Pledge rewards include Official Catan Board Gaming Bags, artisan wood/leather Catan Collector's Boxes, & Seafarers of Catan Game Boards
Hi everyone,
All the surveys have gone out!
For those who pledged for just the Settlers Collector's Box, please make sure your response is in by Saturday, August 8th, as we're going to start shipping on Monday. Thank you!
Hi everyone,
The Settlers Collector's boxes are completed for those who pledged for just that reward.
Next week our manufacturer will plan on completing the Ultimate Collector's boxes.
I just got off a GoToMeeting call with the owner of a pledge management software company that is currently in private beta. He's managed the fulfillment for Exploding Kittens, The Coolest, and some other highly successful campaigns.
I really liked what he showed me, and I think we're going to be using them instead of BackerKit. Fortunately we haven't sent out any BackerKit surveys yet, otherwise I'd have been pretty bummed. I think you'll like the simplicity and design of this site's software.
One bonus of using this software will be that their team plays a much more hands-on role in ensuring that their software is completely customized for our exact situation.
We have a pretty odd situation to deal with, having one partially fulfilled Kickstarter and one new Kickstarter, and it will be nice to consolidate it all into one system (and much less confusing for our backers).
No update on the bags yet, haven't been able to find a manufacturer that will match our original quoted price. I did have one Chinese manufacturer reach out to make them, but the price they quoted me was so low as to make me skeptical. Their typical offering was much more in the small tote/purse arena as well, so in addition to wanting to keep manufacturing in the US I also didn't feel they had the durability expertise to handle what we wanted the bag to be.
Also, I have a Kickstarter to share that has some pretty interesting personal backstory behind it. Long before I ever got involved in the board gaming industry I was deadset on bringing a quality iPad mount to market that would provide a great point of sale iPad stand for small merchants. I knew that the simplicity of Square and other iOS merchant applications would make having an iPad as a point of sale a no-brainer. One of the products that came out of this was the Pad Grip. My former business partner on the project has launched a Kickstarter bringing some of the same durability and rigidity of the Pad Grip to the iPhone mount market, and having tested a couple of them, I can say they're pretty solid.
They only have about $4k left to get funded, so I'm sure they'll do fine, but I just wanted to share it as it's nice to see the product technology and its local manufacturers are still doing well.
Hi everyone,
Our wooden manufacturer ran into an unexpected production issue regarding the logo on the boxes. The original plan was to use pad printers to press the logo on the front. Unfortunately, after testing, he found that it required two base presses of the logo in white, followed by two presses of the logo in brown. The labor/drying time required to do that would make production not feasible from a cost standpoint for him.
In order to avoid that he's going to be laser engraving all of the artwork. You can see a sample below:
I asked him for an updated production timeline and he said that production for those who ordered only a Settlers Box or Ultimate Box would be complete two weeks from today. Those will be the first to ship. We'll be holding all other boxes until the full reward packages are completely packed. Also, I don't think I've shared that we've got all the velvet bags in hand. They come pre-packed in complete sets as shown below.
We've figured out what went wrong with our BackerKit communication, the employee I was communicating with is no longer at the company. Now that we have a primary contact, the setup was very speedy, so those should be going out soon.
Hope everyone's doing well. Cheers.
Hi everyone,
Monday I received the prototype for our Seafarers board packaging, and I'm very impressed with our vendor's work. Their design team really nailed the needs of the packaging, and it has a good presentation as well. Here's some photos of the box:
Our wooden manufacturer has most all of the internals for the bamboo Collector's Series boxes machined and finished, and has begun working on the boxes themselves. Velvet bags have also arrived. Will update with photos of that as soon as I have them.
I'm still waiting on BackerKit, will update as soon as I have more info. Thank you.
Hi everyone,
Just wanted to provide a quick recap of the week. The Seafarers Board mold will be in the machinist's shop for about 3 weeks for the rework on the ribs and outside edges. They will also be adding a round flow channel down the middle of the part so the plastic can flow more easily to the outside edges and fill with less pressure. This allows our production operator to have finer control over the quality of the part, and ensures we don't end up with flashing at the shutoff surfaces of the mold. Here's the flow channel location:
Our packaging vendors will be receiving our full parts set early next week, and will be designing custom packaging for us. I've asked to be called by phone at the onset of any question or concern, but we've had very good experience with them in the past on their speed of design and prototyping and I'm optimistic this time will be no different.
We now have edge parts, so I wanted to share some shots of the Seafarers board with those in place, as it finishes off the edges nicely. These are shot on the same mold, just replacing one side's inserts with flat shut-off surfaces instead of hooks and pins. Our operator reported that the transition time to go from standard SF module to edge SF module was surprisingly quick, so we were glad the design worked as intended.
Here's a few shots showing the edge pieces:
Explorers and Pirates Scenario
We've decided to ship every backer who's getting a 5-6 Player Seafarers Board enough modules to accommodate the full 3-4 Player Explorers and Pirates scenario, which is one more module wide than the standard Seafarers 5-6 player scenario. So each backer will receive a total of 12 modules, 10 standard modules and 2 edge modules for the outside edges. Here's Explorers and Pirates setup and ready for play:
I love how huge and expansive the landscape looks once all the tiles are turned over. The exploration dynamic is one of my favorite parts about the sea-based expansions.
BackerKit
I've been having a humdinger of a time figuring out how to work out our BackerKit. The people at BackerKit have been very patient and helpful, but we have a pretty unique setup with two Kickstarters, one of which has been partially fulfilled and one which has yet to be fulfilled. Each Kickstarter also has several phases of fulfillment for each reward level. I'm sorry it's taken so long to figure this out, but we will and soon.
Bringing It Full Circle
A number of you may have read or are familiar with the book "The 4 Hour Workweek". Reading that book was one of the primary inspirations behind why I decided to pursue bringing the Catan Board to market full-time. I quit my job at Dick's Sporting Goods two weeks before the Kickstarter launched and never looked back. The author of that book is Tim Ferriss, and I recently had the privilege of meeting him and being able to thank him in person for writing the book that prompted me to take the leap.
He was very kind and just generally stoked on life and projects he was working on. He has a podcast, a blog, several other best-selling books. But the thing he was most stoked about was he finally got the previously un-released rights to a documentary TV show he co-produced called the Tim Ferriss Experiment, in which he shows you how to deconstruct any skill and learn it as quickly as possible.
I've now watched every episode, and can say with absolute certainty that it is the most useful/exciting series I've ever watched. He basically learns how to do everything I've ever dreamed of learning, including drumming, parkour, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, surfing, poker, urban escape and evasion.
If you've ever had even the slightest desire to be James Bond at any point in your life, you'll very much enjoy it.
You can check it out on iTunes here: http://bit.ly/tfexperiment
Or don't, that's cool too, this is America.
Updated Timelines
Our wood manufacturer is on schedule for a May 31st delivery.
With the rework on the Seafarers mold, we anticipate beginning fulfillment of the Seafarers boards mid-July. This will allow for packaging lead times and production lead times.
Hope everyone's having a great weekend.
Thanks,
Bill