Which is cheapest?

What sort of quantities are you talking about?

If you in the low 1000s of units and you have the time and space you could probably assemble them yourself.

Although saying that - would you want shrink wrapping done.

I think a lot depends on the size and complexity of what you're putting together.

We have an accessory pack that supports our print and play game - we source the elements from different places and package them at our offices at the moment as it's easier (we stock below 5000 units and they are relatively small).

If we find ourselves moving into the higher thousands though we'll be getting that done all in one place.

The economy of scale thing comes into force then along with the time-saving benefit.

Carl

:)

That does sound like having a company do it for you is the way to go.

You'll get that exciting feeling of waiting for the complete sets to arrive - "mmm smells like fresh new game goodness!"

Good luck with it.

c

Since you say "lots of components from plastic, to boards, to loads of cards," and of course would add to that a box and rules at the least, the reality is that your game is going to be manufactured by multiple companies, anyway. Odds are if a company prints boards they probably aren't going to be molding plastic, and it could well be that they don't print cards, either (which requires specialized cutting and collating machinery, at least for professional-quality cards). And then it's going to be assembled, which might not happen there, either.

As such it may be that you're going to save money dealing with separate manufacturers yourself, still having someone assemble it (which could well be one of the manufacturers, maybe the printer of the board and rules or the box, if separate). Alternately it may be cheaper to have one company arrange everything because while they'll mark everything up, they may get enough of a trade discount to even things out. Unfortunately it's likely going to require getting a lot of bids for both the whole thing and for some of the individual parts, and making certain that the "whole thing" companies provide line item pricing for things, including assembly.

Printers (as in "print shops") are quite accustomed to projects being pieced out and so shouldn't have any problem with it, though it's important to let them know in advance that it's something you're considering so they don't bury some costs somewhere that will break the bid if you supply a particular element.

On another note, I'm pretty sure you're going to find 1000-5000 custom-molded plastic bits to be outrageously expensive, unfortunately.

I think I missunderstood something in the original post.

Reading over FastLearner's post I agree entirely.

I thought you'd already lined up the relevant 'bits' and was looking to collate (my bad).

Fastlearner's comment about your print run is particularly important - if you're having loads of stuff inside the box then your unit cost on 1000-5000off is probably going to be pretty high.

High in respect to being a percentage of the final Retail Price (just in case you were wondering what I meant).

If it turns out to be too high in relation to your target retail price you'll find yourself in the position of either:

1. hiking the retail price up to give yourself a margin to play with for distributors and retail trade negotiations.

2. left to sell them yourself to ensure making some form of profit.

Looks like a lot of number crunching is required on this one (along with the shopping around FL has already mentioned).

Carl