Price here with this week’s update. We’ve got lots of important project updates for you this week on Gloomhaven ocean & land freight, Miniatures of Gloomhaven progress, RPG, and unfortunately continued U.S. tariff impacts.

Let’s jump in. 

-GLOOMHAVEN FREIGHT & FULFILLMENT-

100% of our Gloomhaven ocean freight has shipped! Please see below for an updated Grand Festival project tracker and individual regional freight/fulfillment updates.

Also, please note that Forteller Audio Narration is on target to be distributed via Backerkit pledge manager as we get closer to regional fulfillments We’re also working on making “live” some support FAQ infrastructure and video tutorials for those of you stepping into Gloomhaven for the first time, or returning from your time “away”! More info on all of this in our next update(s)!

You don’t have a vessel as we have a truck(s) incoming to our fulfillment partner VFI from our factory. We’ve got a bit of time until delivery and I’m waiting on some updates from our partners but we’ll report back as soon as we have more from both partners. 

Your vessel, the YM MUTUALITY has arrived at port in Vancouver! We’re currently awaiting an update on ETA to our fulfillment center Universal in Toronto, but anticipate land freight to take approximately 1-2 weeks once it’s been confirmed to have left the port yard. 

Your vessel, the PUSAN C, is currently expected to arrive at port in Melbourne around June 9th according to our docking pre-alert! Yesterday we paid our deposit payment with our fulfillment partner, Aetherworks, and are currently being placed into their fulfillment queue as soon as possible once it arrives. 

Your vessel, the HMM HOPE, is continuing its journey and should be rounding the corner on South Africa any day now. We understand the ETA to currently be near the end of June at which point it will land freight to our fulfillment partner Spiral Galaxy. We’ll provide more updates when we have them but are lining up everything we can to keep things timely once it hits port!

Your ships, the ONE FUTURE &  EVER FOCUS, are both on water and starting their journeys about a week or so apart. These ships will ultimately be heading to our fulfillment partner, Ware2Go, in Nashville Tennessee. We don’t currently have an exact ETA to our warehouse at this point but will of course keep our U.S. backers updated in the weeks to come. We have some updates on the pending/anticipated U.S. tariff surcharges later in this update, so please make sure to read that. 

Your vessel, the COSCO FORTUNE, recently rounded the corner on South Africa and is projected to port in Europe around the end of June. We’re working with our fulfillment partner, Fulfillment Europe, to have things lined up to be inserted into their queue and keep things as timely as possible. Pending no major changes to U.S. tariff policy, orders to Mexico are currently planned to ship from Fulfillment Europe. This is something we’ve done in past campaigns and have no problem doing again to help avoid unnecessary U.S. tariff surcharges on your orders. 

We’ve got an updated Miniatures project tracker for you today. While internal reprioritizations led to some delays over the last several weeks, we’re back to making standard progress on digital modification approvals, red wax approvals, and polyurethane (PU) sample approvals. Check out some of my favorite recent samples received from our factory below!

-GLOOMHAVEN: RPG-
I was just sent an exciting page spread this morning by our own Danielle (RPG Project Manager/Developer) and Layne (Graphic Designer) that we wanted to share with you! Progress continues on shaping and perfecting the “guts” of the book. I know Isaac recently provided some insights to the curation being done now that it’s “all together” so things are getting put through the usability/digestibility “machine” that is Layne Huber’s excellent eye for layout & presentation. Arch Anderson (Art Manager) has done a great job working with the ever-talented Francesca Baerald on the page accents you see here too. 

Last update I’d indicated we would be calculating and putting for U.S. tariff surcharges. While I’d hoped to spend last week doing this, we were hit with a number of breaking news updates, vendor price increases, and new potential surcharges from our freight companies as well that required our attention. While unexpected, it’s sadly not surprising. These updates all required our attention primarily so we could make sure IF we have to charge you for U.S. tariffs, it will be in confidence and ONLY ONCE.

