves user experience, on top of simply driving organic traffic to your site.

Link Building Techniques

Search engines tend to favor websites that other sites link to. When other sites link to your website, these are called backlinks. The more high-quality backlinks you have, the better your website will rank.

So here are some tips on how you can build up your backlinks.

#12: Implement a link-building strategy.

“Link building, [such as] building links to the root of your domain via brand mentions, is not only important but is one of the most natural ways to obtain backlinks over time,” says John White from Complete White Label. “I recommend doing this via expert commentary campaigns.”

That’s just one technique you can employ though, as there are a lot of ways you can get backlinks. Many of them boil down to networking.

To acquire quality backlinks, reach out to the owners of larger sites. Offer to create guest blog posts or strike up a partnership. A lot of this will come down to outreach, often cold outreach, done via email or social media.

Another good way to build up your link profile is by getting mentioned in the media. You may also consider using websites like Qwoted or HARO to get in touch with reporters.

#13: Partner with influencers for content outreach.

Collaborate with influencers to create and share content that includes links to your site. Influencers can reach a wider audience and provide high-quality backlinks. This not only improves your link equity but also drives targeted traffic.

“Apart from increasing your credibility,” says Brandon Schroth from Reporter Outreach, “this will also help expand your brand’s reach. Moreover, these collaborations help in producing creative and original content that can be published on social networks and other digital media, thus generating quality backlinks and increasing the visibility of your website.”

Overall, this is a smart way to increase brand awareness. This is especially true in some niche markets such as cosmetics.

It’s also useful to remember that influencers aren’t just people with big Instagram or TikTok followings. Reporters, reviewers, bloggers, and even community organizers are all influencers in the broader sense of the term. Don’t overlook them because of all the people talking into ring lights!

#14: Use internal linking wisely.

“Don’t skip out on the importance of internal linking,” advises Nathaniel Miller from The SEO Marketing Dad. “Internal linking is a powerful way to guide users and spread link equity. Don’t overlook it.”

Internal linking helps distribute page authority throughout your site and improves navigation. Link related products, blog posts, and category pages to enhance user experience and SEO. Be sure your most important pages receive the most internal links.

You will also want to make sure you use descriptive anchor text. That means avoiding turning words like “here” into links. The linked text itself needs to tell you something about the page that is being linked to.

Advanced SEO Tips

SEO advice can become very complex. If you follow all of the previous tips but are still looking for further ways to improve, here are a few more things you can do.

#15: Use schema markup for rich snippets.

Schema markup helps search engines understand your content. When you use schema markup, it can improve search result visibility with rich snippets.

Rich snippets include additional information below the meta description in the search result. That might include a product rating, number of reviews, price, delivery cost, returns policy, and similar information.

Paul DeMott, CTO at Helium SEO, explains that using it for “highlights like stock, ratings, and pricing can boost your presence on search engine result pages by offering rich snippets.”

In order to add rich snippets, you need to implement schema markup. This can get complex, so here is a guide on how you can do this in Shopify.

While complex, it is often worth it. That’s because rich snippets improve click-through rates by making your listings more attractive.

#16: Optimize for voice search.

Voice search is becoming more common. So think about the kinds of keywords people will use when using Siri for search.

Think about how you can get your pages to rank when using natural spoken language. Think about the kind of long-tail keywords that reflect how people speak.

Truthfully, this is very hard to do. But if you answer common questions directly in your content, such as descriptions, you will improve your odds of appearing in the voice search results. This is because of the conversational nature of copywritten text online.

For more information, check out this post by Design Rush on voice search best practices.

#17: Focus on local SEO if applicable.

You might also consider optimizing your eCommerce site for local search if you have a physical store or target a specific region. Include your business address, phone number, and operating hours on your site. Use local keywords.

If nothing else, create a Google My Business listing to improve your visibility in local search results.

#18: Use comparison pages.

