Manufacturing is complete!
over 2 years ago – Tue, Jan 11, 2022 at 12:34:03 AM

MANUFACTURING COMPLETE   

First, the good news:  MASS PRODUCTION IS COMPLETE!  

GLOBAL FREIGHT

Second (and somewhat expected):  the complicated news. With manufacturing done we are now dealing with the incredibly challenging global freight situation. To give you a glimpse of how terrible this is, here is what we (like many small businesses) are dealing with. 

The outbound shipment of all of our manufactured product to our fulfillment partners is expected to fill a 20' container to the UK and two 40' containers to the USA (with a few pallets shipping out to other addresses direct from the factory). Over the past several months we'd listened as other creators talked about delays, shortages, and cost increases due to Covid and the Suez Canal blockage, so we forecasted the outbound freight cost of this production run to be double the historical average. To be more precise: our adjusted anticipated cost for freight was $30,000 USD; in 2019 this same shipment would have been around $6,500. 

We just received our actual quoted price for freight, and it's over $60,000 USD.  That's not a price we are capable of paying. So now we are hard at work on finding workable solutions, such as finding reputable alternative shipping services or sharing shipments with other creators. This research and vetting process takes time, and it's looking less likely that we will get this production run on a ship before February 1, when the factory goes offline for a month for Chinese New Year. 

The takeaway from all of this is that the products are ready to go, and we will get your backer rewards to you as soon as possible. But it will take longer than expected while this extraordinary global freight debacle continues. We will update as soon as we have a solution.

ROADMAP UPDATE

Manufacturing is complete and we are diligently seeking a feasible freight solution.

Here is the latest roadmap.

• All artwork has been delivered to Panda Manufacturing - COMPLETE 
• Blank punch-board samples received - COMPLETE 
• Blank punch-board samples reviewed and approved - COMPLETE 
• First color samples received - COMPLETE 
• First color samples reviewed and approved - COMPLETE 
• Mass Production start - COMPLETE 
• Full retail sample received - COMPLETE 
• Full retail sample reviewed and approved - COMPLETE 
•  Mass Production complete - COMPLETE 
• Outbound freight to our fulfillment partners - EXPECTED FEBRUARY 
• Fulfillment shipping to you started - DATE TBA 
• Fulfillment shipping complete! - DATE TBA 

-ONWARD!!!

TinkerTurf Production Update
over 2 years ago – Wed, Dec 01, 2021 at 08:43:45 PM

PRODUCTION UPDATE

Hello again backers! We've got some great news. Some of you have noticed that we sent out an address update the other day from BackerKit. Please make sure to check your inbox and double check that your address is correct because we've approved the final manufacturing samples and production will be finishing up in just over two weeks!!

What does this mean?

This means that we are finalizing shipping to our fulfillment partners and need to lock in what needs to go where. We are close to the finish line!! Well somewhat close...

How long will this take?

We are not quite sure how long shipping will take to our fulfillment partners but we estimate anywhere between 1-3 months.  Asia, New Zealand, and Australia should see stuff arriving the soonest as our partner VFI picks up and ships out directly from China. The UK and EU should follow behind with the Americas shortly after. If you are unfamiliar with global shipping, these are the slow boats that take months to travel to the ports, are then off-loaded and inspected by customs, and finally trucked to our fulfillment partners (Spiral Galaxy in the UK and Greater Than Games in the US.) As we've mentioned in previous updates, global shipping has been somewhat of a nightmare. We will do our best to update you along the way. Previously we've provided the vessel numbers and links to follow them when they are finally at sea, which is neat! We will aim to do that this time as well.

What if I move between now and when my reward ships?

This just means that we will have to manually update your address. This really only impacts things if you are moving to a different country requiring us to ship from a different fulfillment partner. If that is the case things may take a bit longer but you will still get your reward. If you do find yourself moving after this point just reach out to us and we will get your address updated.

CHECK IT OUT...

We're so excited the retail samples are here!  Here is another obligatory one-of-everything-in-the-retail-packaging pic.

And here are some pics of some assembly we've done on the MPC sets, we'll have more assembled sets to show in upcoming updates!

ROADMAP UPDATE

As noted above we have completed the Full retail sample reviewed and approved bullet point since the previous update!  We  are still expecting manufacturing to finish by the end of the year.

Here is the latest roadmap.

• All artwork has been delivered to Panda Manufacturing - COMPLETE 
• Blank punch-board samples received - COMPLETE 
• Blank punch-board samples reviewed and approved - COMPLETE 
• First color samples received - COMPLETE 
• First color samples reviewed and approved - COMPLETE 
• Mass Production start - COMPLETE 
• Full retail sample received - COMPLETE 
• Full retail sample reviewed and approved - COMPLETE 
• Mass Production complete - EXPECTED DECEMBER 
• Outbound freight to our fulfillment partners - DATE TBA 
• Fulfillment shipping to you started - DATE TBA 
• Fulfillment shipping complete! - DATE TBA 

-ONWARD!!!

MPC Samples Arrived! New containers for pre-order!
over 2 years ago – Sun, Nov 07, 2021 at 12:59:26 PM

TL;DR

• MPC samples have arrived
• New container options for pre-order, to combine with kick shipping
• Roadmap update

MPC SAMPLES

ZOMG!!!

