Durable, beautiful, affordable minis. New art and tons of new freebies!
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This post is for backers only. Please visit Kickstarter.com and log in to read.
Hello again everyone, and Happy New Year! Here's all the latest news on fulfillment.
We were hoping this would be the update where we tell you that everything shipped... alas, it's not. The good news is, we are much closer to that announcement.
The last time we spoke, we had just received an update from our point of contact at our distribution partner. They had informed us that despite COVID impacts in China, they expected to have everything packed by the end of December. Unfortunately, that ended up not being the case. In fact, shortly after we spoke our agent dropped out of communication for over a week... due to contracting COVID.
They've recovered and are back at work, we're happy to say. Of course, that means that they missed their estimated fulfillment date. We've been in regular contact since then, and we were pushing hard to get everything packed and shipped before Lunar New Year.
If you aren't familiar with it, Lunar New Year is a tradition celebrated throughout south east Asia. In China, it takes the form of a ~15 day long holiday celebrated across the country. During this time nearly every business is closed, including our shipping and distribution companies. Lunar New Year doesn't start officially until next week, but many companies are already closed or winding down for the celebrations.
The good news is, our distributor has told us they will have completed picking and packing of all orders before they break for the holidays. Unfortunately, they won't be able to have the packages picked up until after they return because the logistics company they depend on is already away.
Based on our calls with our partner, we're being told that the orders should ship by February 4th. We've reviewed that date with them closely, and they are telling us they definitely expect to ship by that day - so we have a high degree of confidence in it. We'll be following up with them in the intervening time to make sure they stick to this estimated date.
Here's a quick review of what to expect once the boxes go out.
Once your orders ship from the distribution center, they'll go by sea to the local distribution hubs in your home country. These shipments will be going by sea - which can take about a month. Once they arrive at the destination country's distribution center, your order will be picked up and delivered to your door by a local shipping company.
We'll be back with another update as soon as we have confirmation that all orders have been shipped, and are on their way to the regional distribution centers. As always, if you have any questions or concerns the best way to contact us is at [email protected]
Happy (almost) New Year to everyone! We hope this finds you all in good spirits and good cheer. We're back with another update this month on the state of production.
Since we sent our last update earlier this month, we have made steady progress on getting all orders ready to ship. Based on our most recent information all orders should be packed in the near future, and ready for shipment by early January. Here are the nitty-gritty details.
Our inventory arrived at the distributor on the 13th, and began the process of being received into the fulfillment warehouse. However, they quickly noticed an issue - our manufacturer had mingled two different sets in one box. It's fortunate that this was noticed because it would have resulted in some sets being received under the wrong name, and the backers who ordered those sets would have received the wrong item.
We had been clear with our manufacturer not to mingle inventory in a single box, but obviously they had made a serious oversight. There was no knowing how many boxes were incorrectly mingled in this way, so we asked the distribution team to perform a full check of all the inventory we had received. This check was completed around the 20th.
Once that was cleared up, we were able to give our distributor permission to go ahead with packing. The packing list for the entire project is over 160,000 lines, and every backer has a unique order, making this an undertaking of heroic proportions. Nevertheless, following a call with our distributor representative on the 22nd we were assured they should be able to complete all packing by the end of this wee. However, we've learned to take these estimates with a grain of salt. Our largest concern is that China (where our primary distribution hub is located) is experiencing widespread COVID outbreaks, and this is having an impact on the number of packers they have available. They've assured us that they don't expect this to prevent them from fulfilling all the orders by the 30th - however, despite their assurances we'll continue to follow up with them until we can actually confirm that all the packages have been prepared for shipment.
In other words, we expect packing to be completed soon, but we don't have an exact date we're confident in yet. We'll follow up with a new update as soon as we have actual confirmation.
Here's a quick review of what we went over in our last update.
Once the distribution center has packed all your orders into boxes, they will be divided by country of destination and shipped in bulk to the local distribution center in that country. These shipments will be going by sea - which can take up to a month. Once they arrive at the destination country's distribution center, your order will be picked up and delivered to your door by a local shipping company.
As stated in our Kickstarter campaign page - we are happy to be offering custom friendly shipping to the US, UK, EU, Canada and Australia. Residents of those countries will not have to pay any customs fees for their shipment to be delivered. Residents in other countries should expect to pay their typical customs fees for delivery.
If everything is able to ship out in early January, that means it should arrive to your regional distributor by early February - with delivery to your door happening sometime that month.
We'll be back with another update as soon as we have confirmation that all orders have been packed (hopefully soon!), and are on their way to the regional distribution centers. As always, if you have any questions or concerns the best way to contact us is at [email protected]
Hello again everyone. December has begun, and we're back with a quick update!
Since we sent our last update about two weeks ago, we have a little more clarity on where things are.
You could characterize the current level of detail we're sharing with you as "seeing how the sausage gets made"... a glimpse into the unglamorous process of coordinating all the different aspects of production. It may not be particularly exciting, but given the delay in shipping we feel it's important to be transparent about how the process is going.
In our last update we were pleased to announce that the final design (the war elephant) had been approved by the design department. We received the physical sample to our office on Monday Nov 21st, and we were able to give it the final QC check and approve it for production.
Dynamite! That allowed us to approve all the freebies for production - the one element that had been holding us up. We notified our manufacturer the same day that they could start production.
Like all companies, our manufacturing partner can only process so many projects at once - and during this busy time of year they have a queue of projects they're trying to get done. Our bonus freebie minis entered the production queue on the 21st. However, because it took longer than expected to get the war elephant approved (two test samples had to be made), they advised us that it was going to take them longer than originally estimated before they could complete production of the run...potentially not until the end of this month.
Obviously we weren't happy with that. In order to fulfill the project as soon as possible, we decided to pay an extra "expedite fee", so we could jump up in the queue and start production sooner. After paying to expedite, they estimated that they should have production of the freebie set completed by December 10th. Factoring in shipping time from the manufacturer to the distribution center, that potentially puts us a couple days behind schedule - with the inventory arriving at the distributor on the 12th or 13th instead of by the 10th.
We'll continue to keep pushing this process forward and doing what we can to fulfill as soon as possible. And, of course, we'll be keeping you updated as we go.
So, that said, what should you expect once everything has been received by our fulfillment partner?
Once the distribution center has all the inventory for your orders, they'll be processing and packing everything in their central facility. The packed boxes will then be divided by country of destination, and shipped in bulk to the distribution center in that country. Once they arrive at the destination country's distribution center, your order will be picked up and delivered to your door by a local shipping company.
Depending on your destination country, border customs may result in some orders taking longer to arrive than other orders. We'll try to provide greater detail on all that in future updates.
We'll be back with another update this month to keep you posted on how things are going. As always, if you have any questions or concerns the best way to contact us is at [email protected]