Now, Actually, those Domestic orders are all out!
over 4 years ago – Wed, Oct 16, 2019 at 10:34:43 PM

So, we did get a few immediate 'hey, what about my order?' pings, and in checking the backerkit logs somehow we did miss a segment of almost 60 people. We've fixed them, pushed them into Shipstation, and now we've shipped them all.

The delay for those people with Maps

Ironically, as soon as we printed the batch of maps for this project, our laminator broke. This caused us to check in the DFW area for a 3rd party company that could laminate on demand - and a very happy accident has occurred: We've found a GREAT little factory, just up the street from our DFW warehouse, who has far more professional and robust laminate services than we were doing ourselves, at essentially the exact cost we were paying to do the work ourselves (and assumably, less error rate).

This means an all around win-win for laminatation / maps in the future. Now we'll have them do all our laminating, and our latest batch of maps are in their hands as of this evening, and should be ready in maybe 1-2 days, and then THOSE orders can go straight out, so by this weekend -ALL- domestic orders should be off our books.

International Reserve - Some news

You guys came through in a big way, you put Aetherworks on our radar for AU, and Lion Rampant Importers on our radar for CA. I've contacted them both, LRI can absolutely cover us for CA with no troubles whatsoever, and I'm waiting for a call back from Aetherworks - but they specifically do KS fulfillment.

So - in my head, these are going to be incredibly straight forward, and maybe be ideal future solutions for CA / AU / NZ which is just great.

The shipment to my agent in Poland is going forward today, which will give him 10x copies of the RPG Spell Effects inside the EU, and he's excited to reship and catalog all the mysterious costs that may come with importing directly. Customs alone will probably take 2 weeks, but we'll know soon-ish what those costs are.

Phase 1 is complete! All Regular Domestic Orders are out! (there are a few exceptions)
over 4 years ago – Sat, Oct 12, 2019 at 07:15:46 PM

Phase 1 Complete!

Officially, we finished 'Phase 1' this week! That means all regular domestic orders have shipped. It's an incredible feeling, and validation of what we expected was possible with a 'micro campaign'.

We designed, pitched, kickstarted, die-cut, manufactured, and shipped  ONE THOUSAND orders in just over 120 days.

 Current Shipping Status

980 / 1196 live orders fulfilled. 37 unanswered surveys. 6 domestic orders waiting on Maps (they are produced, and in-hand, are being laminated this week). 98 domestic orders waiting for PF Generic Spell Effects. 47 Backers in CA/AU with International Reserve.

International News?

We're making strides toward Amazon UK, some of the steps are tedious but I believe we'll be ready to send them some product soon, which might open all sorts of doors.

Additionally, I'm reaching out to CA / AU backers as we speak to offer them price points, and see if they want to ship immediately.

The 'Game-On' association through Black Book Editions is still a possibility, the 39x orders for our FPM2 project are en route to them, and we'll see how painless (or painful) using them to re-ship for us will be. There's some concerns, but they're small and growing and could be immensely helpful in the future if they work out a few kinks.

Lastly, there's an 'experiment' on the table, essentially the 'we just do it ourselves' option, because I DO have an agent working for us in Poland. I'm not sure, apples to apples, if Poland is an ideal country to ship into and out of - but heck, we might as well try it and see. So I'm sending him a batch of 5E Generic sets, and once he gets them in, pays VAT, and gets them prepped to re-ship, I'll essentially have X copies I can re-ship from within the EU.

Now, if people want to jump aboard, I'd be happy to write your names down and essentially funnel them to you, but there's no numbers yet for the final VAT and courier fees hes going to pay. We're just going off the basic assumptions with the EU - specifically if the shipment to your door arrives from Poland (inside the EU) while you'll pay shipping, and I've heard some lamentation that you'll still pay a 'courier fee' it will not be the SAME very large courier fee that usually exists when they have to hound you for VAT tax - because the VAT will have already been declared and paid when it was received in Poland.

From there, we assume we can have our agent / some other employees do any assembly and packaging within Poland, to further cut down costs. The concept is sound, but there are a lot of unknowns, so we'll be creating an internal accounting of every associated charge as we get say, 10-20 sets through our fingers, and then compare.

EU Distribution / AU Distribution / CA Distribution

For a long time, we haven't been interested in expanding our "distribution", but I believe the time is nearly here, with a few caveats.

We would now like to look into CA/EU/AU based distributors. BUT, similar to the process above, there's inevitably some 'larger' game stores / distribution chains that are more like fulfillment houses or warehousers than technical distributors.

Some of these guys might be so large, that they operate in the following way: they have huge warehouses, they have an online website, they 'stock' our product just like any other retailer would, you could order our product from THEM if they had it in stock - and some of these guys even do fulfillment for KS projects on the side, since they have the warehousing space.

I KNOW These companies are out there, but I'm just not aware of them in your respective countries.

So - if you guys are aware of companies like this outside the USA, I would love to know who they are, and I'll begin to reach out to them. It's a no-brainer if a large CA-based warehouser wants to stock 50x copies of our 5E Generic set for example, and then I can just funnel them the list of the 17 of you guys in CA and have the dots connect. You won't even need to pay shipping, since we have to import a shipment to them anyway, and we'll just toss +17 copies onto the shipment, etc.

PF Generic Set

Now that the 5E phase is basically done, these dies are "next" on our list, and we're now even more experienced at making them. I don't want to speak for Philip, since he may not be available to hammer these out immediately - but we're pretty confident that as soon as he has some time, he can get these done in a few nights.

I'm hoping he can find some time within the next 2 weeks, and we'll get these moving along.

