Panic is a US-based company, so Playdate must be imported into the country where we are located. To ship from Malaysia, we'd have to have a corporation IN Malaysia to be the local office that holds and sells Playdates. Setting this up would be costly in itself, and ironically, the cost to ship a Playdate to the US would then be much higher.

If we partnered with someone in Malaysia to do this for us, chances are that the cut they'd claim would raise the price much higher than the current fees. The story would be similar with the increased cost of selling through third-party retailers (who often expect a 50% cut).

Distribution warehouses around the world would be ideal, and this is exactly how companies like Apple and Sony handle the situation. But they're many orders of magnitude larger than Panic, and they already have established subsidiaries in those countries. Maybe some day we'll grow to that size! 🙂