You’ve just successfully funded your project…congratulations! Now you are faced with the prospect of shipping hundreds, maybe thousands of units to all of your domestic and international backers who are patiently waiting to receive their promised rewards. One critical path task that often gets overlooked on crowdfunding projects is logistics and it turns out that shipping can be a major problem which can turn enthusiastic backers into disappointed customers
Did you know that a CNNMoney examination of the top 50 most-funded projects on Kickstarter found that 84% missed their target delivery dates? A project with an initial expectation of attracting a few hundred backers can take off and raise vastly more money than anticipated and obliterate the original production plans and timeline. It’s important for you to think through the pros and cons of how to get your products shipped: do it yourself or use a third party?
Domestic shipping in high volumes may be challenging but the cost and logistics of shipping items to overseas backers can be a nightmare. Make sure you’ve addressed any FCC or CE clearance issues beforehand or it may add weeks of delay waiting to receive them from regulators. International shipping is more expensive already and if you have a large and/or heavy product, even higher dimensional weight costs become highly probable.
DCL is in a position to help successfully funded projects navigate the logistics world to work through and get past those potential shipping nightmares. You can check out Tips for Startups on Choosing the 3PL partner to learn more. Wasting time and resources on logistics is not what you need when you’re ready to move forward and manage long term production cycles. This way you can ensure that your product reaches all those backers seamlessly no matter where they live!
