As I mentioned on another thread. The truck strike will have little to no impact on Wave 1 as the strike is in CA, but FFGs stuff goes through Seattle/Tacoma. The clock started ticking when the two ships docked on the 19th and 25th - one's already heading back across the Pacific. It'll take about two weeks to get through the distribution chain, which ties in roughly with the Newt's info. Shouldn't be long now.

As I mentioned on another thread. The truck strike will have little to no impact on Wave 1 as the strike is in CA, but FFGs stuff goes through Seattle/Tacoma. The clock started ticking when the two ships docked on the 19th and 25th - one's already heading back across the Pacific. It'll take about two weeks to get through the distribution chain, which ties in roughly with the Newt's info. Shouldn't be long now.

can't link it because it's on a closed group but here is the photo.

Who is this distributor and more importantly, where does he live??!!

This picture looks like it is from a convention of some kind. It has AGoT 2.0 in it and that is not out until GenCon.

A store called Little Shop of Magic said that Wave one is shipping to their store on Monday.

https://plus.google.com/110579177738865419134/posts/EsvFG5UZ88m

If this is true, we should be hearing more next week. I haven't really been keeping up but to we already know all the cards in all the Wave 1 sets?

Vegas....where else!

Vegas....where else!

Road trip!!!!

I check a few times a day as well. I've had a question I've wanted to ask in regards to shipping and delays and such and I think it coincides with this topic: Wouldn't this be a non-factor if manufacturing was in the States? Of course national shipping (trucking strikes, etc) could take place but wouldn't eliminating the delay overseas shipping causes be a good thing? I'm not an economist and obviously there is some financial advantage to companies outsourcing production to China otherwise they wouldn't do it. I've just been curious what those margins might be? Big enough where it's still more profitable having several weeks of time (or months) where products can't get into the hands of consumers? The fact that FFG is an international company and doesn't just sell it's products to the US is obviously another big factor I'm sure. Anyway, I'm sure this has been discussed on the FFG forums before and if someone knows where a good thread is about this I would be thankful for a link to it.

Northern Utah here. Let's do it!

I check a few times a day as well. I've had a question I've wanted to ask in regards to shipping and delays and such and I think it coincides with this topic: Wouldn't this be a non-factor if manufacturing was in the States? Of course national shipping (trucking strikes, etc) could take place but wouldn't eliminating the delay overseas shipping causes be a good thing? I'm not an economist and obviously there is some financial advantage to companies outsourcing production to China otherwise they wouldn't do it. I've just been curious what those margins might be? Big enough where it's still more profitable having several weeks of time (or months) where products can't get into the hands of consumers? The fact that FFG is an international company and doesn't just sell it's products to the US is obviously another big factor I'm sure. Anyway, I'm sure this has been discussed on the FFG forums before and if someone knows where a good thread is about this I would be thankful for a link to it.

I'd be willing to pay more if they made them here in the US. I wouldn't pay double, but if it was about 20-25% more! I'd pay that.

Vegas....where else!

Road trip!!!!

Northern Utah here. Let's do it!

Each day I come home.

No box of joy at the door.

A tear hits the ground.

(A Haiku for those who recognize the cadence).

I've had a question I've wanted to ask in regards to shipping and delays and such and I think it coincides with this topic: Wouldn't this be a non-factor if manufacturing was in the States? Of course national shipping (trucking strikes, etc) could take place but wouldn't eliminating the delay overseas shipping causes be a good thing? I'm not an economist and obviously there is some financial advantage to companies outsourcing production to China otherwise they wouldn't do it. I've just been curious what those margins might be? Big enough where it's still more profitable having several weeks of time (or months) where products can't get into the hands of consumers? The fact that FFG is an international company and doesn't just sell it's products to the US is obviously another big factor I'm sure. Anyway, I'm sure this has been discussed on the FFG forums before and if someone knows where a good thread is about this I would be thankful for a link to it.

Hi Sencho,

That's a good question. Sure, it's a hassle to ship this stuff in, but at the same time, it's not that much of a hassle. Per unit - especially on high value-added products - shipping is pretty cheap.

Two factors that make it worth outsourcing are the labor cost and the currency values. The labor cost is the easy one: Americans are a very hard-working people, but they also require a lot of compensation. Workers in China really are that much cheaper to hire. They also don't have the labor standards that Americans or Europeans have.

Currency values is another thing. Americans like the idea of a strong dollar, but it's a very bad thing for our international competitiveness. Maintaining a strong dollar means that it's cheap for us to import and expensive for us to export. We have that strong dollar despite our trade deficit in large part because we have the world's main reserve currency. Everybody uses the US dollar for international exchanges, and therefore there's always a high demand for dollars, and thus the price of the dollar remains high. We also have a huge financial market, which is the real driver of currency values.

I'd be willing to pay more if they made them here in the US. I wouldn't pay double, but if it was about 20-25% more! I'd pay that.

I agree with you that I would pay for 20-25% more. In fact, I pretty much do because I only buy from my FLGS, rather than the online retailers

However, without knowing specifics, I think we'd be paying more than 20-25% more, and I don't think you and I can maintain the demand for this product at that 20-25% markup. While it would probably still be cheaper than WH40K et al. X-Wing and Armada are still cheap games appealing to an easy market of people who want to play for relatively low cost.