“Comparison pages targeting keywords like ‘Product A vs. Product B,’ are perfect for capturing bottom-of-funnel shoppers who are ready to buy but need that final push,” says John Butterworth of Mint SEO.

“They’re searching for specific product comparisons, so give them a clear breakdown of features, benefits, and pricing to help them decide. If your page has a clear winner, it’s likely the customer will purchase that product straight after reading.”

#19: Make gift guides for seasonal SEO.

Another underrated tip, advocated for by Hemapriya Natesan is creating seasonal guides. She says that you can “create blogs centered around popular themes, like holiday gift guides, that incorporate long-tail keywords.”

On those pages, you can “showcase your products with high-quality images, customer experiences, and descriptions that illustrate why they’d make thoughtful gifts.”

It should be noted this can be a solid way to acquire first-time customers since shoppers tend to be more open to new brands during the holidays.

Final Thoughts

When it comes to SEO, there is one animating principle. Make a site that people want to find!

In practice, that means creating a site that is easy to use, secure, and loads quickly. That’s where technical SEO comes in. Every single page needs to be useful, which is where on-page SEO is handy.

The best sites make content that users want to find and distribute it to other websites where it can be found. To accomplish that, you need content marketing and link-building.

Take a few of these tips and think about how you can apply them to your site. There’s a good chance that they’ll help you improve your eCommerce SEO game!

Further Resources

For further learning and implementation of advanced SEO techniques, consider the following tools and resources:

• Google Search Console: Monitor and maintain your site’s presence in Google search results.
• Ahrefs: Comprehensive SEO toolset for keyword research, backlink analysis, and site audits.
• Moz: Offers tools and resources for SEO learning, including keyword explorer and link-building strategies.
• SEMRush: An all-in-one marketing toolkit for SEO, including competitive analysis and site audits.
• Yoast SEO: A popular WordPress plugin to optimize on-page SEO.
• Neil Patel’s Blog: Extensive resources and guides on SEO best practices and strategies.

FAQ

How long does it take to see results from eCommerce SEO?

SEO is a long-term strategy. You might see some improvements in 3-6 months, but significant results typically take 6-12 months or longer. Technical fixes like site speed improvements can show faster results, while content marketing and link building take more time to compound.

Should I hire an SEO agency or do it myself?

It depends on your budget, time, and technical comfort level. If you’re just starting out, focus on the basics yourself—technical SEO, product page optimization, and creating quality content. As your business grows, consider hiring professionals for more advanced strategies like link building and technical audits.

How do I choose the right keywords for my products?

Start with how your customers actually search. Use tools like Google’s Keyword Planner or Answer The Public to find relevant terms. Focus on a mix of high-volume competitive keywords and longer, more specific phrases that your ideal customers might use. Don’t ignore local keywords if you serve specific geographic areas.

Is it worth optimizing for voice search?

Voice search optimization is becoming increasingly important, especially for mobile users. Focus on natural, conversational language in your content and FAQ sections. Answer questions directly and concisely, as voice assistants often read featured snippets aloud.

How many keywords should I target per page?

Focus on one primary keyword per page, with 2-3 related secondary keywords. Avoid keyword stuffing—search engines prefer natural, helpful content over pages crammed with keywords. Your primary keyword should appear in the title, URL, and naturally throughout the content.

Do I need to optimize every single product page?

Yes, every product page should have unique, optimized content. Avoid using manufacturer descriptions across multiple products. Each page should have unique titles, descriptions, and relevant keywords while maintaining helpful, readable content for your customers.

No matter where you go – Kickstarter, Indiegogo, Patreon, GoFundMe, or somewhere else – one thing is clear. Crowdfunding is growing by leaps and bounds.

In North America alone, $17.2 billion was generated through crowdfunding campaigns in the year 2020. That’s up 33.7% from the year prior. Also in 2020 – the middle of a pandemic – almost 6.5 million crowdfunding campaigns were launched.

