Pledge rewards include Official Catan Board Gaming Bags, artisan wood/leather Catan Collector's Boxes, & Seafarers of Catan Game Boards
Hi everyone,
The Seafarers board mold completed polishing yesterday and is headed back up to our shop today. I asked the polisher to take pictures during his process so that I could share them with you, so here they are.
Thanks everyone, will have another update next week on the rest of the production.
Hi everyone,
We're going to be sending out Kickstarter surveys this week for all pledge levels.You'll be able to add on other items later, this will just allow us to get your shipping address as soon as possible.
The Settlers Collector's Boxes will be shipping out first, on Monday August 10th, for those who pledged for only the boxes.
Next up will be the smaller pledges (part cups, dice tray/tower).
The Ultimate Collector's Boxes will be complete 9 weeks from this Monday, and then those will begin shipping.
The Seafarers Boards will begin shipping around the same time, as once the mold gets back from the polishers (likely early next week), there will be about 2 months of part production before the Seafarers production is complete. In total it's about 14,000 plastic parts.
As part of the surveys, we'll be asking for your birth year. The reason for this is if you'll remember, in this update I promised each backer that as part of our stretch goals I would hand-write a Thank You note as well as make an origami piece representing each backer's Chinese zodiac birth year. The Chinese zodiac calendar assigns 12 different animals in sequence, starting with the Year of the Rat. Below you can see the calendar in origami form.
For those concerned, don't worry, this won't hold up fulfillment. Because we'll be getting everyone's shipping survey early, I'll have time to fold each one. Our goal is to deliver on every promise we made, no matter how small.
Which brings us to the most challenging part of this project, the Catan Bag. The east coast vendor came back with a price almost identical to what we ended up at with our first vendor, which was about $20 too high from what we were planning on. I have one more vendor I'm waiting on, but in the meantime, I've spent some time thinking about how we can deliver as much value as possible to those who pledged for the Catan Bag.
My first instinct was that if we weren't able to deliver the product to the exact specifications and quality we promised, I'd rather provide a store credit than provide a subpar product into the marketplace. We received a fair amount of pushback on that idea, however, which I certainly understand so I began considering lessening the stringency of our design constraints and thinking about ways to deliver the functionality and original intent of the design at a lower cost. As much as it would pain me to produce a less cool product, if we're able to provide the same functionality at the cost of less style it would be worth it for our backers.
So I'd like to take the pulse of the community here and see how everyone would feel about going back to the drawing board and designing a basic all-purpose carry duffel that was designed to be big enough to carry the basic Hex Board, the Seafarers Board, and two full-sized Catan retail game boxes. We would still want to use the same quality fabric and hardware, same colors, and same logo, the stitching time would just be much lower. We've also realized we would almost unquestionably have to use a Chinese supplier because labor costs are the majority of bag costs. This is why nearly every American vendor came in at almost the exact same price once we started reaching out to vendors outside of San Luis Obispo. Material-wise, we'd really be looking at the same amounts of everything, the labor is what starts to make the costs skyrocket.
How do you feel about this idea? Please feel free to be as honest as possible, we want to make sure we do the best we can here, and your feedback is what guides our progress. If we do decide to design a carry duffel instead, you have my word it will be a high quality, long-lasting product with no imitation leather (ever) and as much metal hardware as is functionally possible.
Thank you.
Hi everyone,
Below is a video update on everything. Below the video will be a brief written overview on what’s new, for those who’d understandably prefer to not watch a 14 minute long video.
1. Seafarers Mold: It works like a champ.
We ran test parts after getting the mold back, and the changes did exactly what they were supposed to.
We’ll be sending it down for polishing later this week after we get done machining the Catan logo from our other molds so we can send them along for re-texturing as well.
2. Wooden Production: Some stuff happened that was super lame and I finally found out why.
You may have noticed that when I came back online after all the Mayfair shenanigans happened, I was quite vague about the delays for the wooden production.
This is because I, too, had no idea why nothing had been done for the previous 3-4 months. I came into the shop to check on progress sometime in February/March and literally nothing had been done since we issued the PO to them in November. I found out this past week the reason why.
After issuing the PO to them, I wasn’t very communicative with them. A phone call here and there, but really not much, as we were scrambling with bringing lawyers on board, going back and forth with Mayfair and just trying to protect the business and keep it alive, frankly. I simply assumed that once we issued the PO to them, work would begin swiftly. We already had all the bamboo and materials in their shop, and prior to the large PO, he’d only been manufacturing our products, so I just assumed that work would commence immediately. Apparently my lack of communication was taken as an order to halt production.
This was very definitely not the case. I was actually looking forward to coming into the shop and being able to take photos of all the production to share with everybody. It was the one positive thing I had to look forward to after everything went down. But unfortunately somehow the fact that I didn’t regularly email them was perceived as an intent to cease production, and nothing happened until I walked into that shop 4 or so months later.
Then on top of that, two weeks ago, after thinking that all the Settlers boxes were complete and we’d begin on the Ultimate Box production, I found out that we’d experienced an additional miscommunication. When I asked them to make the 39 Settlers boxes for those who’d ordered just the Settlers Box, apparently he understood that to mean just the box itself, without any of the internal collectible gear. So the boxes were ready, but no internal gear was. This killed me. I could not understand how that assumption could be made, as the Settlers Collector’s Box is worthless without the gear inside. Regardless, I tried to keep positive and came into the shop and worked to assemble internals to help speed up the process and get a better understanding of how we could streamline the production.
I’ve asked him to provide a timeline for the completion of the Settlers Boxes and Ultimate Boxes, with all internals, for the 39 and 31 people respectively who ordered just the boxes. Additionally we’ll be shipping the smaller rewards to those who pledged at the lower tiers for the part cups and dice towers/dice trays. Once I have these timelines I’ll pass them on.
For this phase of the fulfillment I’m going to use a Kickstarter survey as a temporary solution to get the shipping addresses for these tiers. Each of these tiers will still have an opportunity to add more product via BackerKit when that time comes, we’re just using the Kickstarter survey as a means to get your shipping address immediately.
3. Catan Bag
We’ve been unsuccessful in finding a vendor that can match the price we were originally quoted. We have one more option that is being looked into, but if that doesn’t work, this is what we’re going to do.
During the BackerKit, every backer who pledged for a Catan Bag will be given a credit equivalent to the amount they pledged. So for those who pledged the Early Bird, you’ll be given a credit for $100. For those who pledged at the standard level, you’ll be given a credit for $120. Everyone who pledged for the rewards that include a bag and another product, you’ll be given a credit for $100, as each of those reward levels are discounted and have shipping built in.
With that credit, you’ll be able to select from our range of products and use that credit to get new gear of your choice. I know this is absolutely not an ideal solution, I wish more than anything that we could just make the bags, because I love how the prototype turned out. But we hope that this provides a good value for you and allows you to get some new gear to play with. This will also be much, much faster than waiting for us to try to stockpile enough cash to pay the high COGS to get the bags made, because that might never happen.
4. Conclusion
In short, we’re proceeding with fulfillment, and I’ll send out another update as soon as I hear word from our wooden manufacturer on completion timelines.
And to assuage the worries of some, nobody's going anywhere. I'm not going anywhere. Nobody's taking anybody's money and running to South America to startup a drug cartel. We're here. In California, working every day to move things forward. We're building products for Kickstarter at the same time that we're building products for our online and retail business. I get up every day and this is my job. So if for some reason I don't post an update as fast as you would like, please remember it probably means I'm just working and trying to figure problems out. And just be cool. Kickstarter is a place for cool people, let's be cool.
Thanks