It's Fun when Everything is Amazing
over 4 years ago – Wed, Oct 02, 2019 at 11:57:16 PM

Some quick photos of many many boxes going out. Just so many!

Before mail even came to pick up today, we had a third wagon overflowing with boxes. And right now, these 3 wagons are filled again waiting for tomorrow.

Overall Estimates

We've shipped about 500/1200 now, with another 200 or so that will go out in the next 48 hours.

We did have 1 small hurdle, we shipped ourselves 14 boxes via UPS, and they delivered 13 and one is in limbo. So with what we have onhand, we'll be 200 copies short of page #2. Obviously, they could show up any day with that missing box because it's been found, which will be great.

Regardless, the next batch of 500+ sets is due on a pallet arriving Monday, so we should have enough copies to fulfill everyone even if this missing box never turns up ... it just obviously sucks and we're hoping that doesn't happen.

Incorrect Addresses

USPS has a basic 'address validation' process, and about 50 addresses have been !!! marked by that system, so I'll be sending out a simple BCC email to all of you soon saying "can you please verify your address one more time". In half these cases, you've forgotten an apartment number or have a typo, and in half these cases there's actually NOTHING wrong with your  address, the USPS system just can't validate it for whatever reason. Once I can compare your address to the system, I'll override any address that it still thinks is incorrect, but this will catch dozens of mistakes and missing APT #s.

The BIG One! - Wave 1 is Shipping
over 4 years ago – Wed, Sep 18, 2019 at 10:49:39 PM

Lets take a photographic journey:

All 3x pages of the 5E Generic Set, die-cut and ready to ship.

The Die-Cutting is very good, the white print film peels of easily. The spell graphics look wonderful.

We have a full box of each of the 3 pages, so right around 200x sets like we assumed.

The graphic is correctly scaled, with the die-cutting going 'just around it' in the smoothest way possible. The difference is about 1mm or less, making these things beautiful.

It took less than 30 seconds to tear these pages apart, the die-cutting is clean and the notches are ideally placed so nothing rips.

Every part of this final product was almost EXACLTY how we imagined it, and I have to say I'm impressed. The Dies Philip made really work, the rings work great and aren't too flimsy, and in every other way it's just a superior version of our previous product - and you don't need scissors!

As we planned, without peeling the white print film, you can tear the "outer edge" off the sheets, and they slide into a map case. This has almost no effect on you guys (the backers) because you're likely to pop them all out immediately, but it does open doors for us with packaging options. We may even retail these like this "in the case" with unpeeled or peeled sheets, which was never an option before.

As a reminder, we're doing as little assembly as possible in this campaign. Sheets are going straight into 12x18" cardboard mailers, and are all being shipped Priority Mail.

Sheets + Box weighs in at exactly 15.8 oz.

Sheets + Map Case + Box weighs 1 pound, 2 oz.

As promised, I'm trying things a little differently this time. Now that we have the product IN HAND, I'm finally locking Backerkit, processing credit cards, and pushing the first 200 orders into my shipping system.

Approximately another 500 sets are being finished in Las Vegas right now, and may ship to me as early as tomorrow, and we have more plastic shipping to us to make the last of the sets by the end of the month.

Flat Plastic Miniatures 3 Teaser

If this micro campaign can be closed out smoothly, we're very happy. Next up for us will be another BIG project for Flat Plastic Miniatures. This time around, we're taking the dive and making a support kit for existing hard-bound adventures. We want GMs to have a 1-stop shop for every miniature they need to run and entire campaign, so we're setting our sights on a support kit for the Lost Mines of Phandelver and Storm King's Thunder adventures. We'll also have some war-bands and other special packs to boot.

We've learned a TON from Flat Plastic Miniatures 2 about what not to do as far as kickstarter structure goes. And with this campaign's hyper streamlined approach and huge success, we have a plan for FPM3 that we hope is the best of both worlds - a beefy campaign with some wonderful new offerings, but under the hood a very streamlined tier structure, and many tricks to simplify the production and delivery process so we can get it out the door on time with minimal headaches.

The Update thats about to require another Update - Production results from Vegas!
over 4 years ago – Sat, Sep 14, 2019 at 01:16:38 AM

Sorry this update has been so delayed, there's a lot of moving parts.

As a recap: I went to Vegas, we created the final dies for the 5E Generic sets. We printed a few initial copies, and prepared for our main print run.

The results were almost exactly what we expected; everyting went very well, but there were some additional issues, including a transparency glitch, some minor scaling issues that had to be cleaned up, and because this was just an initial test of the cutting, and the scaling, we did not bother properly aligning the die. So when you see these photos, you might think "man, the alignment is off too!" well, sort of, but actually it wasn't aligned at all. That alignment is just random with no attempt to line it up.

Here are some real photos of the test batch from this trip:

The Big Picture

These are fantastic! I didn't cut these with scissors, they fall out of their sheets, you just peel the white film off and pop them right out. The die-cutting works like a charm and these are truly ideal.

So, now what?

Well, this is why this update basically needs another update. After this successful test, all we needed to do was fix a few glitches, and then print print print print. So i sent my co-worker to Vegas last week, and .... well, he's been printing!

The first 200x sets were successfully printed and are already in the mail to our warehouse. I should have them in a few days. The next 500x sets after that are 2/3rds printed, and their final sheets are printing this weekend, and I should have those faster than I can even ship the first 200.

So in a nutshell, you can consider ~700/1200 sets of this campaign are already printed, and on their way to me. Unless theres some unforeseen issue (I haven't personally inspected these sets myself yet) they'll start going right out. So i can somewhat confidently say we're starting delivery in mid-September.