How we’re going to ship Fabulous Beasts

Here’s a very important question: how do we manufacture and ship Fabulous Beasts to (hopefully) thousands of people? It’s one we’ve been wrestling with all year. We don’t just want to ship, we want to ship on time. To you! For Christmas 2016…

It turns out the first thing we had to do was think globally. Over the last year, we’ve researched different kinds of high-volume manufacturing processes and taken advice from experts. Our first visit to Shenzhen, China was a huge eye-opener: manufacturing is the lifeblood of the city, a teeming ecosytem of factories specialising in every single kind of making process.

The second thing we had to do was find great partners. We were invited to join Hardware Club, a community of hardware start-ups from around the world that share knowledge and support one another on the journey of making and scaling new products. Thanks to that network, we got to know a Hong-Kong based company called JDH Sourcing. JDH have over 25 years’ experience in making toys and games. They have forgotten more about how to make stuff at scale than we’ll ever know, and that makes them a brilliant partner for us. Also they are just the nicest people, which really helps too.

Tim and Chris visited with JDH last month to tear down our prototype and figure out how we will manufacture Fabulous Beasts. Here’s a look at some of the things they learned.

If you enjoyed this post, we have more about the design and development of Fabulous Beasts:

• How we designed Fabulous Beasts – all about its game design
• Winning the Indiecade Technology Award – how we developed the technology that makes it work

We’re taking Fabulous Beasts to Kickstarter on January 26. Sign up so we can tell you when it starts!