Ocean vs. air freight

Ocean freight is the default for board games, and for good reason. Games are heavy, dense, and rarely time-critical, exactly the profile ocean shipping is built for. A full production run moves by sea at a fraction of the air cost. As a rough guide, ocean freight might cost a publisher somewhere between one and three dollars per game landed, while air freight for the same game commonly runs five to ten times that, enough to erase the entire margin on most projects.

Air freight has one virtue: speed. Where ocean takes 4 to 7 weeks door to door, air takes roughly 5 to 10 days. That makes air the tool for small, urgent quantities, not full runs. The classic uses are flying in 20 to 100 review and preview copies before a crowdfunding campaign, getting convention stock to a show after a production delay, or replacing a small batch of damaged goods quickly.

The cost structures also differ. Ocean is priced by volume (per cubic meter for LCL, per container for FCL), while air is priced by chargeable weight, the greater of actual weight and volumetric weight. Board games are heavy for their size, so they usually bill at actual weight, which stings. A single 3-kilogram game shipped air freight as part of a small batch can easily cost 15 to 30 dollars in freight alone.

Most publishers use both in the same project: a small air shipment for reviewers and marketing, then the full run by ocean. Plan the air batch when you place the manufacturing order, since pulling copies off the line early requires the factory to finish and pack a partial batch ahead of the main run.