Agamemnon Press
CREATOR
5 days ago
Project Update: Fulfillment Begins
Greetings Lost Dreamers!
I'm here with great news, fulfillment has begun on The ENNIES Emporium project.
I first, want to take a moment and apologize for why this has taken so long. I'm going to give you the real back story. If you know me, you know that I don't believe in corporate-speak platitudes. This is also a real learning experience for me and perhaps it will be for you as well as many of us are small creators. If you're every interested in running your own crowdfunding project feel free to reach out to me anytime. I am always here to share advice because other great designers and entrepreneurs have shared their advice with me.
At the end of the day, this is my second job. I'm a teacher full time which means my fulfillment times usually coincide with my Summer and Winter breaks. This also means fulfillment is such a struggle for me and a limiting factor. When I'm planning these projects I'm always working backwards from "when should I plan on mailing these out and can I do it during Spring Break?"
Then I had an idea! What if someone else did fulfillment for me! This would be great. Odds are I could find someone who would do it faster, more accurately, and it would be reasonable. At least I hoped it would be.
My original plan was to work with Studio 2, who I've partnered with for distribution. They are a good company ran by good people. They gave me their rates which I felt was fair, but had drawbacks to it.
I'm here with great news, fulfillment has begun on The ENNIES Emporium project.
I first, want to take a moment and apologize for why this has taken so long. I'm going to give you the real back story. If you know me, you know that I don't believe in corporate-speak platitudes. This is also a real learning experience for me and perhaps it will be for you as well as many of us are small creators. If you're every interested in running your own crowdfunding project feel free to reach out to me anytime. I am always here to share advice because other great designers and entrepreneurs have shared their advice with me.
At the end of the day, this is my second job. I'm a teacher full time which means my fulfillment times usually coincide with my Summer and Winter breaks. This also means fulfillment is such a struggle for me and a limiting factor. When I'm planning these projects I'm always working backwards from "when should I plan on mailing these out and can I do it during Spring Break?"
Then I had an idea! What if someone else did fulfillment for me! This would be great. Odds are I could find someone who would do it faster, more accurately, and it would be reasonable. At least I hoped it would be.
My original plan was to work with Studio 2, who I've partnered with for distribution. They are a good company ran by good people. They gave me their rates which I felt was fair, but had drawbacks to it.
- Everything had to be shipped to their warehouse in Tennessee. Each carton of books costs $40 to ship and each carton holds 10 copies of Empire of Bones and 18 copies of Painted Wastelands. As you can imagine, this quickly adds up.
- Studio 2 only charges $2 per box to pick and pack. That's a pretty reasonable number.
- Studio 2 charges a lot more for international shipping than I would if I did it myself. This led to a lot of hurt backers who were slapped with shipping sticker shock. I don't blame them. This led me to finding a new partnership for EU backers.
So I ended up looking for some alternatives. Then I found an opportunity with Gamer's Guild. Gamer's Guild is local here in Arizona. "What an amazing opportunity!" I thought to myself. I could load up my car with everything they'd need and drop it off at their warehouse. It would be great. We could even develop a partnership with them!
We had a video meeting in July. We had a physical meeting at GenCon with the whole team. Everyone was happy. It took a month and a half from that meeting until I received the fulfillment terms. This is part of the reason why this has taken so long.
- Gamer's Guild is charging me $14 a box to pick and pack. This is on top of the shipping costs which are the same as Studio 2. This is absolutely absurd. Now it's my turn for sticker shock.
- It would cost $1,400 to pack the 100 backers of the ENNIES Emporium. Not to mention the cost of HELLCRAWL with its 900+ backers which would cost $11,000!
This is absolutely deranged and leaves me back at square one where I do fulfillment myself. In a way, this has pushed me as a business owner to grow. It is completely untenable for me to sit in my painting room packing boxes alone for days. Thus, Agamemnon Press has hired its first employee.
We are hiring our friend Julie to pack boxes and she's going to do an amazing job. I believe that having Kayla, myself, and Julie working together we will knock fulfillment out of the park. So welcome Julie to the team!
Finally, from HELLCRAWL + Painted Wastelands 5.5e forward, our European Union + Norway backers will have their projects fulfilled in Europe by MudKnight.media. These guys are great and we are working together to get Agamemnon Press products into game stores in Europe. Thus, it is pretty straight forward for me to have them handle fulfillment of crowdfunding projects.
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