I check a few times a day as well. I've had a question I've wanted to ask in regards to shipping and delays and such and I think it coincides with this topic: Wouldn't this be a non-factor if manufacturing was in the States? Of course national shipping (trucking strikes, etc) could take place but wouldn't eliminating the delay overseas shipping causes be a good thing? I'm not an economist and obviously there is some financial advantage to companies outsourcing production to China otherwise they wouldn't do it. I've just been curious what those margins might be? Big enough where it's still more profitable having several weeks of time (or months) where products can't get into the hands of consumers? The fact that FFG is an international company and doesn't just sell it's products to the US is obviously another big factor I'm sure. Anyway, I'm sure this has been discussed on the FFG forums before and if someone knows where a good thread is about this I would be thankful for a link to it.

Labor in the US, and in most first-world countries, costs a great deal. As a hypothetical factory owner you generally have a minimum wage, which in comparison to foreign nations is quite high yet in terms of local buying power quite low since that minimum wage gets factored into the cost of everything. When you get into skilled labor such as is needed for the creation of plastic tooling and the like, the costs go dramatically higher still. Your factory has to meet certain safety and building standards. In the US, you must provide health coverage, and at a fairly high level comparative to what one could call "manufacturing nations" like China and India. You have a maximum work week and laws governing overtime. You have the prospect of very costly lawsuits over trivial matters. You have a labyrinthine tax code to navigate to actually pay your people, which requires the services of a dedicated professional who doesn't work for free. None of those things is "bad" as something to be corrected (well, maybe the tax code), but they do all add their own bit of cost to the equation and in aggregate are substantial enough to make using local labor undesirable. Multiplied out across a few hundred or so workers at a factory and even at minimum wage, it's a hefty premium for something that must cost as little as possible in most cases.

Overseas, most of those things are absent or are dramatically lessened in impact. Safety codes and worker's rights aren't particularly comprehensive nor enforced as thoroughly. Regulations that do exist can be skirted with enough political favor. One could do that in the US for a time, but the media and courts (not every lawsuit is trivial) will eventually catch up with you and it will be expensive. Ergo, the cost of a unit of human labor is dramatically cheaper overseas. If that human labor is doing something relatively low-end such that it can be done anywhere in the world, then there is little incentive to buy it in the US. Yes, shipping it overseas adds to the cost and time, but across tens of thousands of units for a single cost the amount still isn't that high per unit. Scale aside, it's more or less identical to the FLGS vs. online discounter discussion; if you the consumer don't derive any benefit from buying it locally, why would you? Factories are consumers of labor, and the logic is not all that dissimilar.

At times like these when there's a major impact to the schedule caused by external events, it can be tempting to try and throw in these complications as justification to move manufacturing to the US. However, the times where the system doesn't work are the minority. To incur rather massive expenses for a temporary and rare disruption isn't sound business, especially when normally the windows are entirely predictable. Paying more 100% of the time for X years is undesirable compared to paying more for disruption for 50% of one year that may not happen again in that same span of years. Add in that the goods in question here are non-perishable and so the loss is somewhat intangible. It's more a delay of income and a nebulous concept of "lost opportunity sales" which really can't be defined, nor are they likely to be fatal to the product lines. It hurts, sure, but not enough to outweigh those other facts which make the option to move locally look grim. Until such time as the cost of manufacturing in the US is cheaper than making the same good overseas (which it won't be for quite a while), you're really not going to see any change. Hence why the dock workers knew their strike would be impactful; the people who buy from the factories overseas have given them a great deal of economic leverage and they opted to use it.

Thanks for the insight into some of the economics behind this Mikael! Very informative.

Regardless of where you are buying wave 1, its still expensive AND a lot of ships. Also I am sure each future wave will all exceed $100 per wave. That's a lot for people to spend regardless of who they are.

Wave 1 is going to be great! Buy until it comes I really want to put some wear and tear into the core set. So far I've found I have not played it all that much as a I wanted. So I agree with everyone, "is it hear yet" but I can also wait for boat to get here when it gets here.

Also as wave 1 comes out, I want to play each ship, so I'm buying in batches. Unlike x-wing, I do not want to have ships in my box that don't get played, this game is too pricey for that.

I check a few times a day as well. I've had a question I've wanted to ask in regards to shipping and delays and such and I think it coincides with this topic: Wouldn't this be a non-factor if manufacturing was in the States? Of course national shipping (trucking strikes, etc) could take place but wouldn't eliminating the delay overseas shipping causes be a good thing? I'm not an economist and obviously there is some financial advantage to companies outsourcing production to China otherwise they wouldn't do it. I've just been curious what those margins might be? Big enough where it's still more profitable having several weeks of time (or months) where products can't get into the hands of consumers? The fact that FFG is an international company and doesn't just sell it's products to the US is obviously another big factor I'm sure. Anyway, I'm sure this has been discussed on the FFG forums before and if someone knows where a good thread is about this I would be thankful for a link to it.

From what I understand from friends in the business, it's not just a question of wanting to make things in the U.S. - it's that the capability no longer exists. So much of the worlds manufacturing has moved to China that it's almost impossible to find everything you need in the states anymore. Companies to make the molds, the production machinery, the packaging.....all pretty much located in China! So to actually get a whole assembly line devoted to your product up and running is not just a matter of placing an order somewhere - it's putting in the capital to set up the line, hire and train the workers, and then find enough business to keep it running and profitable year round.

If enough companies decided to move manufacturing back to North America it'd be a viable plan, but no one company as small as FFG is going to have that option.

reminds me of the hitchhikers guide through the galaxy part where they send away all useless people including the telephone receiver cleaners of the planet with a spaceship to create new colonies (but mostly to get rid of them). as soon as those left the original planet was wiped out by a deadly disease which originated from infected telephone receivers.