Scenario Cards

Find your true passion and meaning in life

Roel Vogels, the founder of Scenario Cards, had personal experience of losing sight of what really matters in life, experiencing burnout himself a couple of years back. Roel explains that before the burnout, he used to be focused on the external rewards and success, but at the same time, he lost track of what motivated him and what he was passionate about. In the recovery process, he spent huge amounts of money on life coaching.

“At some point, I wondered why couldn’t I have the same kind of deep and fruitful conversations with my friends? Why does it feel awkward to dive into topics of passion and purpose with the ones that you are close to,” Roel describes.

Roel developed an initial list of questions, which he had with him for gatherings and dinners, and it worked. People enjoyed the discussions with him; a friend of his asked if he could buy his list of questions for a date, and the rest is history.

Roel developed the initial product, the first set of question cards. The first 20 decks were sold within 24 hours on Facebook, and now, Scenario Cards is shipping the products to 65 countries and has over 6000 customers. The rapid growth continues.

Building the infrastructure for the future

In the beginning, Roel did order fulfillment himself, but it became quite obvious that it wasn’t the setup that he wanted to continue in the future. Roel realized how important the order fulfillment phase is for company growth.

“It was nice to have a bit of understanding of how fulfillment works and what it takes, but quite quickly, I realized that if I want the business to succeed, outsourcing fulfillment is the key, Roel explained.” He took the strategic decision to find a partner to outsource order fulfillment and build the infrastructure that could efficiently handle the rapidly growing amount of orders.

Scenario Cards delivers products all over the world. Currently, the company has two OGOship warehouses in Europe, one in the Netherlands and one in the United Kingdom. The European warehouses cover all of Europe. In Roel’s experience, it is essential to have a fulfillment center in Europe, not just for the sake of shipping times but for the duties and taxes as well. In addition to these centers, Scenario Cards uses one order fulfillment hub in the US and one in Singapore.

Distributing inventory to several order fulfillment hubs

Distributing inventory to several different order fulfillment hubs is a part of Scenario Cards’ growth strategy. For Roel, it was about the service level he wants to provide his customers as well as cost-efficiency. Roel wants to have as quick a delivery time as possible and low shipping costs.

“Instead of shipping everything from, say, Singapore to the world, we are shipping from multiple hubs. Our factory ships in bulk to the hubs, and we ship to the individual countries from the hubs. So, logistically, it makes much more sense to operate this way,” Roel says.

Roel thinks the demand for quick shipping is still very much the expectation customers have. It is important to be able to offer fast shipping all around the world and to be transparent about the actual shipping times. “People will compare my products to other products, and, if I can promise a quicker delivery, they are more likely to choose my products instead of the alternatives,” he describes.