John Nephew thought he had a winner with a new tabletop game called Dice Miner. Importing the games from China turned out to be its own roll of the dice.
Nephew, founder of Atlas Games in Duluth, Minn., ordered a 40-foot cargo container full of games from Shanghai in December, anticipating delivery in about six weeks.
Instead, the games took nearly six months to arrive — an increasingly common example of the supply chain bottlenecks pushing inflation to its highest level in more than a dozen years.
“We were booked on something like eight different shipping voyages in a row, and had them canceled from under us,” Nephew says.
Soaring demand from Americans for everything from iPads to cars is leading to a surge in freight crossing the Pacific, hitting business owners like Nephew.
When the cargo with his games finally arrived on the West Coast, the container was immediately emptied so it could be sent back to China for another load.
The games then continued on to Minnesota by truck, rather than rail, which would have been more economical. The final shipping cost was about $12,000, at least 50% more than the game maker had budgeted.
Businesses around the country are wrestling with similar challenges in getting their goods.
The Port of Los Angeles just logged its busiest month in history, handling more than a million shipping containers in May, more than half of them loaded with imports from Asia.
Small business owners that sell cheap overseas made novelties and notions are really going to be hurting if they are not already even the ones with a unique product manufactured abroad are screwed. We shop to much anyway.