While our one-time tooling costs are already considered very reasonable, we thought that our clients needed a better solution to keep the custom tooling costs to a minimum for small production quantities.

Not All Tooling Is Created Equal

One of the things that GPI has built a reputation for over the years is the ability to successfully manage high-quantity production runs containing custom components. But of course, not every game being brought to market demands high production volumes. There are several reasons why you might find yourself needing only a couple of thousand games to be made. But if that game contains multiple custom components, each requiring custom tooling, and you’re only making a small quantity of games, the amortized tooling costs could have a major impact on your total landed product cost.

For example, let’s say you design a game that requires multiple injection molds for custom components totaling around $10,000 in custom tooling costs. If you produce 20,000 games then that means the amortized cost of tooling is adding only about $0.50 per game to the total landed unit cost.

On the other hand, let’s say you only want to produce 5,000 games of that same project requiring $10,000 worth of injection molds… Now the amortized tooling costs are adding $2.00 to the total landed cost. For some projects, that can be a deal-breaker.

Introducing ECONOMOLDSâ„¢

Compared to our normal mass production injection molds that are made from Japanese steel and can last for hundreds of thousands of mold cycles and years of use with regular maintenance, we now offer a new economical option ideal for custom tooling on small runs. ECONOMOLDS will keep custom tooling costs to a minimum and are made from Chinese steel and are built to last only for one production run. The best part? They cost 70% less than our normal mass production molds.

Determining if an ECONOMOLD is appropriate for your project is something best discussed with your GPI project manager so that they can confer with our tooling specialists on the factory floor. But if you only plan to run production once at a small order volume and if the pieces you want to make are injection molded and simple in design/detail (for example, simple custom dice, pawns, tiles, or cubes), you might be able to save hundreds, or even thousands of dollars, on tooling cost for your next game made by GPI.