How much do you know about how the toy products that you make and play with get to you? Most likely, they were shipped to the city you bought them from, on boats in containers. In January of 2021, shipping container prices started to climb. By early spring they were double the standard pricing and today shipping container prices have been reported to have increased 4x what importers are used to paying to ship their products. The growth in sales that the toy industry experienced over the past year is just a fraction of the growing demand weighing heavily on our supply chain. Shipping ports are congested and shipping containers are limited, all leading to a container crisis that’s wiping out profit margins.

In this episode, you’ll learn the history of the shipping container, gain an understanding of the pricing and functionality of containers, but most importantly we’re going to wrap this episode by building out an extensive Market Shift Mind Map around the shipping container crisis. The goal of creating this mind map is to predict and prepare for the future with this major shift in mind. You’ll learn to break apart and analyze the 4 different aspects of the rising shipping costs and predict changes to come so you can be proactive instead of reactive. Whether you’re new to the industry or an experienced toy professional this is a great exercise to appreciate the history of shipping and to think ahead for its future.


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