Dogs BOND - Freight Overage Donations

I'm asking anyone to chip in to help defray the cost of the surge pricing on Dogs BOND freight shipping. THERE IS NO OBLIGATION to our backers, this is strictly raising funds if you are able to help with the overall cost overage which is due to global pandemic and international shipping crisis. Everyone who ordered a copy of Dogs BOND will receive what they ordered.

A donation of $2 would cover a single box. A donation of $5 covers yours, and another box. We appreciate your support. 

With a tremendous amount of humility, I will share some of the challenges and compromises that we are having to make to get Dogs BOND across the finish line. The compound crises of COVID and the Suez Canal ship hit us as a 1-2 combination. It’s not enough to knock us down but we’re definitely going to feel it.

 

Here’s what we were faced with:

· International Freight Shipping Estimate / Quote in Sept 2020: $2800 - $3200

· International Freight Shipping Estimate / Quote as on June 28, 2021: $8000

 

Upon seeing a 250% spike in the quote, I fired off several very concerned emails and had some loud video conversations with our shipping partners. I am working with them to confirm shipping details, schedule, and of course pricing. Based on these conversations and my own research within the industry – we are simply at the right place at the wrong time. I had very plain conversations with the professionals.

 

“This is an unforeseeable, completely nightmare situation for international freight shipping” ~Vicki M. our freight shipping vendor

 

 

 

 

Upon working with the vendors and asking many professionals, we ran through several options very quickly. Jump to Option C if you want to see what we’re doing.

 

Option A: Find storage in China. Wait for freight shipping prices to go down.

 

Why not Option A:

• Ultimately, even shipping industry experts do not know when things might go down to “pre-pandemic & pre-suez canal problem” pricing
• Finding a responsible, responsive partner for storage would take time
• Financial responsibility for storage, insurance, and other costs which are unknown
• Don’t want to have to leverage the patience of our backers anymore than absolutely necessary.
• The animals that our project will be helping can’t wait and we want to get the games into the hands of our backers and in with the rescue organizations as well.

 

Option B: Team up with other publishers / creators who are finding storage in China to defray shipping costs and wait for shipping prices to go down. The industry is very collaborative, and several creators are considering delaying project delivery. Everyone is feeling this crunch and looking for best options.

 

Why not Option B:

• Ultimately, aligning with other creators in the short term sounds like a good option but the long term implications and loss of control could mean other problems later.
• Conflicts could arise if the different project creators have different tolerances for when the games should be shipped / paid for
• Would someone expect us to continue paying for storage if we decided to ship a week or a month ahead of when they were ready?

 

Option C (what we chose): The Dogs BOND team will pay the price surge of freight shipping. After much conversation, we arrived at a slightly more manageable number primarily because we’re ready to be picked up from the factory right now and we don’t take up that much space on a ship.

 

International Freight Shipping Estimate / Quote as on July 2, 2021: $5000

 

• Dogs BOND is expected to board the ship on July 17
• We can stay closer to our revised timeline
• The cost of shipping now, may be revealed as only marginally more expensive than committing to storage in China and waiting for prices to return to normal.
• International backers will see customs and VAT costs which we can address on a case-by-case basis. Please be patient with us as we work through those details.
• The freight company will charge us the balance when the games arrive in the US – meaning they’re as incentivized for the shipping to be done safely and securely

 

So this is where we are. I figure that I’m going to have to pay now or later, but if we pay now at least we can hold true to our timeline. Of course, it’s a fairly large outlay of cash which the project doesn’t exactly have right now. Fortunately the freight company is giving me a grace period to come up with the rest of the funds which will be entirely funded from my (Alex’s) personal funds.

 

With absolutely no obligation or expectation, if you’d like to contribute some funds towards the increased freight shipping charge, we’d appreciate any amount you feel comfortable to chip in. We would welcome the help. All Backers will receive the games that you ordered and there is no expectation that you should have to pay more in shipping to cover these additional costs.

 

Thanks for your support!

 

Alex, Sarah, and Kiki