We're pleased to announce our MPC (Mass Production Copy) samples for all products have arrived. 

These samples are from the manufacturing runs so that we can see the product in its final retail form and packaging.

We will be assembling these over the coming days and sharing that progress with you as we go.  It's pretty exciting time for the project.  Not as exciting as when you get it in your hands, but a major milestone towards getting to that halcyon day.

BUT HOLD ON JUST A TICK...  

What is that on the lower right?

ENHANCE!

If we're not mistaken those *look* like Abandoned versions of the new Cargo Container sets.  We must have slipped those in late in the process while in some sort of production mania induced trance...  I wonder if we have any other shots of those.  Ok, yeah, hold on.  We're getting word from our deep cover field agents that we do have some images of these units deployed to the battlefield.

If you'd like to add either of these two container sets to your order (or any other items) to get optimized kickstarter shipping prices we've opened the pre-order store on backerkit again:

TinkerTurf Sci-Fi Terrain Release 2.1 Pre-Order Store

ROADMAP UPDATE

As noted above we have completed the Full retail sample received bullet point since the previous update!  We  are still expecting manufacturing to finish by the end of the year.

Here is the latest roadmap.

• All artwork has been delivered to Panda Manufacturing - COMPLETE 
• Blank punch-board samples received - COMPLETE 
• Blank punch-board samples reviewed and approved - COMPLETE 
• First color samples received - COMPLETE 
• First color samples reviewed and approved - COMPLETE 
• Mass Production start - COMPLETE 
• Full retail sample received - COMPLETE 
• Full retail sample reviewed and approved - EXPECTED NOVEMBER 
• Mass Production complete - EXPECTED NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 
• Outbound freight to our fulfillment partners - DATE TBA 
• Fulfillment shipping to you started - DATE TBA 
• Fulfillment shipping complete! - DATE TBA 

-ONWARD!!!

Survery Follow-up & Mfg Update
over 2 years ago – Wed, Oct 20, 2021 at 08:56:03 AM

Hello das kickenfriends!

SURVEY

Let's discuss the survey we sent out recently, the results, and what we've decided based on them.  Our goal here was twofold; 

1) Understand if more frequent, but smaller Kickstarter campaigns were a palatable option for our backers; 

2) Understand what size of campaign that would be ideally. 

There are very difficult business realities of global production delays and shipping delays & costs that are leading us to ask these questions, and we want to find the best answer for you as our backers and us as a business.

We were very pleased with the amount of feedback we got.  275 responses out of 1,123 backers, for an over 24% response rate!  We were hoping to get at least 100 people so we're really pleased with that number.  Thanks so much to all of you that took the time.  Here were the questions we asked, and in the interest of transparency here are the results:

Then finally we asked what other feedback do you have?  In the feedback we heard a lot of concern over increased shipping costs in the net for multiple smaller Kickstarters.  We also heard that an offering of just something like these bridges was too small.  And we heard more positive support than not for doing what we needed to do to weather these new global business realities.

So what are we going to do about the results?

• We are going to proceed with smaller more frequent Kickstarters starting in 2022.
• We are going to construct those smaller Kicks out of a collection of 3-6 pieces that play well with each other.

Adding smaller Kickstarters to our arsenal of options will allow us to overlap the development of new designs with the manufacturing of recently-completed Kickstarters. This gets TinkerTurf terrain out to you at a faster pace because we're not relying on large projects that take many months to manage. In other words, we become more nimble. As always we still plan to give you the great showcase pieces and exciting companion products at Kickstarter prices. And, we're not closing the door on big Kicks. Say, for the launch of an entire new genre of terrain.

We hope this level of transparency helps you understand the choices we've made, for our collective benefit. Thanks again to all who participated. 

ROADMAP UPDATE

No significant changes to the schedule since the previous update. We are still expecting manufacturing to finish by the end of the year.  We do have one new thing to share, though: images of our product cartons!

Here is the latest roadmap.

• All artwork has been delivered to Panda Manufacturing - COMPLETE 
• Blank punch-board samples received - COMPLETE 
• Blank punch-board samples reviewed and approved - COMPLETE 
• First color samples received - COMPLETE 
• First color samples reviewed and approved - COMPLETE 
• Mass Production start - COMPLETE 
• Full retail sample received - EXPECTED NOVEMBER 
• Full retail sample reviewed and approved - EXPECTED NOVEMBER 
• Mass Production complete - EXPECTED NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 
• Outbound freight to our fulfillment partners - DATE TBA 
• Fulfillment shipping to you started - DATE TBA 
• Fulfillment shipping complete! - DATE TBA 

-ONWARD!!!

Upcoming Releases Questionnaire
over 2 years ago – Mon, Sep 20, 2021 at 11:02:16 PM

With global freight and manufacturing slowdowns looking like they are the new reality for tabletop manufacturing, we are contemplating moving to a model where we do more frequent and smaller Kickstarter releases.  The notion is to Kick new product designs as they're completed, rather than waiting to accumulate a large number of designs and then Kick them all at once.

Please help us decide if smaller, more frequent Kickstarters is a better model for our backer community by filling out this short questionnaire.  And don't think we haven't included preview images to both delight and entice you!!! 

TinkerTurf Future Releases Questionnaire

-ONWARD!!!

PS - We'll have a production update soon as well.