A Review (and Recommendation) of GTG Operations

So, you crowdfunded a game, and you need to ship it to 1200 backers. You made 2000 total copies of the game, and you need a place to store the extra copies. Also, you’d really like to sell those extra copies to retailers and distributors.

I was in this predicament myself after my Kickstarter campaign for Euphoria in 2013. Fortunately, I was friendly with some of the folks at Greater Than Games, a fellow game publisher in St. Louis that was considerably more evolved than the fledgling Stonemaier Games. They had a warehouse, shipping capabilities, and relationships with distributors.

Thus began a long and fruitful partnership with GTG Operations, a partnership that continues to this day.

So why have I taken so long to recommend GTG Operations to you?

I’ve mentioned it in the past, but up until a few months ago, GTG did not have the capacity to add new clients. We’re not their only client, but at their original warehouse, the combination of GTG and Stonemaier took up the majority of their space.

But GTG is now fully settled into a massive warehouse with plenty of room for more publishers. It’s more than just space–they now have more loading docks to accept several shipping containers at a time, and their fulfillment capacity is significantly increased (mostly due to finding the right people, but a machine we bought them also helps).

Also, while GTG is very good at shipping to distributors, they’ve struggled at times to keep up with our fulfillment needs. I’ve stuck with them and tried to be a part of the solution, and at this point I really believe they’re doing a fantastic job with fulfillment. They balance our weekly shipping needs with the occasional big preorder shipouts…in fact, they blew through the big Red Rising fulfillment at a record pace.

What exactly does GTG do for clients?

• Receive and unload shipping containers at their warehouse in St. Louis.
• Store pallets in their warehouse.
• Inform distributors of product availability.
• Ship products to distributors.
• Handle distributor invoices and payments.
• Fulfill any customer preorders you provide them.
• Fulfill any ongoing customer orders you provide them.

GTG works with distributors and retailers worldwide–that’s their distribution brokerage service, which we stopped using last year solely because we hired Alex to handle it internally. They can ship to customers anywhere, though we primarily use them to ship to customers in the US.

Are there areas of improvement?

Overall, GTG Operations is doing a great job, and historically they’ve been very open to feedback. There may be things I’m not aware of, as Joe and Alex are in direct contact with GTG far more than me these days, but from my perspective there are just a few areas of improvement:

• Better packaging: I mean this in a few different ways, and I say this with the caveat that we have very few complaints about damaged products. That said, GTG is still using thin bubble wrap when most fulfillment centers have moved towards the bigger, more protective bubbles. Eventually I’d like GTG to move away from bubble wrap altogether, though–paper is far easier to recycle. Also, I recently tested GTG by having them ship me a swift-start pack (without knowing it was me), and what could have been shipped in a thin bubble mailer was sent in a significantly oversized cardboard box.
• Better advocate to distributors: You don’t know distributors and retailers, and even if you knew their email addresses, they already have thousands of other publishers to deal with. This is the benefit of having a distribution broker with a long history like GTG. However, GTG doesn’t actively sell your games to distributors. They list your inventory, and they send out a monthly enewsletter to distributors, but they’re not advocating for your specific products. At the same time, why should they? You’re the publisher–it’s your job to sell your products. But why would distributors listen to you? It’s a vicious circle. I think there’s probably a nice middle-ground solution where publishers could pitch their products to distributors on an ongoing basis and GTG would provide the conduit to get distributors to listen to those pitches.

What am I getting out of this post?

GTG Operations did not ask me to write this, nor do I receive any sort of kickback if you sign up as a client. Rather, I’m writing this for 2 reasons:

1. While there are other great fulfillment centers in the US, it was really helpful for a long time to have both fulfillment and distribution brokerage handled out of the same location by the same people, and I think that combination of services could be really helpful for you too.
2. I believe in supporting the partners who have supported us. Stonemaier Games probably wouldn’t be here today if it weren’t for GTG Operations. It also helps that I truly think they’re good people. They look after their employees, clients, and customers.

How can you contact GTG Operations?

Their email is operations@greaterthangames.com

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