The First Curveball:
On May 28, 2025, the Court of International Trade ruled that the reciprocal and fentanyl tariffs issued under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act are unlawful. This court, made up of Reagan, Obama, and Trump appointed judges ruled unanimously against the tariffs stating “trade deficit” was not a valid reason to declare a “National Emergency” and that these powers rest by default in the hands of Congress.  To quote, “"The court does not pass upon the wisdom or likely effectiveness of the President's use of tariffs as leverage….That use is impermissible not because it is unwise or ineffective, but because [federal law] does not allow it." The judges also ordered the Trump administration to issue new orders reflecting the permanent injunction within 10 days.

The Second Curveball:
As we’ve been conditioned to expect from this administration, The US government filed a motion to stay the order pending an appeal. AKA, they are appealing and in the meantime continuing to collect tariffs until rejected by higher courts (appeals court and/or Supreme Court).

Obviously, we don’t want to charge a U.S. tariff surcharge if we aren’t truly being charged ourselves, so we pumped the brakes to wait and see what the rest of the week would bring. Within 24 hours, we were essentially right back where we started at a known 30% tariff tax for the time being.  

The Third Curveball:

We were notified that some of the import/customs partners we’ve traditionally used for clearing our products upon entry and handling duties for us have begun implementing new tariff processing surcharges themselves due to the surge in import duties impacting their cash flows. 

Basically, just as we’re finding ourselves needing to pass along these new taxes to you, existing logistical partners are also running into various situations in which their cost of business are increasing dramatically, cash flows are becoming tighter, and risk factors heightened, so to offset that, additional charges are being levied on our cost of doing business too.

We do believe we have ways to circumnavigate these payment pass-throughs ourselves though, but it’s going to take some more manual processing from us—frustratingly taking more of our time and effort we’d rather be putting into other aspects of our obligations to you.

To summarize: Given we have several weeks ahead on the water, we’re taking some more time to confirm what our true import costs are looking like so we can make sure we’re not overcharging, undercharging, or putting you through more annoying steps than absolutely necessary. We’ll likely have more confident information to share by next update, if not sooner.

 

-TARIFF IMPACTS & CEPHALOFAIRS ACTIVE EFFORTS-

We’ve been doing our absolute best to be transparent with our audience and community here about what tariffs mean to our project timelines, production challenges, and company resource hurdles. For this reason, I feel it’s important to share some hard decisions we’ve had to make recently as well as some proactive steps we’re taking to help advocate not just for our organization but this industry we love as a whole.

Last month we let our staff know we’d be concluding some re-forcasting of the year ahead, and even into next year, as we realize that without confidence in trade policy we may be looking at further delays on top of our own existing project creative/production delays (of which we acknowledge and take ownership of those parts we are ourselves responsible).

Last week we came to the conclusion of that new forecasting and determined that a few steps were in our best interest to uphold our existing obligations. Those obligations being first and foremost to:

#1) Our Backers. You have invested in us and our creative vision. We have a fiduciary responsibility to you to make sure we’re protecting your pledges and in position to produce/fulfill as soon as the landscape permits us to move forward.

#2) Our Staff & Creative Contractors. We are blessed to work with incredibly talented individuals that help us put together our wildest dreams, and it takes dedicated individuals with hundreds of hours under the belt of product understanding, awareness, and insights to build further upon the foundations we’ve already created. We want them to have confidence we’re positioning ourselves in the best place for long-term employment and growth. 

With these things in mind, and the fact that the core of our production/import capabilities have largely been brought to a standstill for 70% of our market for the last financial quarter—we communicated some hard decisions last week to our team resulting in one full-time job elimination and multiple temporary 50% furloughs (Of which I am first and foremost included in, effective last month). These reductions in salary/work hours will be in effect for the foreseeable future until we have confidence in our ability to resume standard and catch up to more timely operations. As Cephalofair’s COO my reduction is in salary only, as my commitment to you is still 110%+ of my time and effort as we navigate these waters together.

I want to make absolutely clear, we have confidence in Cephalofair’s organizational standing and future, but want to be able to look back and know we took EVERY step at our disposal to keep our promises to you. Steps taken not sooner than needed, and not later than would jeopardize that confidence.

NOTE: These furloughs impact more background operational/sales based team members as we recognize we still have outstanding product development/production obligations that require our full-time attention in those areas to see RPG/Miniatures through. As well as community support needs as we head into our next round of fulfillment. Please have faith we are not taking any eyes off the ball, but rather shoring up on overhead where it makes most sense and is most advisable by our financial specialists.

