My first warehouse experience…
There is something to be said for doing warehouse work. Moving pallets around, creating pallets, organizing shipments, and getting shipments out… It is a soothing experience. It is also nice to see a daunting task in front of you that has a direct and obvious method of resolution. Finishing opening all copies of Homesteaders, verifying the components, adding desiccants, and checking for collation problems was a relief.
Four 9-10 hour days consisting of opening boxes becomes exhausting. I want to thank Seth Jaffee for coming with me and helping all week. Fred Yelk Woodruff of PSI was also very helpful in getting us set up to work. Jay, who lives in Atlanta came and helped us check boxes, pack boxes for pre-orders, and various other tedious work. I addition, we had the help of 3 temps, of which Toni and Tamiko were outstanding.
We barely finished going through Homesteaders in time, and without all of the help it would not have happened.
Eye Candy
Walking into a 50,000 square foot warehouse with 2 layers of games in the air was inspiring. The entirety of my first shipment of games fit on 10 pallets. The PSI warehouse swallowed up my shipment with its enormity. The whole operation appeared to run very well and swift. Everybody had their own consistent speed that they worked at, which resulted in a high total speed.
Every day they were sending out shipments to various places. I can only imagine what the shipping holding area would look like when they were actively sending out shipments to distributors, Barnes & Noble, Target, and Amazon. Surprisingly, out of 50,000 square feet there was only two games that I really wanted to get. I bought Bausack and Bananagrams for my wife’s birthday.
Meeting The Major Players
I met the PSI guys at the 2009 GAMA Trade Show for the first time. They made a very good first impression on me. At the time I was unsure if I wanted to go down the fulfillment route, but that if I did, I would want to work with PSI. I only spent a fraction of an hour talking to the guys then.
Being at PSI for 5 days gave me a chance to get to know all of the major players more. I am convinced that choosing to use PSI for fulfillment was the best choice that I have made since I decided to publish Terra Prime and Homesteaders.
- They move a lot of product
- They have a great sales team
- They are honest
- They keep my garage from filling up with games
- They charge me slightly more than what it would cost me just to ship games ($2.40 vs. $2.00 estimated)
I will have many future posts that will go into more detail about the holes in my business that they plug up. I am so pleased with my decision to use PSI, that I will be moving over to a similar solution for the manufacturing of games also. Pay a little extra to have no problems, which after the first printing of games is another easy choice to make.
It is funny to reflect on choices that should be easy to make. Using PSI from the onset should have been an easy decision to make. Despite this, I mulled over it for a long time. Using a manufacturer / manufacturing liaison that is based in a country where I can force remuneration for problems should have been an easy choice. Dealing with my current moist but not moldy games makes that choice easy in the future.
Thankfully I did not have deal with the tedium of shipping, difficulty getting into distribution, and storing of games to choose to use PSI.
Moisture, Mis-collation, Missing Stuff, and MAYHEM!
When you pour so much effort and money into a project, and find the results to be unsatisfactory… It breaks your heart. I do not know how else to say it. I thought I had my heart broken before by a high school girlfriend, but now I know what it really feels like. It sucks.
Part of you wishes that you could rewind the clock and decide to not go down the path that led to heartbreak. Part of you wants to call out a tactical strike against the people who screwed it up! Thankfully, I have the support of my wife, close friends, family, and random strangers. It becomes tempting to walk away, excepting that it would be unfair to them.
The bottom line is that after opening all of the copies of Homesteaders we probably lost about 50 games in damages. If we didn’t open the games and fix them, then we would have likely lost 200-400 copies of Homesteaders [10%-20%]. We threw in gigantic desiccants in an effort to suck the moisture out of the box, and protect the games from devastating problems and losses.
Missing The Airplane
We finished Homesteaders on Thursday and had a 10AM flight out of Atlanta on Friday. Whatever happened, we missed the plane (which Seth takes full responsibility for). All of that work, and I was going to be going home to my family. BAH!
Missing the plane turned out to be a favorable event. I got to play a game of Ground Floor with Seth. Ground Floor is where I wanted it to be the first time I played it. It was nice to make a decision about putting that into “the develop for probable 2011 publication” category. The only downside I felt was the length of the game. For two players it ran approximately 1-1.5 hours. Although, a 6 player game would probably take forever.
Playing Train of Thought with Fred was great. Now PSI is sufficiently impressed with Train of Thought to likely recommend it to the buyer from Barnes & Noble. I also got to rummage through PSI’s warehouse to find various party game packaging. Packaging for such a game is hugely important.
An Abrupt End
It seemed like the week at PSI had an abrupt end. Much like this blog post. I think I have said all I have to say.
Related posts:
- Manufacturing Issues and Potential Solutions
- Fact or Fiction… Publishing Board Games Is Good Finance?
- Why I Use A Fulfillment Company To Warehouse And Sell My Games To Distributors
- Importance of Lists and Timelines for a Proper Plan + Example
- 5 Signs You Don’t Want To Use That Manufacturer
- The Devil is in the Details – Knowing Pallet Sizes
- How to get free container shipping from China
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