Armchair Dragoons Forums
Wargaming => Intel Dump => Topic started by: bayonetbrant on August 23, 2021, 10:22:46 AM
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https://www.armchairdragoons.com/news/global-shippings-impact-on-tabletop-gaming/
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ive seen the 'our prices are going up' announcements get quite visceral on FB
warlord recently announced a very modest increase and the place went up in flames
GW always gets the eye rolls at price rises, and some of it is justified
its a hobby, if its too expensive get out - i liken these people to walking into a Ferrari dealer and complaining you cant afford their goods - no one is making you buy them
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I don't know.
Granted, tabletop gaming & wargaming aren't exactly cheap, but there's still varying degrees of affordability. What do you if something you've enjoyed for years quite suddenly and/or unexpectedly -- and for reasons beyond anyone's control -- starts to go beyond your price range?
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I have seen quite a few discussions lately like, "I really want that game, but shipping doubles the price..."
I suspect some of those publishers who responded, "we're going to keep doing what we have been" are going to have a shocking moment when they see their sales fall off.
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I wouldn't take part in a hobby where the postage for said hobby on the items I bought were unpalatable. I guess "unpalatable" to me will depend on the product.
I really don't like paying postage and that's the main reason I don't buy direct from game manufacturers in the US (or other countries for that matter) - even when they do have a sale on.
If postage gets to a certain point (probably any more than a 5th of the price of a game) then I'm out. Simple as.
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Postage at the retail level is an issue, but not nearly in the same way that bulk freight is right now.
You might see a 10-15% increase in postage. Hell, you might even see a 100% increase in postage, where package from the US goes from £15 to £30.
But global freight prices are currently exploding by logarithmic values. Containers that were shipping for $2500 are now costing $25000, and that increase of $22500 could complete sink a small company.
So that increase in postage from £15 to £30 sucks. But it's not going up to £150. Not saying that a postage increase doesn't suck, but you'd always have an option to stop at a retail shop some time when out traveling or on holiday, if you end up near one, and take a game or two home with you from there.
Publishers don't have any comparable option to keep their companies afloat.
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Another problem that you don't hear much of (yet) is a serious truck driver shortage here in the States and I think also the UK. That will also push up delivery rates.
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Not to distract from the original topic, but all manner of consumer items and staples in the US are increasing dramatically now.
There is a shortage of chicken wings.
Service-industry labor is in a massive shortage.
All of our costs are going up considerably.
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There is a shortage of chicken wings.
meat-packing plants have been kit hard w/ closures for outbreaks, creating a bottleneck for all sorts of meats
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All the same here - 100 k drivers short now affecting the pig market where farms are backed up with now overweight pigs that the farmer is fined fur are the abattoir
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the start of some good news? or just a temporary blip?
The steady climb to ever-higher rates for container shipping this year is showing signs of easing, at least temporarily.
On the busy Shanghai-to-Los Angeles trade route, the rate for a 40-foot container sank by almost $1,000 last week to $11,173, an 8.2% drop from the prior week that was the steepest weekly fall since March 2020, according to Drewry. Another gauge from Freightos, which includes premiums and surcharges, showed a nearly 11% plunge to $16,004, the fourth consecutive decline.
Ocean freight is still several times more expensive than it was pre-pandemic, and air cargo rates remain elevated too. So it’s anyone’s guess if these latest declines in global shipping costs mark the beginning of a plateau, a seasonal turn lower or the start of a steeper correction.
But investors are taking notice: Shares of the world’s container lines — from the biggest players like Maersk and Hapag-Lloyd to smaller competitors including Zim and Matson — have stumbled in recent days from record highs set in September.
Judah Levine, group head of research at Hong Kong-based Freightos, said the recent softness could reflect slower production in China during its Golden Week holiday combined with power restrictions in some regions.
“It’s possible some reduction in available supply is curbing container demand and freeing up some of the additional capacity that carriers have added during peak season,” he said. “It is also possible that — with ocean delays making it increasingly unlikely that shipments not already moving will make it in time for the holidays — the price drop also shows that the peak of peak season is behind us.”