We deeply regret the position we find ourselves in amidst this trade war and to our staff, both dismissed and temporarily setback, we apologize and thank you immensely for your professionalism, understanding, and dedication to our outstanding projects. And while it may not be necessary, I do feel compelled to share that we had several Cephalofair employees be the first to raise their hand and offer to “be the first in line” should our situation require it. While ultimately our decisioning came down to our most obvious income disruptions and greatest business needs- having had the pleasure of working for each of these phenomenal employees for several years now I’m genuinely not surprised and thank them for their compassion for each other and support for our organization as a whole. We hope, and will be working our absolute hardest, to ensure these reductions are for as little time as possible and will prioritize getting staff back to full-time first and foremost. 

-SO WHAT ELSE IS CEPHALOFAIR DOING?-

Local Advocacy (Politics Warning, Ye Who Enter)

We try very hard not to make politics a center post of what we do, we’re game makers, toy makers, and inventors after all. But I am also a firm believer that in business and in life, politics will find you even if you don’t go looking for it. So when appropriate, I choose to engage rather than disengage. I volunteer locally, am a member of our local chamber of commerce, and try my best to attend local small business/governance related meetings when relevant to my needs and interests.

Last week I spent upwards of an hour in my local Congressman’s district office (Kevin Kiley, CA-R). Not with him, unfortunately, but with his district representative and district director. To be frank, I was deeply frustrated and disheartened by how little the office had prepared for our meeting, how few actual answers or pieces of advice they brought to the table, and how uninformed they were with even the most basic level of comprehension around small business economics and trade/manufacturing logistics. Instead of getting an official stance on the existing tariffs, or advice on how we should be navigating this trade policy, or for how long- we were simply told Congressman Kiley was unwilling to make comment at this time. It wasn’t clear what they believed to be the leading strategy behind the tariff negotiations, or the end goal, nor why the Executive office isn’t working with the majority held house and senate to pass legitimate and lawful trade policies rather than the courts.  

Nonetheless, I hope the insights I was able to provide and my offers to be a resource should they desire to represent small/medium enterprises in the future encourages them to consider greater action at some point.

Next week I will be heading to D.C. at the invitation of The Game Manufacturer’s Association (GAMA) in joint effort with The Toy Association to do some industry advocacy on capitol hill. While you’re not going to see me in front of any important looking congressional hearings or anything like that (to my knowledge!), it is our hope to be taking as many meetings as possible with elected legislators to directly convey the hurt our industry, our organization, and our customers are/will be feeling under this continued volatile trade policy. We will be spending a few full days in House and Senate office buildings as a cohort of twenty or so toy & game professionals from all different backgrounds who care deeply about what we do, the communities we build, and deep seated desire to “get back to business”. Please wish us all confidence, patience, and clarity as we do something we’ve not had to before (and honestly find a little uncomfortable having to do), especially when we’d much rather be spending our full time making amazing games and works of art.

Super Secret Stuff (NOT POLITICS! HUZZAH!)

Sooo…..let’s sandwich some of these less fun updates with positivity, optimism, and excitement for the future!

We’ve been asked numerous times by very generous backers how they can contribute/donate/support Cephalofair in smaller ways to help navigate the current uncertainty ahead. While we’re in a confident position to execute on those obligations without this level of direct financial support, we’re always keen to give our community more ways to engage in the “World of Gloomhaven”! Amidst the disruption of the last couple of months, we’ve not just navigated the lows, but actively looked for opportunities to pivot resources (where responsible) into vetting projects/ideas/etc outside our normal peripheral that may be executable even under these uncertain times.

One of the few things we DO have confidence and ability to execute on at this time is game development, design, and the ability to plan for things in the future that we hope you’re all really going to enjoy.

Some of these are more future proofing our publishing position and most certainly won’t be our focus until our outstanding obligations are fulfilled (RPG/Miniatures), but some smaller things in our “back pocket” maaaay just sneak their way onto your radar sooner than we intended.

And that’s all I can really say about that for now, so I’m going to “tie a bow” on it before I say any more!

That’s “it” for this week, if you’re still here with me and reading this thank you genuinely for your interest, understanding, and support. We’ll be back in two weeks with your next update.