Our insight into Stonemaier's Fulfillment Post
Intro
For those who may not be aware, Jamey over at Stonemaier in one of our industries pillars of transparency and frequently posts about relevant topics for publishers and would-be publishers of board games. In his most recent post he tackled fulfillment and logistics and his article is informative and concise as always. You should 100% check it out and read it HERE.
Our Thoughts
After reading through his post I just wanted to chime in with some additional thoughts to augment this information with our own experience on this topic. I am not trying to take anything away from Jamey's post, but just give all of you some additional insight.
Third Party or Self Fulfillment?
This write up assumes you are committed to using third-party fulfillment for your game/project and ongoing operations. Creators might consider fulfilling their project themselves in whatever region they are phyiscally in rather than jumping right to a third-party fulfillment solution. We have our own warehouse and fulfill all of our projects ourselves within the USA. Doing it yourself will be cheaper and unless you are doing a huge volume (which Stonemaier obviously is!), you can keep total control and save money this way.
Remember that by giving a third party your fulfillment that they might be doing what you could do yourself but often with a markup for their own overhead and profit. I have seen quotes for third-party fulfillment more than double the cost of delivery to customers over doing it ourselves. Another thing to consider is that your project won't be their number one priority unless you are already an important customer to them.
Remember that by giving a third party your fulfillment that they might be doing what you could do yourself but often with a markup for their own overhead and profit. I have seen quotes for third-party fulfillment more than double the cost of delivery to customers over doing it ourselves. Another thing to consider is that your project won't be their number one priority unless you are already an important customer to them.
Having our own 18,000 square foot warehouse where we use 6,000 of it and rent out the other 12,000 to two neighbors means they are covering our mortgage and the value of the building is ever increasing. Check out a 2 minute video of our warehouse to see how we are set up:
Paying no rent/storage for any of our product since we had the capital to invest in the warehouse has been amazing and is alrady saving us so much money every month!
Logistics/Shipping Agent
Jamey recommends his logistics company and I can recommend ours as well. We have worked with an amazing logistics company for all of our freight for the last 5+ years that is based out of DongGuan China. They can handle all the freight (boat or air) shipping anywhere in the world and offer better rates than the US based logistics companies I have had quotes from in the past. You can email them at kathy@dgnanhuang.com if you are interested. Kathy and Able are great!
UK/EU Fulfillment
We also use Spiral Galaxy for our EU/UK fulfillment and they also sell directly to stores as a distributor of ours. Their system integrates well with our shopify store for Maydaygames.eu, as we have a localized webstore for the region as Jamey recommends in the article. We also have a Brazilian website at Maydaygames.com.br and are lauching Canadian and Mexican sites this year. Turkey and South Africa are also future potential sites that we are considering.
Rather than storing our stuff in these new countries with existing fulfillment centers we are selling directly to a local family/friend at wholesale prices and giving them the freedom to market the brand locally, sell to local stores and attend local conventions in our name to further promote our company while giving them better margins on the product. These local websites become their own small business and enrich the lives of these local families which has been great so far!
Australia and NZ
For AU/NZ we have had a good experience with VR Distribution there, just another option for you to consider.
Direct From China Fulfillment
Lately we have moved away from sending product to fulfillment centers at all for smaller games. Instead we offer a DDP (prepaid tax into the EU for example) shipping option from China directly to backers for everywhere except the USA. We have been using SendFromChina.com to store and fulfill all non-USA shipments directly from China and the rates are about the same or cheaper as what we get from fulfillment partners in those regions, without all the extra logistics. They do great work and you can see the rates by weight/country that we are getting from SFC and charging our backers at this google sheet HERE.
Our backers seem to like this option and it is SO much simpler for us.
Eco Friendly Shipping AND Saving Money?
On the topic of eco-friendly, space-efficient packaging, we bought one of these a few years ago from Amazon and instead of throwing away master carton cardboard and buying packing material, we shred them into packing material and use that for our shipping. It might be good for you if you have ongoing operations. We had a one-time expense that wasn't cheap, but now we buy almost zero packing material and don't have to empty our dumpster nearly as often since we don't have to throw away nearly as much cardboard.
Note the image above and the link are both affiliate links to Amazon, we might get a small commission if you pick one of these up through that link.
UPCs
For UPCs you might consider buying them in bulk at upcs.com. We have purchased 1,000 UPCs through them since 2021 (most recently 400 more in late 2025) and use them for our products on Amazon and other websites and on our games that have been in Barnes & Nobel, all without any issues at all. Much more affordable than GS1. Once you have a UPC number in hand it is super easy to generate the barcode from it HERE. You normally want that UPC-A format on the back of your box. Getting them for a one-time fee with no annual service charge is a GREAT option if you are on a tight budget, and let's face it, we all are!
Final Thoughts
It is so great that Jamey posts such transparent information and advice here, just adding our experience to the conversation. If you found this information helpful please consider sharing it or posting a comment. I spend quite a while writing these up and would love some feedback!