What’s definitely not over yet is the logjam of ships outside the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, where 60 vessels were waiting for a berth to offload as of late Sunday. The average wait is now more than 11 days, compared with a high of about eight days back in April.
Port congestion is a key reason why Bloomberg Intelligence doesn’t see the market at the start of a downtrend.
Meanwhile, as Bloomberg’s Robert Tuttle reports, the hunt for the ship that may have caused a major oil spill off the coast of Orange County in California is proving to be a slow grind.
The Big Crunch of 2021 is still reverberating across financial markets and the global economy more broadly, prompting downgrades across equity analysts’ estimates for the upcoming earnings season and causing many central banks to start removing emergency stimulus to ward off inflation.
—Brendan Murray in London
from Bloomberg
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2021-10-11/supply-chain-latest-container-shipping-rates-are-drifting-lower
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Yeah, the current shipping shitshow is an absolutely nightmare across the board.
I work at a company that installs security systems. I'm spending insane amounts of time right now on product procurement, because good luck finding equipment right now. Everything is backordered. We're almost to the point of having to postpone some big install jobs because we simply can't source the gear for them. Those are fun customer calls (that I luckily don't have to make).
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:notme:
“What me want to know is: What are the implications of supply-chain crisis for cookie?”
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???
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I keep seeing people say we need to manufacture more in the US. I point out that we have 870,000 manufacturing job openings that employers cannot fill, so how do expect creating more jobs that people refurse to take to work.
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I don’t understand the Cookie Monster cartoon.
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Was there supposed to be a dialogue caption?
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Was there supposed to be a dialogue caption?
yep, edited to add! thanks
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Was there supposed to be a dialogue caption?
yep, edited to add! thanks
Now ... :hehe:
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Note to self: make sure I'm logged in properly before reading. I could read the Cookie Monster caption and could not see the picture. After realizing I wasn't logged in, could see the picture. Very funny!
Also: do not get between Cookie Monster and their supply chain for cookies. :D
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Trigger Warning to Infantry Types, Logistics talk to follow:
Unfortunately, we are not at the worst this is likely going to get for sea freight, no market is improving and most are steadily declining. On a positive note, air cargo is roughly back to pre-pandemic levels but is absorbing delays for cheap sea freight in a feedback loop that is still hosing us. Asia internal is doing okay but US trucking is going to be hard hit this holiday season across most areas but less so in the fly over states and the south. European forecasts for truck freight are better but not pre-pandemic yet. I am not touching the UK. If the ports can download their backlogged vessels, we still have a good month or two delay to look forward to based on port clearance. This is all making sea freight more expensive for users and I have seen prices quadruple for containers on some carriers, congrats on your future sharing of this cost. DHL has some good analysis on this that is the basis for most of this but other sources are general supply chain forums and websites I use for work/professional development.
Edits because weird things with apostrophes
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Trigger Warning to Infantry Types, Logistics talk to follow:
:2funny:
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Channel I follow on YT says this could be a couple of years
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Channel I follow on YT says this could be a couple of years
for some cargo, that's entirely possible.
there are multiple links in the chain that are all broken:
1. too much backlog in the ports to move, but even if you could increase sealift....
2. too much backlog at the inbound ports, because of lack of manpower to unload, but even if you got more manpower there....
3. too few truck drivers / freight train spaces to move the cargo out of the port, but even if you got more drivers....
4. too few places to put the goods because the warehouses are understaffed and/or overloaded, but even if you found somewhere to put it all....
5. not enough income in the general population b/c of 18 months of the plague for people to have disposable income for things
you could fix any one of those pretty quickly, but fixing all of them? In a 3-month window? Good luck!
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Due to the situation I reverted all my direct pre orders, KS, P500 and all similar stuff. Absolutely cancelled every single one of them. I'll not buy anything in advance with the present situation.