For many startups, the question is no longer “should we launch a crowdfunding campaign” but rather “where should we launch our crowdfunding campaign?”

And that’s a good question. One that’s often answered by defaulting to Kickstarter, because it is the most popular crowdfunding platform.

But what about Indiegogo?

The plain fact is that some products do really well on Kickstarter, and others do really well on Indiegogo. Each website has a dedicated community of people willing to back crowdfunding projects. Each website is capable of helping crowdfunders succeed.

But some products are just a better match for one platform over the other. Here’s how you can make your choice between Kickstarter and Indiegogo.

What is crowdfunding?

Crowdfunding is a way to raise money from a large group of people, usually online. Instead of relying on one investor, you get small amounts from many. It’s popular for launching new products, creative projects, and businesses. Kickstarter is the most popular crowdfunding platform, with Indiegogo being in the top 5.

Anyone with an idea can set up a campaign and ask for support. People who believe in the idea contribute. In return, they often get rewards like early access to the product.

Crowdfunding has changed how people fund projects. It makes it easier to bring ideas to life without needing a big loan or investment. All you need is a good pitch and an audience willing to back you.

What is Kickstarter?

Kickstarter is one of the oldest crowdfunding platforms, having started back in 2009. It’s known for creative projects like art, games, tech, and – of course – board games.

You can’t just launch any project you want, though. Kickstarter has strict rules on what is and isn’t eligible to fund on their platform.

Plus, Kickstarter is based on an all-or-nothing model. If you don’t hit your goal, no one’s card is charged, and you get nothing.

What is Indiegogo?

Indiegogo is another popular platform. It’s less popular than Kickstarter but has a more flexible platform. Tech and gadgets seem to do particularly well on Indiegogo.

Indiegogo allows a broader range of projects and has fewer rules. That means some projects, like those related to personal causes or charitable campaigns, can be funded through Indiegogo, even when Kickstarter says no.

Indiegogo also allows creators to choose between all-or-nothing or keep-what-you-raise funding options. That means if you reach, say, 70% of your goal, you can keep the funds you raise, whereas on Kickstarter you would get nothing.

What other crowdfunding platforms are there?

There are tons of crowdfunding platforms online. Many, like Patreon or GoFundMe, don’t necessarily immediately come to mind when you say “crowdfunding”, but still count because they are based on raising small donations from a lot of different people.

Bearing that in mind, there are plenty of crowdfunding platforms besides Kickstarter and Indiegogo. Some are better for personal causes, while others focus on helping startups raise capital. Here’s a quick look at some of the most popular alternatives:

• GoFundMe: Best for personal causes and emergencies.
• Patreon: Focuses on ongoing support for creators through monthly subscriptions.
• StartEngine: A platform for equity crowdfunding, aimed at startups seeking investors.
• Gamefound: A crowdfunding platform exclusively for board games.
• Crowdfunder: Focuses on helping startups raise capital from investors.
• Fundable: Allows startups to raise equity or rewards-based funds.
• Republic: An equity crowdfunding platform for startups and real estate.
• Crowdcube: A UK-based equity crowdfunding platform aimed at helping companies raise investment.

These platforms serve different purposes. Some focus on personal causes, while others target startups or ongoing projects. Choose based on your needs—equity, rewards, or charitable giving.

Not every platform fits every project. For instance, GoFundMe works well for raising money in emergencies but wouldn’t be suitable for launching a tech startup. Equity platforms like StartEngine or Republic are perfect if you’re looking to offer investors a stake in your company.

3 most important factors to choose between Kickstarter vs. Indiegogo

When you choose between Kickstarter and Indiegogo, there are only three factors that should make a decisive difference: your product type, the rules, and whether you want partial funding access.

There are plenty of differences between the platforms, to be sure, and we’ll talk about those. But these three factors are, by far, the most important. Below is explanation of why this is the case:

1. What platform will be the best fit for your product?

Kickstarter is best for creative projects. Think games, films, and art. Even Kickstarter’s branding leans heavily into creativity and artistry, in much the same way that Adobe’s does.

