Freaking hell. I used to get entire guitars shipped for 50$.
I honestly cannot help you much with that, I am currently avoiding dealing with the US market for the exact same reasons. I would say that 50$, however I want you guys to succeed (and me to get my hands on a kit), hurts. On our side, most EU country don't only see the 50$ from shipping. We have to pay VAT + import duty on the lump sum (item + shipping rates) so for let's say 200$ total most of us would be paying upwards of 250€. There are some ways -depending on the country- to dodge part of the tax by declaring that it's electronics under 150€ total value, but it's usually asking for troubles.
Being based in Germany, I usually get electronic component from Digikey or Mouser when above 50€ (no shipping, no taxes), and I order my pedal related stuff from Musikding. Low shipping and a huge list of items to chose from. He has most of the AionFx, PedalPCB etc as kits at a reasonable price. In the long term, dealing with Klaus (from Musikding) is probably your best bet).
For your specific case, I will look into options to send kits as they are from the US. But it might just be more realistic to either not waste time on the outside market for such a small first batch, or go for a "half kit" selling only what could be hard to source (basically everything outside of diodes, resistors and caps) to make sure you go under whatever threshold you could trigger. But that would likely cut into your profits so once again, not sure how realistic.
I do appreciate the effort though, thanks a lot
