What do you desire in deck creation?

[The Game Crafter]

Is this the smallest box you can get for a deck that's 4"x3"x2"? That's still overlarge being 6" deep.

The brown boxes we stock have to be sized for both international and domestic use, because while we ship a lot of stuff, most of what we ship is via Priority Mail. Therefore storage space is at a premium for brown boxes. And the post office frowns upon us putting labels on multiple sides of the box.

That said, I have good news! I looked and there is one size smaller that we can get that fits both our domestic and international labels. It is 7x5x1.5. So as soon as those arrive we'll start using those as well. That's half the volume of our 8x6x3.

 

[gregory]

That would be an act of mail fraud. https://postalinspectors.uspis.gov/investigations/MailFraud/MailFraud.aspx

Oh I know. It was worth a shot though

 

[starlightexp]

Hmm sorry for posting here I didn't know this was a shipping only thread

 

[The Game Crafter]

Sorry but have to report yet another huge box for two tiny decks. The box weighed in at the same as the contents. Photo attached so you can see how silly and wasteful it is. I do care about the waste as well as shipping costs.

If you would be willing to give me your order number I'd like to investigate why this happened so I can prevent it in the future.

 

[The Game Crafter]

Hmm sorry for posting here I didn't know this was a shipping only thread

Please do not be sorry. I welcome all comments. I'm here to improve my business and also to find out how I can serve the Tarot community better.

 

[The Game Crafter]

2) Printing issues ABOUND. I have 3 decks that people did through you guys and in not one of them are the cards actually all right. I'm sure it's in the 1/8 error margin but if laying the cards out together they look a bit like an arts and craft project. Tarot is a different beast then just normal card games we LOOK at the art for details, meanings and the like. Where a card game is more about the playing the game itself, Tarot is more about the art. We don't NEED to get another deck, but we do because we like the art. If the art is sloppily printed on the cards you can't help but notice. Again all the errors are most likely not egregious enough to make you guys send me another deck but it does prevent me from wanting to use you guys as my printer. In the 3 years of selling decks I have made I have not once had a deck come from my other printers wrong. Even when I had borders on the front and the back they were so close to being centered that by laying out the cards side by side you never would know they were POD.

I'm sorry that you are dissatisfied with the orders you received. I looked you up in our system, and I think I found you (though I'm not 100% sure). It looks like there were two separate orders placed. However, if this is you, there were no grievances filed against those orders. Did you ever report your dissatisfaction to our customer service people? We do strive to remedy problems if they arise.

Also if I wanted to order bulk because I am doing a show or class almost every other company I looked at would offer me a discount. That $12 deck now just became a $9-$10 deck if I ordered say 60 copies through them. At that price NOW I can sell the deck for $20 and have a product that is at a decent price, still cover my time and costs. There is just no way I could justify using you guys. I chose to ship the decks out myself because I want to be sure that each deck was right and so I have opted out of selling through my printer. They do indeed offer drop shipping to places like you guys but for me buying in bulk and not passing the costs on to others was the way I chose to do it. Still even not at bulk the deck would have been say $22 through them and $34 through you? Most people are ok with dropping about $25 on a deck but when you get closer to $37 it's more of a commitment. True you can say that pricing is up the the designer but many artists spend hundreds of dollars and just as many hours making a deck and it would be nice if they can at least make back the money they spent to make the deck. You HAVE to get more competitive at pricing with people having more choices these days.

We do offer bulk pricing starting at 25 copies. http://news.thegamecrafter.com/post/35561758838/new-bulk-pricing-great-for-kickstarters

 

[The Game Crafter]

Thank You All

Thank you all for your participation in this thread. Your insights have helped me tremendously, and I'm pleased to say that over the next two months we'll be implementing a number of changes based upon your feedback here. I'm going to enumerate the changes here.

1) We have already removed the large game box as the "default" box from our system. This should encourage designers to choose a box that best fits their game, rather than having the system suggest too large a box.

2) We have ordered some smaller shipping containers which should be less weight and less wasteful. The new shipping containers are the smallest the USPS recommends we use based upon our shipping: 7x5x1.5. These are more than 50% smaller than our current smallest shipping container for First Class and Parcel Post shipments, and are roughly the same size as a USPS Priority Small Flat Rate Box.

3) We are going to order some additional cloth bags. This will allow us to offer higher quality cloth bags at cheaper prices. In addition, we're going to allow those cloth bags to be used as packaging for your decks. As many of you point out, these make better packages than a box for the Tarot community.

4) Early next year we'll be adding a "Tarot" section to our site that specifically promotes the selling of Tarot decks. This will make it easier to find all the quality Tarot decks on our web site. We will also specifically showcase tarot decks in other parts of our site in order to increase sales for all of you.

5) We are looking into a new technology to cut Tarot cards that may be cheaper and more accurate. No guarantees there of course. But we're evaluating this new technology to see if it can offer either an improvement in price or accuracy.

6) Before the year is out we will introduce a new 90-card Jumbo-sized Tuck box to give a better box option for decks like Zombie Apocalypse Tarot so that they can still have a printed box without using the Large or Medium game box we currently offer.

7) We're working on a jumbo booklet that will allow you to create very large Meanings books for your divination decks.

8) We're putting together a video for designers explaining why it is important to choose smaller packaging for decks to lessen the shipping costs to consumers, especially those consumers over-seas.

Thank you for this opportunity to become a part of your community. If you have additional questions or concerns please do bring them up. I will continue to monitor this thread. I just wanted you to know that your comments have not fallen on deaf ears. You have made a difference in how we are doing business going forward.

 

[gregory]

Thanks for all you are saying here.

 

[HudsonGray]

Yes, thank you, you are very responsive.

Everyone here takes deck making very seriously, even if we don't have a huge print run of over 2,000 decks done. Your efforts are much appreciated.

 

[nicky]

hmm sorry for posting here i didn't know this was a shipping only thread

roflmfao