Peaks

Update: Tariffs and Fulfillment

Hello friends,

Elephant in the room, tariffs are becoming a huge obstacle for US/CA fulfillment. I'll jump right in...

The only pledges affected are those in the US and Canada. Fulfillment for EU, UK, Asia, AU, NZ, ROW are moving along. Games were delayed in getting picked up as containers were harder to come by due to the panic of raising tariffs.

The Trump administration is currently threatening to increase tariffs another 50% on items imported from China to the US, bringing the total to 104%. This makes fulfillment very difficult. This affects pledges in Canada because prior to tariff increases it was more affordable to ship to the US then take a truck to Canada.

While things have obviously shifted, it's not a simple thing to just remove Canada from the US pallets and ship separately. For a small publisher like Tangerine Games, we depend on consolidated shipping. Basically, we share containers with other smaller publishers to split the freight costs. This was our strategy for Nestlings and has been our plan for PEAKS since before the campaign launched last summer. Freight isn't cheap, so consolidation is very helpful. Heck, even a lot of medium-size publishers still do this.

Since consolidation is a thing, all publishers need to agree and be able to move forward with an alternate plan. For the US/CA shipment, it will need to be delayed. If there was any indication that tariffs would increase or even decrease at certain intervals (e.g. "new 50% tariffs go into effect 45 days from today"), we could plan more precisely.

Unfortunately, this isn't the case. President Trump is just increasing tariffs left and right at will. So, if we ship the US container and it increases by the time it arrives at port and all publishers can't pay the extra cost, the games just sit at the border accruing fees. It's too big of a risk right now.

We are hopeful to have a plan in the next week or two for US/CA fulfillment, but things are too volatile at the moment to secure a step forward.

With this said, we will more than likely slow down our spending on ads for our next title, Sauros, in order to make sure PEAKS is delivered to everyone. Your pledges, taxes, shipping fees, and gracious donations for tariffs are all assigned to PEAKS. 

The money we've used for Sauros have come through further sales of Nestlings and other purchases post Kickstarter campaigns. Slowing down these ads will allow is to put more money into making sure you all receive PEAKS. It sucks but it's part of the business.

We'll post again when we have tracking information for the ships for all other pledges outside the US/CA. We'll get through this together!