Indiegogo, on the other hand, covers a broader range of categories. But among them, projects in the technology, fitness, outdoor, and home categories tend to do well.

You need to go to the platform your audience expects you to be on. Launching a board game on Indiegogo would be a mistake. But that would not be the case if you launched a new consumer electronic product on Indiegogo.

2. Are your product and company able to follow the rules?

Kickstarter has strict guidelines. It doesn’t allow charities, personal causes, or any project that isn’t focused on creation.

Indiegogo’s rules are more relaxed. If your project doesn’t follow Kickstarter’s rules, this could be your better option. This would be the case for charity or for personal causes. There’s simply no use in trying to launch projects like that on Kickstarter, since the manual review process will eliminate them before they have a chance.

3. Do you want the ability to take partial funding if you underperform your goal?

Kickstarter is all or nothing. You either hit your goal, or you get nothing. It’s great for ambitious projects with big goals, where not having enough capital would lead to the creators having to invest far too much of their own money to ship far too few products.

Indiegogo offers flexible funding. If you want to keep whatever money you raise, no matter if you hit your target, Indiegogo’s flexibility gives you that option. To be clear – Indiegogo still offers all-or-nothing funding as an option too. But the point is that you can choose in advance to keep the funds if you don’t raise enough to reach your goal outright.

Flexible funding is useful for creators who can still succeed even with partial funding. If you want to take advantage of that, you can’t use Kickstarter.

Kickstarter (Pros)

Kickstarter is a household name in a way that other crowdfunding platforms simply aren’t. It’s this brand name – and the community that comes along with it – that set Kickstarter apart since it helps with reach, success odds, media exposure, and community-building.

1. Kickstarter has a larger audience.

Kickstarter is the largest crowdfunding platform. Even though you should build your own audience before launching, you will still see a huge spike in attention just by the act of launching on Kickstarter. This makes it easier to attract even more backers, creating a virtuous cycle.

2. Kickstarter success rates are higher.

Kickstarter campaigns generally have a higher chance of meeting their funding goals compared to other platforms. The all-or-nothing model encourages backers to help you reach that target. This gives creators a better shot at full funding.

3. The media loves Kickstarter.

Kickstarter projects often get media coverage, especially if they are unique or innovative. The word “Kickstarter” itself rather than “Indiegogo” or “Patreon” or some other crowdfunding platform tends to get the attention of journalists.

When you land press coverage, it can help drive even more attention and backers to your campaign. It’s simply easier to do that with Kickstarter than other platforms.

4. Kickstarter’s fixed funding model reduces the risk of being underfunded.

By only allowing funds to be collected if the goal is met, creators avoid being stuck with less money than they need. This ensures that you get enough resources to complete your project. It’s a safeguard against underperformance.

In fact, Kickstarter’s strict insistence on all-or-nothing funding has likely contributed to its success as a platform. Reducing the risk of creators having to fulfill orders without enough funding reduces the risk of backers paying for products and receiving nothing. It likely has helped Kickstarter’s reputation.

5. Kickstarter generally has better analytics.

Both Kickstarter and Indiegogo have built-in analytics tools. But Mark Pecota, CEO of LaunchBoom, says in his article comparing the two platforms that “in my experience, Kickstarter has better integration and the data tracked in Google Analytics almost identically matches the data tracked on your Kickstarter campaign.”

6. Kickstarter has a thriving community of creative projects.

Kickstarter is home to a passionate, engaged audience that loves supporting creative ventures. This community boosts projects in categories like art, film, and games. It’s hard to measure the impact of culture on a crowdfunding platform overall, but let’s not forget that Kickstarter is home to “superbackers” who have supported more than 25 projects with pledges of $10 or greater in the last year.