Sidenote: Add the silly UK trade disagreements and the UK wargaming industry are saying 35% loss average due to loss of continental EU customers... that's quite a slice of market. So yes, I also cut shipments from the UK.
Thus I now buy directly from stores instead of the publishers through "pre orders".
For online stores for me - continental EU - there's a few I regularly go to and have the stuff delivered in 24 - 72 hours, depending. If Spain is next day, if Germany or so is 72 hours max. ( last package that came from UK was sent in July and arrived first week of October... )
I'll leave some of the links for the board wargames stores I use ( the physical stores here are greedy bastards and put very high final prices so I resort mostly to online from other continental countries )
Spain - I've ordered at least once from every single one of these. Orders are always here in 24 hours.
https://www.masqueoca.com/
https://www.4dados.es/
https://www.atlanticajuegos.com/
https://snafustore.com/
https://jugamosuna.es/
https://mathom.es/
France
https://www.hexasim.com/ - top service and immediate contact if needed. Very fast delivery, usually 48 hours.
https://www.philibertnet.com/ - not the best prices but always worth checking. I've been surprised.
https://www.agorajeux.com/ - same as the previous and they carry some good old stock and not so mainstream titles.
Belgium
https://www.boardgamegeneral.eu/ - this is the one that usually I get the "out of stock" or "rare" stuff from. When someone says "Atlantic Chase is sold out !" or something similar, chances are these fellows will have a copy just for you.
Germany
https://ugg2nd.de/ is also a good store to check. Not my first choice at all though.
Advantage of some of these stores is that they also carry wargames miniatures options but for that I go a bit more expansive, but i'll leave the miniatures stores for another day.
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That's a handy list of places to buy. We might need to highlight that a little better for our overseas users :bigthumb:
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That's a handy list of places to buy. We might need to highlight that a little better for our overseas users :bigthumb:
I know there's more but I only included the ones i've ordered from at least once.
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certainly! personal experience can always make a difference
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Here's a good video that shows the magnitude of the problem. The link should be available to you and not be behind a paywall.
https://www.wsj.com/video/series/on-the-news/what-america-supply-chain-backlog-looks-like-up-close/388D6F02-5BCD-43AD-A3EE-B945F7373983
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not necessarily "The Answer"™ but some good on-the-ground perspective
https://medium.com/@ryan79z28/im-a-twenty-year-truck-driver-i-will-tell-you-why-america-s-shipping-crisis-will-not-end-bbe0ebac6a91
good link, TR. Those videos are.... just, wow
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not necessarily "The Answer"™ but some good on-the-ground perspective
https://medium.com/@ryan79z28/im-a-twenty-year-truck-driver-i-will-tell-you-why-america-s-shipping-crisis-will-not-end-bbe0ebac6a91
That was interesting. I wonder if problems with shipping, including higher costs, might wind up bringing manufacturing back to the US? That would solve some of the transportation problems. It might also have a net positive environmental impact, although I'm not sure how that would be factored in.
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That is a really good question. US companies sort of sold their souls to China from a manufacturing standpoint and now we are struggling to pay the devil his due.
I'll leave it at that because we could easily veer off the political discussion cliff with this one.
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I'll leave it at that because we could easily veer off the political discussion cliff with this one.
thank you
that's greatly appreciated
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not necessarily "The Answer"™ but some good on-the-ground perspective
https://medium.com/@ryan79z28/im-a-twenty-year-truck-driver-i-will-tell-you-why-america-s-shipping-crisis-will-not-end-bbe0ebac6a91
That was interesting. I wonder if problems with shipping, including higher costs, might wind up bringing manufacturing back to the US? That would solve some of the transportation problems. It might also have a net positive environmental impact, although I'm not sure how that would be factored in.
The problem with that is massive up front costs to bring back manufacturing capacity, combined with then having to train a work force to do it. And then you get to deal with essentially reconstructing the entire global logistics chain from the way it currently exists.