How Magic FX Moves Arena-Scale Freight with LTL Shipping in ShipStation

Making the moment unforgettable

The house lights cut. A bassline drops, fog rolls across the stage, and confetti cannons around the venue fire at once. Across the arena, 40,000 phones go up to catch it on video. Nobody in that crowd is thinking about a warehouse. But somewhere back home, packed in foam and taped shut, that exact moment started as a shipment. 

Behind experiences like these, you’ll find Magic FX. The company’s walls are covered in photos of moments just like it: crowds mid-roar, arms in the air, the second a show became unforgettable. 

“We try to make unforgettable moments,” said Nick Guggisberg, Magic FX’s operations manager. “It’s really cool to see both the products in action, but more the reaction of the people in the crowd. That’s what really gets us going.”

Magic FX, based in San Luis Obispo, California, makes the special effects equipment behind those spectacles: confetti cannons, smoke cannons, CO2 jets, and handheld gear for artists on stage. Its customers are production companies that run concerts, club installs, and sports team game-day experiences. A handful of artists and teams buy directly, too. 

Through 2025, the company operated as Club Cannon. Then came a merger that reshaped the business, and with it, Magic FX’s shipping needs.

When LTL freight entered the mix

Club Cannon’s shipping was mostly parcel: smaller products in boxes. Magic FX’s equipment is often built for stadiums and arenas, and that shifted the math. About 20% of what Magic FX ships now goes out as freight instead of parcel, and the merger added a consumables business—fluids, streamers, confetti—that moves constantly and in volume. On a given day, Guggisberg’s team handles 30 to 50 parcels and five to six pallets, in an industry where, as he put it, “everything is needed yesterday.”

The products demand care in transit, too. 

“We take great care in our packaging to make sure that it looks exactly the same when it arrives at the customer as when it leaves our warehouse,” Guggisberg said. 

Magic FX sits at the high end of its market, and the unboxing experience is part of the brand.

ShipStation was already their trusted platform for parcel. Freight was the part that didn’t fit yet. Before less-than-truckload (LTL) shipping came to ShipStation, freight meant working outside the platform entirely. That meant juggling third-party logistics providers, maintaining direct relationships with freight carriers, and working around an ERP that took three or four extra steps to bridge the two systems—all separate from the parcel side of the business.

“I’d say on average I have 35 tabs open on my web browser, so anytime I can lose one tab, that’s a huge victory,” Guggisberg said. 

An easy yes

Magic FX was already a committed ShipStation user for parcel, so when the chance to start shipping LTL freight in ShipStation presented itself, Guggisberg didn’t hesitate.

One platform, start to finish

Now, the freight workflow starts as early as the quote. Guggisberg uses ShipStation’s rate tool to price shipping before an order is confirmed, then books the freight in the same system once it’s palletized and ready to go, weights and dimensions included. Bills of lading and pallet labels are automatically generated and printed through ShipStation, reducing the manual work involved in preparing freight documentation. The platform also helps streamline freight classification, including the National Motor Freight Classification (NMFC) codes used for LTL shipments. 

“It was an absolute nightmare when we had to make bills of lading manually,” Guggisberg said. “Not that it’s hard, it’s just time-consuming and tedious.”

The time savings add up: about 5 minutes per shipment, modest on its own, but not across a week of 8, 15, or more pallets.

Across his team, that’s 2.5 to 3 hours saved every week. LTL shipping opened up new carrier relationships, too, including AAA Cooper Transportation for lanes Magic FX ships often, like Las Vegas, at rates about $45 cheaper per shipment. At roughly eight pallets a week to Las Vegas alone, that’s about $1,200 a month back in the budget.

Simple enough to hand off

Magic FX is training a new shipping and logistics hire, and having freight and parcel in one platform makes that job easier. 

“It simplifies it for this new employee that we’re training,” Guggisberg said. “You don’t have to teach them how to use several different websites or softwares—it’s just all in one place.” 

For Guggisberg, the impact is easy to sum up: “It went from being a little chaotic and scattered to just being streamlined and simple.”

That reliability matters to a company that can’t afford a dropped shipment on show day. 

“We can always rely on ShipStation,” Guggisberg said. “It has never failed us, even when things get really chaotic.”

What’s next for Magic FX

Magic FX is chasing something bigger: staying the top name in special effects manufacturing, worldwide. The ambition already spans an ocean. The company operates globally, with a hub in the Netherlands. ShipStation is making the international side of that easier, generating customs documents automatically instead of leaving Guggisberg to sort them out by hand.

Wherever Magic FX’s next unforgettable moment happens, ShipStation is built to help get it there.

Curious if LTL shipping is right for you? See what it looks like inside ShipStation.