7. Kickstarter will pay all funds after 14 days, holding none back.

Once your campaign ends successfully, Kickstarter transfers the funds quickly. The 14-day period is short, allowing you to start using the money right away. There are no additional holdbacks or delays. Indiegogo, by comparison, holds onto about 5% of the funds to issue to backers in the event of refunds.

Kickstarter (Cons)

Kickstarter also has its downsides. The platform has some limitations that you should be aware of prior to launching.

1. Kickstarter manually reviews projects and has strict rules.

Each project must pass Kickstarter’s approval process, which can be time-consuming. The platform has strict guidelines on what projects are allowed. This can be a hurdle for creators with unconventional ideas.

2. Flexible funding is not an option on Kickstarter.

Kickstarter uses an all-or-nothing model, meaning you must meet your goal to get any money. If you fall short, you get nothing. Some creators simply hate the idea of working hard on a crowdfunding campaign only to end up empty-handed and this lack of flexible funding can be a dealbreaker for certain projects.

3. Kickstarter’s page builder is notoriously hard to use.

Kickstarter’s tools for creating campaign pages are known for being clunky and difficult to navigate. Creators often struggle with formatting and design. This can make it hard to build a professional-looking page.

4. Kickstarter does not have a platform for post-campaign fundraising.

Once your campaign ends, there’s no built-in way to continue raising funds on the platform. Kickstarter doesn’t offer tools for ongoing support like some other platforms do. This limits creators who want to extend their campaigns.

This forces a lot of creators to use third-party tools like BackerKit, Gamefound, or even Indiegogo InDemand to continue raising funds after the completion of their projects.

5. Kickstarter has relatively few project categories.

Kickstarter focuses heavily on creative projects and has fewer categories for business or personal causes. This can make it hard for some campaigns to find a home. If your project doesn’t fit their mold, you might have a hard time raising enough funding.

Indiegogo (Pros)

Though it is less popular than Kickstarter, Indiegogo has some attractive features for campaign creators. In particular, it’s known for its flexibility and openness to various project types.

1. Indiegogo allows flexible funding.

Unlike Kickstarter, Indiegogo gives you the option to keep whatever you raise, even if you don’t hit your full goal. This reduces the risk of walking away empty-handed. Flexible funding is perfect for creators unsure about meeting their target.

2. Indiegogo has a broader range of product categories.

Indiegogo welcomes projects that range from creative endeavors to personal causes and tech innovations. That makes it more versatile for projects that might not fit into Kickstarter’s stricter guidelines.

3. Indiegogo is open to more countries.

Indiegogo is available to creators in a wider range of countries than Kickstarter. This makes it more accessible to a global audience. It’s a great option for international campaigns seeking a broader reach.

4. Indiegogo allows for post-campaign funding via Indiegogo InDemand.

Once your campaign ends, you can continue raising money through Indiegogo InDemand. This feature lets you keep accepting contributions even after your initial goal is met. It’s perfect for projects that want to maintain momentum.

If you want to do this with Kickstarter, your only choice is to use a third-party pledge manager such as BackerKit. Although it should be noted that Kickstarter has been researching and beta testing a system for post-campaign funding.

5. Indiegogo’s page builder is more flexible.

Indiegogo’s tools for creating your campaign page offer more customization options than Kickstarter. You have greater control over the design and layout. This flexibility makes it easier to create a polished, professional page.

If you are particularly tech-savvy, you’ll be pleased to know that Indiegogo’s page builder even supports basic HTML and CSS if you want to get a little more hands-on with your page styling.

6. Indiegogo collects backer information immediately after pledging.

As soon as someone contributes to your campaign, Indiegogo collects their contact and shipping details. This means you have everything you need to fulfill orders quickly. Early access to backer info helps streamline fulfillment.

7. Indiegogo has a thriving tech and gadgets community.

Indiegogo is particularly well-known for its tech and gadgets campaigns. If your project falls into one of these categories, you’ll find a ready-to-back community of interested backers. This niche focus can boost your campaign’s success in the tech world.

