European fulfilment

[Eero Tuovinen]

Concerning the Essen thread, I've discussed the practicalities of mailing games to Europe with a couple of publishers. It's not cheap to ship to Europe, as I know from personal experience after doing large orders a couple of times. Even a large land shipment will put a full 1€ on top of each book's price after the shipping costs and tolls. So I was discussing the issue with Paul Czege, and came up with an interesting solution that should fit him, at least, pretty well: why not just print and store the books in Europe? Pretty stupid to ship paper, when ideas ship for free.

In the Essen context this might or might not make sense for a given publisher; if you're sending 50 books to the convention and do your printings in small digital printers, the chances are that you can find a printer in Europe that makes your 50 books for cheaper than it'd be to ship your existing stock over the Atlantic. There's also time preference: if you print your books for Essen in Europe, you can do the printing after Gencon, easily. But if you want to ship in land-mail, you'll have to have the books available and ready for shipping in, what, June at the latest.

Of course, this brings up the whole idea of European shipping operations in general: how much does it cost to send a single book to an European customer from America? Shipping from Finland to anywhere in EU, it's around $1.5 for smaller books and around $4 for larger ones. So in principle, there should be cost cuttings available if one could just print, stock and ship any European business from Europe, instead of going over the Atlantic in small drips. Again looking at Essen, printing for the convention is even more sensible if you can print a hundred copies and use the leftovers to fulfil European customer demand later on.

I seem to remember that some fulfilment companies are already exploring the possibility of having another warehouse in Europe. I expect this will become the standard of operations in the future, especially as European indie designers start making mutual connections and the need for pan-European shipping becomes more prevalent. I'm reminded of how most of you have different rates for European customers and Americans: with European warehousing that could be a thing of the past, which might make it easier for the customer, as well.

In practice: if you're wondering what to do about the whole Essen thing shipping-wise, and unsure about what to do with left-over books, I'd be interested in exploring the fulfilment thing small-scale, just like I do small-scale retail to get a feel for the job. (There's some little synergy, as we have to go to the post office for Arkenstone business anyway regularly.) I don't think that I could offer very lucrative terms compared to somebody like IPR or the like, but if you're like Paul (I'm using you as an example, sorry) and do your own fulfilment, then this could be a chance of pace at least. Print a suitable printing for Essen, and make a deal for European fulfilment for the rest of the stock. Depending on how many European orders you get usually, the stock would probably be out of my and your hair next spring, at the latest.

I don't have any firm idea of what to bill for the service of warehousing and shipping at this point (anybody care to give examples from equivalent services?), so we'd have to figure something out. 20% of the cover price? $2.5(+70c per extra book) per baggage shipped? Something like that; enough to cover the shipping expense and some token amount on top to cover the hassle of going to the post office. Can even be negotiated on a case-by-case basis at this point. Then there's the fact that this is a garage operation without a garage pretty much, so I'm not taking everybody at this point. If you're participating at Essen, want to try printing in Europe, or I'm familiar with your product, then we can talk about it. We have excess room in the Arkenstone closet, but not insane amounts. If there's ridiculous amounts of demand for European fulfilment, then I guess we'll just have to start a IPR branch here in Finland to take care of it ;)

But, the main point: if you feel that the logistics of the Essen thing feel too much, PM me! I'm more than qualified to juggle small (<100) amounts of books between US and Europe, so I'm sure we can figure out some combination of POD printing, creative warehousing and other ideas mentioned so far to tailor something that allows your stock to participate at Essen. Then there's Brendan's group shipment (leaving in late June or early June, I expect), too, so there's many options in that regard.