The Australian Update (And updates for real countries)
almost 3 years ago – Sat, Jan 29, 2022 at 01:30:42 AM

 EDIT: Please take away that the first comment I showed is a good comment and a fair thing to bring to my attention! I am not fruistrated at comments like those in fact I WELCOME THEM

Ya... We're Shipping Too
almost 3 years ago – Sat, Jan 15, 2022 at 03:22:08 AM

Christmas Update (International + USA)
almost 3 years ago – Thu, Dec 23, 2021 at 02:42:20 AM

Please Read Before Commenting (USA Update + Surprise)
almost 3 years ago – Tue, Dec 07, 2021 at 11:01:18 PM

Where the F have you been Chris? | Expedited Shipping??
about 3 years ago – Fri, Nov 19, 2021 at 06:38:15 AM

Hi everyone! It's been a little bit! 

Not a lot of images/graphics just a whole lot of text!

I had to travel back home for a funeral - that's why I've been absent in the last week. My Great Uncle "Shorty" passed away. Although I wasn't close with the man, he was family and I had the honor of being a pallbearer and a witness to his memorial and his laying to rest. His life... was incredible and I felt compelled to share a bit about him and how it's made me reflect. PS, skip all this if you're curious about expedited shipping.

2 generations back - when Shorty was born, my family lived in poverty. My grandmother's dad left the family. For the longest time, they lived under a fuggin' tree and were rice farmers in Southern Louisiana. Shorty had a pituitary issue which stunted his growth around 4ft 5in - which didn't stop him from joining the war at his time (crazy)
This dude, in the decades after his retirement, would take his 3 wheeled bike through our small hometown of Sulphur Louisiana and would collect aluminum cans and pull tabs to then take them to recylcing. He donated EVERY PENNY he made from that, to the Ronald McDonald House Charity.
  He did this for DECADES, retiring from that only a few months ago - not before the city of Sulphur banded together to memorialize him in an official proclamation - Shorty Breaux Day is officially recognized by the local government.

The Point?

Look death sucks, no way around each of us biting the dust, BUT it also is biting in the clarity it provides. Life is fleeting and temporary, and it's our obligation to learn from the character and accomplishments and failures of our elders. It was really cool hearing stories of my family's past. If you can talk to your parents, talk to your grandparents, find out where you came from, cause that web of history could end up fading as we all do. Write. That. Shit. Down. 

BTW, I'm not sad. This was not an overwhelmingly sad experience for me. I'm glad I got the chance to travel back home safely to be with family.

Ok... Expedited Shipping

Ok the meat of the update - Expedited shipping. Long story short, this fell through. Give me a chance to explain because although it didn't work out I don't regret how I approached it. Transparency incoming!

Before I go in please note

• The info in here isn't fun, it's some math and boring rationale. I'm sorry for being boring at length, lol.
• I'm OVER-COMMUNICATING in attempt to 1. apologize and 2. reinforce trust.
• Sometimes shit doesn't work out, BUT noone got charged, because I had the foresight and cash on hand TO NOT charge cards yet. That's a win in my book. 

 Why did it fall through?

There are a few reasons, but the most primary was a miscommunication from our distribution center on the deltas (differences) in total cost shipped airfreight and total cost shipped oceanfreight. Basically, when they initially quoted us, we saw it was VERY cheap to upgrade shipping as and AVERAGE. When they returned the quote the totals were 3-4x more expensive than originally quoted - instead of $7 for expedited shipping it was like $20 on average. Nah, no thanks, I couldn't afford to split that big of a difference (although I did see if it was possible)  Warning, math incoming:

What they provided me via email:

• Ocean Freight Orders: ~$57,000
• Airfreight Orders: ~$76,000

I then did math on my end to speed up the process 

• I covered the $4,000 and did a bunch of fun extrapolation off of an assumption of $15k of cost divided by 2000 backers ($7.50) per backer)
• I THEN did a weighted distribution (is that the term?) to weight the fees around that average, but most matched the original shipping cost matched to the country - this method could get pretty darn close to what the fee we could expect would be.
• The totals per country I then got were inputted into the Google Form and you guys know the rest. Here are some screen shots from the new docs

 Why did you rush it??

Look... I wanted to pull this off, but I didn't want it to hold up the whole process.  I wanted to give people the option to get their game early and I am as frustrated (maybe even more) that we wenen't able to. The supply chain is GETTING BETTER,  but not fast enough. 

Timing - the more we deliberated, the more time we wasted not knowing whose order was going on a boat, meaning the ship would set sail that much later.  We needed to give ourseleves a fighting chance to pull this off, which is why we moved quickly. But we took safeguards to prevent risk...

Was my credit card charged??!

No. You were not. Enter the safegaurds. Remember when you filled out the Google form? You gave me PERMISSION to charge your card at a later date, which never came.

When multiple parties are rushing to throw a hail marry, there's likely going to be a mistake.  Imagine processing 500 refunds? Jesus Christ you all would throw me off a bridge in real life. 

The bottom line

We are in the same place we were 3 weeks ago - orders are going by ocean, except we didn't waste much time at all. We did this gambit while orders were being prepped and bundled. I have suucessfully approved the orders and product set sail for the EU, UK, etc this week.

Thank you all

As always I appreciate you all and hope you can appreciate the candidness, transparency foresight, and open communication, even though we all didn't get what we wanted. Please reach out with any questions.