Indiegogo (Cons)

Indiegogo has some drawbacks, especially when compared to Kickstarter. It’s important to weigh these cons before deciding to launch a project on the platform.

1. Indiegogo has lower success rates.

As many as 37.7% of Kickstarter campaigns succeed. Only 17-18% of Indiegogo campaigns do the same.

To be clear, these are base odds of success that don’t consider the product category or the skill of the crowdfunding creator. But even still, this can be awfully discouraging for creators hoping for guaranteed success.

2. Indiegogo has a smaller audience.

While Indiegogo is a popular platform, it doesn’t have the same massive audience that Kickstarter does. Fewer potential backers mean you might have to work harder to promote your campaign. This smaller pool of users limits your campaign’s exposure.

Again, if you are launching in the right category, this is less of an issue.

3. Indiegogo campaigns aren’t as attractive to the media as Kickstarter campaigns.

Kickstarter has a stronger media presence, often drawing more attention from journalists and bloggers. Indiegogo campaigns don’t typically get as much press coverage. This lack of media buzz can make it harder to generate excitement.

4. Indiegogo holds 5% of funds for refunds.

Indiegogo keeps 5% of your funds on hold in case refunds are needed. This is a relatively minor concern if you budget for it, but it can still be annoying if you aren’t aware of this fact. Make sure you consider how immediate your cash flow needs are before you launch an Indiegogo campaign.

5. Indiegogo charges backers immediately, rather than after the conclusion of a successful campaign.

On Indiegogo, backers are charged as soon as they pledge, regardless of whether the campaign hits its goal. For cash flow purposes, this can be excellent, but until those orders are fulfilled, accountants will consider that money “unearned revenue.”

Now to be clear, this is also the case with Kickstarter, but since you receive rewards after the campaign is over, that’s less time that unearned revenue will be sitting on your books.

There’s also a psychological element to consider for backers. Some backers may hesitate to pledge if they don’t know whether the campaign will succeed. This could affect your overall funding.

Final Thoughts

Kickstarter and Indiegogo both have well-established communities, and both can be a great place to launch your crowdfunding campaign.

The most important thing to consider is: “what kind of product am I selling?” Games, film, art, publishing, and design do really well on Kickstarter. Technology, fitness, outdoor, and home do really well on Indiegogo.

After considering product category, it’s a matter of subtleties. What’s more important: higher chances of success or openness? Does flexible funding move the needle? What about the ease of transitioning into a post-campaign pledge manager?

These questions will help you determine whether Kickstarter or Indiegogo is right for you and your business.

But no matter what you choose – good luck! Let us know if you need any help shipping orders.

Picked your platform? Now pick a fulfillment partner.

Whether you go Kickstarter or Indiegogo, the platform doesn’t ship your rewards. You do.

Fulfillrite handles fulfillment for campaigns on both (and Gamefound, BackerKit Direct, and good-old Shopify if you switch later).

Plan on taking your board game idea to Kickstarter? There are a lot of games out there, and you need a way to prove yours is worth playing! Getting reviews is one way to do this, but it’s not the only way. You can also make an online board game demo.

But how do you do that? How do you turn a tabletop game into something playable online?

Turns out there are a lot of ways, the two most popular of which are Tabletop Simulator, which is available cheaply on Steam. The other is Tabletopia, which is entirely free.

Of course, as easy as it is to get into Tabletop Simulator or Tabletopia, making a good-looking board game demo is still not easy. That’s where Kenny Goodman, Owner of Overboard Games comes in. He runs a business entirely dedicated to helping board game publishers create online versions of their games.

I sent a bunch of questions his way by email, and he sent some insightful responses back which we’re going to share with you!

What follows are his answers to Fulfillrite’s questions, lightly edited.

What is Overboard Games and what services do you provide?

