Nuts & Bolts – How to Find & Hire a Fulfillment Provider
[Read our full Nuts & Bolts series]
For our fulfillment we are partnered with Fulfillrite, who we’ve had a great experience with.
Fulfillment is the process of getting your games from a local distribution center into your consumers’ hands. It entails taking delivery of a shipment, picking and packing games, and managing returns (see our Supply Chain A-Z article).
A lot of indie publishers manage fulfillment on their own – and if you have the space, a smaller print run and capacity, it is a great (albeit time intensive) way to save some money.
If you aren’t managing fulfillment out of your home, then you’ll need to contract a fulfillment provider. These are specialized services with warehouses, technological infrastructure, and processes to take delivery of, repack, and ship games.
Querying a Fulfillment Provider
Finding a fulfillment partner is straight forward. You just need to reach out to fulfillment providers with your game’s weight & dimensions.
See this list of fulfillment providers curtesy of Stonemaier Games: Fulfillment Providers (I recommend querying at least 3-5 vendors).
US Shipping Zones for fulfillment out of New Jersey
They will be able to provide shipping rates by geography – like this shipping estimate for Sigil from Fulfillrite. Most will break down their picking fees, the cost of packaging, and postage costs.
Key Considerations
Price isn’t the most important consideration when finding your fulfillment partner.
Reputation: Reputation and surety that they will get the job done smoothly, and without undue product damage, is far more important than a dollar or two savings on picking and packing. I recommend asking around in game design and publishing forums for peoples’ experiences with your with your most competitive.
Ease of Communication: You’ll need a good relationship with your sales rep to smooth the freight delivery process, and address any hiccups that come up during fulfillment. Make sure your sales rep is responsive and can help you workshop your fulfillment options.
Technology: My favorite thing about Fulfillrite is their tech platform. They have a dashboard where I can manage inventory, upload shipping details, and best of all, it automatically ties into our Shopify storefront.
Price: Price matters. Make sure to ask not just about individual game shipping options, but also about multiple game, and whole case options (for bundled shipping and your direct to retail program). Also ask about warehouse fees (as you’ll likely order more games than you sold through your Kickstarter/Gamefound), and about delivery fees like de-palletization or container unpacking.
Duty Paid & International Shipping: Most campaigns won’t have the scale (or desire) to manage a multi-hub distribution process. You’ll likely be shipping globally out of one local hub. So, make sure you have a good handle on duty paid options and which countries they are available for.
Have you managed a fulfillment process yourself – what surprised you about the process?
