Survey IDEA 3: Shipping Product in 1 place, then nationally

[LouPhi]

AIM: reduce costs of shipping (will it?) / Less packaging = better for the nature / Speed up process of getting our product or reward.

Let say we can combine the shipment of 500 products (or x amount) from a creator in the USA to 1 place in Europe (with agreement of you and creator).
Then someone (a new business service) would drive and ship the products in your home country.
Let me explain by an example. If the 500 items are sent to Belgium but 100 are for Belgium, 200 for France, 100 for germany and 100 for the UK as end destination.
Then someone can drive in 24h to France (ship locally by normal post), drive to Germany (ship locally...) etc... and even use a ferry to drive to the UK (and then ship locally). Is that something you believe possible ? If cheaper would you use that service ?

Of course combining with large HUBS in big cities like Idea1 or Idea2 (then you collect it in your town), it would be even cheaper! Let's face it, I know this is hard to put in place but not impossible. It would also decrease CO2, traffic and waste of packaging perhaps?

And if time is not so important, perhaps all that shipping can be made very cheaply by a service like BLABLACAR?

Your thoughts?

[TashaTurner]

Is this a fulfillment house of sorts? Interesting idea. I'm not sure how easy to implement at a reasonable cost, while delivering rewards quickly, paying living wages. I suspect there is a reason typical fulfillment houses are costly and it's not all due to mismanagement and overcharging clients.

[LouPhi]

The best example for it (of course) is Exploding Kittens game. It's small in volume. I paid 35 USD + 15 USD shipping oversea.
I'd be interested how many backers are from France, Benelux, Germany, UK for instance. IF just 5000 backers out of the 220.000 backers. That's shipping costs (including package) of 75000 USD. The volume of a deck is in my opinion between 300 and 500cm3. Let's take 500cm3. How many decks in 1m3 ? 1000.000 / 500 = only 200, so half a pallet for all the games. Cost of shipping ? Perhaps 1000 or 2000 USD only. Let's say 5000 USD.

That leaves 70.000 USD to be shipping to 6 countries NATIONALLY and it's possible in 24h to drive to a post office in all these countries. Let's say 48h as need to unload, queue, pay etc...
Package and shipping per deck will be around 5 EUR, let's say 7 USD.
7 * 5000 = 35.000

That leaves 75K - 35K - 5K = 35.000 USD to manually (how many people) put 5000 decks in boxes+addresses.
That means salaries + the petrol to drive 48h.
All in all, I think there is a benefit possible as I took high costs + that's for 1 product.
The driving to the countries could be done 1 time per week with several products.
And better if of course to combine with the idea of the other IDEAS : permanent address hub / concept store. Shipping there is super cost efficient, less packages, less fuel... everyone saves!

But the most important is that' it's perhaps possible to reduce then the cost from 15 USD to 5-7 USD that means it would appeal to more backers. Let's face it paying 50 USD for a game pre-sold at 35 USD is pricey.

PS: Dunno how all the VAT would be handled though.
Sure it's complicated but we mus first find out if enough backers are interested or not.

[TashaTurner]

Exploding kittens is using an EU fulfillment house. So they had all the games shipped to somewhere in Europe and I believe you'll find they covered customs and VAT fees in that $15 they collected.

They got a good deal based on volume.

How would this be coordinated in China?

Will European backers be willing to trade off getting rewards "around the same time as U.S. Backers" to get them cheaper because holding off on shipping from China until have full containers to go to EU?

From my understanding of how its currently done packaging is not labeled for individuals until it gets to creator or fulfillment center. From my experience as a backer the 2 things fulfillment centers screw up the most on:
1. Putting individual orders together properly
2. Properly packaging individual orders so neither packaging nor shipping damages product

I guess I'm not convinced you can make it cheaper or that you've thought through all the steps it takes and why shipping is more expensive.