Overboard Games is a digital board game marketing company. We provide various services to help publishers and designers promote their board games, specializing in the creation of Tabletop Simulator & Tabletopia mods for online board game demos. We also do renders and animation.

How does Tabletop Simulator work?

Tabletop Simulator is essentially a physics sandbox engine that you can use to create board games. You drag and drop your files into pre-set templates which you then modify within the game to suit your need. It mimics the experience of having physical game components on a physical table.

It’s clunky at first, but once you get into the rhythm of things, Tabletop Simulator really starts to sing. Anyone can make a simple mod on Tabletop Simulator, but it’s hard to make good-looking ones, which is what we specialize in.

How did you get into creating Tabletop Simulator mods?

I got into creating Tabletop Simulator mods a couple of years ago by casually turning free print-and-plays into digital games. Then I would email the publishers to share the mod I made. This quickly snowballed into something bigger, and publishers started contacting me, which I did not expect. But once I saw there was a market, I embraced it and turned Overboard Games into a business.

When did Tabletop Simulator really start to take off?

Tabletop Simulator is one of those peices of software which board game publishers have always known about, but never fully embraced. Physical games reign supreme in the board game world. But it took off when the pandemic started, as it forced everyone to turn to digital gaming platforms.

Why do board game creators, particularly Kickstarter/Gamefound creators use Tabletop Sim so much?

They use it because it’s a free way to advertise their game. It also gives players a chance to play their new game before they back on Kickstarter.

It’s also opened the door for new designers by simplifying playtesting. Tabletop Simulator allows you to do an infinite amount of iterations for free, which increases the quality of your game way faster than doing it in person.

How does Tabletop Sim help crowdfunding creators raise money?

Tabletop Simulator has two sides: the workshop and downloadable content (DLCs). We use the workshop, a place where anyone can upload a mod and then distrubute it for free, for anyone to play. The workshop allows you to indirectly monetize the game by drawing attention to the crowdfunding campaign.

What was the hardest mod you’ve made?

This is an easy question. The most difficult mod is the one we’re creating right now: an update for Europa Universalis: The Price of Power. The demo originally had five custom scenarios, and now we’re increasing that to twenty in the complete game. As a result, it is going to require a lot of scripting. (You can program Tabletop Simulator mods to automatically perform certain functions like board setup. But writing the scripts to do this is hard!)

What was the most fun mod you’ve made?

Honestly, all the mods are fun to make, but Merchant’s Cove is my favorite. It has multiple fun things, like a spinning compass, a marble machine, sliding ramps, and cute little “good tokens.” It’s even got a very attractive and functional interface, backed up by scripting, that automatically sets up the game for certain factions.

What’s next for Overboard Games?

We would love to do more animation and renders as that is a lot of fun. As an overall business, I want to fully embrace the Overboard brand and branch into other forms of media that I’m interested in.

What else should crowdfunding creators do in order to ensure success?

To ensure success in an industry so competitive is difficult, but the key to it is to make your game known and market it to create a solid following. Build a community from the start, have a dedicated playtesting team, and get as many people as you can invested in your game early.

Want help creating a digital version of your board game? Check out Overboard Games to request a quote.

If you’ve browsed Kickstarter, Indiegogo or other crowdfunding sites lately, you may have noticed that the gaming category has been growing and growing in popularity. Crowdfunding has become a viable way for game designers to turn their ideas into reality.

Catacombs, the award-winning dexterity fantasy board game, was first published in 2010, followed by a sold-out second edition. When it came time for their third edition redesign, the creators did something a little out of the box, so to speak – they turned to Kickstarter.

We talked with Elzra Games cofounder Aron West about why Elzra turned to Kickstarter, what they learned and how they knocked their campaign out of the park.

This interview was originally published on November 11, 2015. We’ve updated the formatting for more recent devices, but have otherwise left the interview unchanged.

Elzra Games has continued to expand the Catacombs franchise since the publication of this interview and continues to be successful in crowdfunding!

