Your Kickstarter just funded. And you’ve just popped champagne.

And sure enough, your inbox is exploding with congratulations. You’re riding high on the dream of bringing your hardware product to life.

But it won’t be long before reality sets in. Because it’s now a fact that you have to ship 5,000 units to people scattered across 25 countries. Where do you even begin with a responsibility so big?

Research shows only about 30% of Kickstarter projects deliver on time or with acceptable delays. That means roughly 70% face significant shipping problems. But most delays aren’t from bad luck—they’re from the same seven mistakes that almost everyone makes.

This guide shows you the common traps that hardware crowdfunders run into and how you can avoid doing the same.

Mistake #1: Not planning ahead for fulfillment.

Most creators obsess over their campaign video and social media strategy. That’s no mistake either, because you need to do a ton of pre-marketing to launch a successful campaign.

It’s understandable that fulfillment feels distant when you’re just trying to get funded. And it’s only too natural for it to get pushed to “we’ll figure it out later.”

But if your campaign succeeds and you’re scrambling to find a fulfillment partner under pressure, that’s just awfully stressful. It’s even worse if you’re one of the unlucky folks who find out your funding goal didn’t account for the actual cost of shipping.

The fix: Start fulfillment planning 2-3 months before launch. Get quotes from at least three fulfillment centers during your prep phase. Build those costs into your funding goal from day one, with real numbers from vendors.

Mistake #2: Underestimating true weight and dimensions.

You’ve weighed your prototype at 2.5 pounds and feel good about your shipping budget. Then you add retail packaging, bubble wrap, and the outer shipping box. Suddenly your package is 4 pounds and 14x10x6 inches.

If you’ve never shipped products before, this is one of those things that may very well catch you off guard. Carriers charge based on dimensional (DIM) weight—whichever is greater between actual weight and calculated volume. For bulky hardware, DIM weight destroys budgets. Adding one inch to box dimensions can increase shipping costs by 15-20%.

The fix: Weigh your complete package. That means your product plus all packaging plus shipping box plus padding. Add a 10-15% buffer. Use actual measurements when getting fulfillment quotes, not optimistic estimates. Make a physical mockup of your final packaged product and weigh it. This one step can save you from budget trouble down the road.

Mistake #3: Ignoring customs, tariffs, and international shipping.

International backers prove your product has global appeal. They’re also a fulfillment minefield if you don’t plan properly.

You get hit with customs charges twice: when importing bulk inventory from your manufacturer, and when individual packages ship to international backers. The 2025 tariff environment made this dramatically more expensive. The $800 de minimis exemption ended in August 2025, so even low-value shipments are subject to tariffs too.

Crowdfunding campaigns lock pricing months before shipping. When tariffs change after you’ve collected funds, margins evaporate. Stonemaier Games faced nearly $1.5 million in unexpected tariff costs on games already in production.

The fix: Budget for tariffs twice—bulk import and individual shipments. Use SimplyDuty to calculate landed costs. Get correct HS codes from a customs broker—misclassification leads to fines and delays. For significant international backing, consider regional fulfillment hubs to avoid double customs.

Mistake #4: Overestimating your manufacturer’s abilities.

Your manufacturer sent beautiful samples and said “yes” to your quantities. But what happens if you discover they’ve never produced at this scale before?

Scaling from 100 units to 10,000 isn’t just “doing the same thing more times.” It’s a completely different process.

The Zano Drone raised $2.3 million and shipped less than 4% of orders before bankruptcy. The Kreyos Smartwatch raised $1.5 million, only to find their manufacturer had four people (some part-time) working on it.

The fix: Vet manufacturers for scale capability, not just sample quality. Ask for references from other crowdfunding projects. Visit the factory or get a video tour. Include contract penalties for delays. It’s also a good idea to consider a backup manufacturer in a different country.

Mistake #5: Making your reward tiers too complex.

Giving backers the ability to choose color and size, and one of a dozen add-ons and stretch goals seems like a great way to drive pledges. But every variation adds another SKU.

Then fulfillment begins and you’ve created a mess. Manufacturing becomes more complicated. Gathering simple survey data becomes surprisingly complex. Order fulfillment costs can go up too because pick-and-pack fees increase as you add multiple different SKUs to the same order.

The fix: Keep it simple. Limit SKU count. Bundle variations instead of letting backers pick individual components. Lock tiers early and resist adding complexity mid-campaign. Use clear graphics showing exactly what’s in each tier. Make post-campaign surveys straightforward and avoid open-ended customization.

Mistake #6: Underestimating production timelines.

As goes the saying, “hardware is hard.”

Manufacturing is a subtle and sometimes difficult process. New design iterations take longer than you think. You could run into tooling problems you didn’t anticipate. Sometimes, you’ll find that key components have 16-week lead times. Other times, you’ll find out that achieving some necessary certification requires redesign.

The numbers cited early in this post don’t lie: only about 30% of crowdfunded projects deliver on time. Another 30% face delays between 6-24 months.

The fix: Take your internal timeline estimate and double it. Build in buffers for manufacturing validation, certifications (UL, FCC, CE), component lead times, and tooling iterations. Communicate realistic timelines from day one. Under-promise and over-deliver beats the reverse every time.

Mistake #7: Not communicating with backers.

Delays happen. But what undoes campaigns isn’t the delay—it’s the silence that follows. When things go wrong, creators can become embarrassed and feel this temptation to stop communicating. Meanwhile, backers are left wondering what happened to their money.

That’s a recipe for anxiety, anger, and distrust.

But believe it or not, backers are surprisingly forgiving as long as you commit to transparency. They’re supporters who backed you knowing this was early-stage. That’s how it is with crowdfunding, and repeat backers know this.

The one thing backers can’t forgive is being left in the dark.

The fix: Set a communication schedule and stick to it—updates every 3-4 weeks minimum, even without major news. Be honest about delays and challenges. Show behind-the-scenes content. When you hit a setback, acknowledge it directly: “Here’s what happened, why, and our plan to fix it.” Consider creating community spaces like Facebook groups or Discord. You can recover from delays. You can’t recover from broken trust.

Final Thoughts

Hardware really is hard, and so is crowdfunding. But many people have still succeeded on platforms like Kickstarter and Indiegogo despite the big learning curve.

Awareness of common mistakes makes a huge difference. If you know about the problems that can happen, then you have the power to avoid many of them—as well as reduce the impact of those that still do.

Prepare in advance and pair up with the right partners, and you have a very good chance of being in 30% that ships on time.

This guest blog was provided by Fulfillrite, a 3PL with warehouses on both the East Coast and West Coast to handle Shopify, ECommerce, and Crowdfunding orders. Looking for a new 3PL partner to fulfill your customer’s order? Click this link to obtain a custom fulfillment quote.