UnitedCardists.com - The forum for Cardistry, Magic, Custom Decks and All Things Playing Cards.

Howdy all!

My first KS deck launches soon and I’m working to the last minute to bring down my funding ask.

For those who have traveled down this road - what should I estimate for shipping? I’ve been advised to set aside 33% of funding for shipping, but that makes my ask price quite high.

I’m looking for ballpark here, I know location of backers is variable. But if printing costs are, say, $5k, what should I expect to pay in shipping to cover my butt - $2k? 3k? 6k?

I want to keep the price as low as possible and not ask for too much money. But I also want to at least break even on funding.

I see several kickstarters for USPCC (my printer) who are asking for $4-7k for funding. However, I know that printing with USPCC can’t get you a product for less than $4.5k... so are they really only putting in 1-2k for shipping? That sounds either dangerous or RAZOR thin.

Advice will help me make a great product! Mucho thanks!

Hopefully you can get responses from other creators/producers that are infinitely more knowledgeable about your question. I think some are able to set a lower goal amount because they just need partial funding to produce the deck. They expect a lot of the decks produced not to be sold through Kickstarter, but get enough support to supplement their own investment. They then get a pile of extra decks they can sell on their own or through playing card retailers, or both.

I don't know about volume shipping, but I can say when I sent playing cards it is expensive domestically in the US and just incomprehensibly expensive internationally. I am just talking about the postage. The packaging and fulfillment is a whole other shipping expense. You do need to be careful you don't underestimate your shipping costs. The worst thing for you is to sell the decks too cheaply and end up in big debt so you can mail the rewards to your backers.

Let's say you are planning to offer $10 deck printed by USPCC. Add 35%-40%. If lower - prepare to fund some of your goal from your poket. It's not an issue in case of overfunding. Then you can set it to 30% or lower.

2nd method - $10 per backer (not always correct) +-20%

So 1000 decks by USPCC - set a goal to $5.5-$6k

Thats great news, but I think they could still be a bit cheaper.. Can you ship via Royal Mail in Canada? Their shipping prices are pretty cheap