What is your background? How did you become interested in designing games?

At a high level, I have a background in software development, enterprise systems, cloud computing etc., so designing board games enables me to ship “physical bits” as opposed to “digital bits.” It’s a nice change.

How did Elzra Games come about? How did the game Catacombs come to be – the idea, concept and design?

Catacombs as a product happened by accident. Approximately five years ago, Ryan Amos, Marc Kelsey, and myself were involved in designing and manufacturing the first edition of Catacombs. Given our exposure to a wide variety of board games, we had a feeling for some ideas that we thought could work. We discussed some initial designs and ultimately focused on the idea of a exploring a dungeon by flicking a wooden disc as most dexterity games involved sports or racing cars.

The first edition of Catacombs was released in 2010. From humble beginnings and word of mouth it took off under the Sands of Time Games brand. Elzra Corp. took over the assets of Sands of Time at the beginning of 2014 (before the Kickstarter). I am now responsible for the creative and operational aspects of the company and the Catacombs Third Edition product line.

The first two editions of Catacombs were very successful and in fact, sold out. Why turn to Kickstarter for the third edition?

We wanted to test the market demand for a new version that implemented some improvements that customers had suggested. Kickstarter seemed like a perfect way to accomplish this.

What sorts of research and preparations did you make before launching?

We reviewed other Kickstarter campaigns and devoted time and resources to creating an engaging video. We also paid close attention to our reward and stretch goal setup, which any serious campaign will do as a matter of course. Kickstarter had not been available in Canada for very long, so it felt like we were a trailblazing project.

Having a strong following from editions one and two must have made things a little easier. Did you find them to be supportive?

There was a great deal of controversy about the new artwork direction in the Catacombs Third Edition product line. Some of our existing fans felt that we had abandoned them. This is definitely not the case! However, the new artwork by the talented artist, Kwanchai Moriya, is much more colourful and accessible expanding the game’s appeal. As they have become accustomed to the new artwork and the many fan driven improvements in the Third Edition, people are becoming more accepting of the changes. Overall, the response to Catacombs Third Edition has been fantastic!

What were the biggest challenges you encountered while running your Kickstarter campaign? What would you do differently next time?

We would ensure we had currency-hedging instruments in place. The drop in the Canadian dollar from 2014 through this year really hurt us. Simultaneously launching with a German language version in conjunction with a third party publisher proved logistically challenging as well. Finally, we have a much better sense about the costs involved in shipping to certain countries and would raise the shipping rates accordingly. Who would have thought that shipping from Germany to Serbia was as expensive as shipping to Australia?

Really good point! Is this what led you to bring in help for your fulfillment?

Yes, because as a new company with low shipping volumes, it is very expensive to ship packages from Canada internationally. Instead, we shipped packages to European and international backers from a fulfillment company located near the printer in the Netherlands where our games were produced. We had Fulfillrite handle shipping packages to the backers in the US and we took care of sending out packages to domestic backers based in Canada ourselves.

Were you ready for the incredible response to the campaign, having raised over $200k of your $40k goal? How did you handle it?

No, it was a nice surprise. We knew how much work was ahead of us, so there were no celebrations or anything like that. We immediately got started. We also incorporated many suggestions from fans, for example, the “chicken hero” and the “bee familiar” were included in Catacombs Third Edition as direct result of comments received during the campaign.

What’s next, are you working on any new games?

Yes, three new titles set in the Catacombs universe. One is a card game being designed by one of the original Catacombs designers, Ryan Amos, another is a direct expansion to Catacombs and the third takes Elzra’s Dexterity Game System and turns it into a competitive experience. The Catacombs Third Edition product line looks set to become available in additional languages as well.

Finally, the Catacombs Third Edition base game and the Cavern of Soloth expansion will be available at retail before the end of 2015.

To learn more about Catacombs, the Cavern of Soloth and Elzra Games, please visit them at Elzra.com