Done!
10 months ago
– Mon, Jun 12, 2023 at 03:48:00 PM
Hey Everyone.
What an epic saga this has been. It's so wild to look back at this project from the very beginning, all the way up until now, and see the crazy ups and downs of this ride. I am so very proud of this deck of cards and so thankful for your support. This campaign turned into an insane challenge, but we struggled through it and finally made it to the end of the Kickstarter portion of Vivid Kingdoms.
A while back, we got all the stuff back from the fulfillment company. I recently moved to a 15,000 square foot warehouse and was able to take back all the Vivid Kingdoms leftover items. I am very thankful to be in a space like this, so I can handle larger projects like Vivid Kingdoms.
There were a few remaining orders that they shippers didn't ship out. So me and my team went ahead and shipped those out. I personally spent 2 days just sending out Vivid Kingdoms orders to the last remaining backers. It gave me a better understanding of how truly complicated some of these orders ended up being :)
Now that my team and I have them, we are taking super care to pack them up and using high quality packing materials.
If you did not get your rewards for some reason, shoot us an email to [email protected]
We will get your rewards sent out asap.
Some folks never filled out their survey, some folks cards got declined, some shipments were lost in the mail, sometimes we just plain ole dropped the ball and messed up. But we want very badly for every single person to get what they ordered and hopefully love their stuff.
For anything related to Vivid Kingdoms, please just email us. Don't use kickstarter or any other social media platform. Simply email [email protected] or use the contact form on my website
--
We are in the process of adding the Vivid Kingdoms stuff to my website.
Right now just the VK deck is on there, but right now we're counting the remaining stuff and adding it to the website so that it will be available for purchase.
There will be a special Vivid Kingdoms page on my site where all that stuff will live.
I have received quite a few messages from folks looking to pick up an extra deck, or other items, so for those folks, keep an eye on that page over the next week or so as items continue to be added to the website.
--
I just wanted to say thank you all so much again. For watching the videos, for supporting the project, for lifting me up when I was at my lowest point with all this, for your patience and understanding, and for appreciating my art and style.
A couple weeks ago, I sat down with my family and actually played some card games with my deck for the very first time. It was a really cool experience and I kind of got to appreciate the deck for the first time. Up until that point all I could think about was logistics, and making sure all the backers got their rewards, and folks who were less than thrilled with how long things were taking. But actually using the cards and having fun with my family, I sat back and thought to my self "wow these are actually pretty frickin cool cards." I got to sit there and be proud of this amazing deck we all made. I say "we" because this whole community helped design them with the online polls and the comments on the YouTube videos. And I say "we" because you all blew this kickstarter up so hard that I could do some extra special things with the deck and this dream project became a reality because of you.
I learned so much from this campaign. It was really hard, but also very special to me, and in the end, incredibly rewarding.
Thank you all so much!
-Peter
[Ten Hundred]
Last Black Decks
about 1 year ago
– Fri, Mar 17, 2023 at 06:42:52 AM
Hey All,
There's about 80 orders left with black decks.
At first I was freaking out cause we ran out of black decks & I didn't think more were coming.
I was like, " Oh no, do I gotta email 80 people & tell them we can't send their deck after all this time??" That would have been no fun for anyone.
But I messaged the manufacturer & it turns out there was still one more shipment of black decks they were sending!!!!
That shipment was supposed to go out last week, but now it is scheduled to be sent out the fulfillment partners on Tuesday.
At that point the very last, final orders should shipped.
If you don't have your order, and it doesn't have a black deck, you should email:
It could be missing due to:
- Incomplete Survey
- Declined payment
- Lost in transit
- Delivered to old address
- Other (That we will help figure out)
Thanks
Peter
[Ten Hundred]
482
about 1 year ago
– Mon, Feb 13, 2023 at 04:35:44 PM
Hey Everyone,
This update is going to apply to a relatively small amount of backers. So if you have your order you can go ahead and skip this one.
- There's 482 orders left.
- 63 of them don't include Black Decks.
- We ran out of 4 designs of 11x17 posters. The restock of those should arrive Wednesday & then they'll ship out.
- We ran out of a SIGNED giclee prints in a couple designs. They're on the way to me right now to sign so they can get shipped out.
- We got the Fedex shipment of about 200 Black Decks in last Friday. (The "lost" batch that I mentioned in my last post)
- The additional replacement Black Decks were supposed to ship out last Friday, but they ended up shipping out today. Those should start shipping out in approx. 3-4 days.
Everyone, on every team working on this, including myself, are all investigating the remaining orders to make sure every single backer get's their items.
This week, we've also been helping out backers who never filled out their surveys. We've been manually building those orders into the system.
The operations manager at the fulfillment center has been closely investigating each piece of remaining inventory to verify that the physical quantities on hand match what the system says so that orders can be fulfilled.
Basically we are just looking into absolutely everything remaining right now to get this thing done.
--
In this post I was planning on inviting the remaining backers to email us... but I think we should hold off on that till the end of next week. By that time we will have the missing 11x17 prints, the signed giclees, and the black decks. Those items should knock out pretty much all of the remaining 482 orders.
It's so close I can taste it.
It's gonna be such a fantastic feeling when this thing is 100% done and everyone has their stuff.
Thanks you all so much!
-Peter
[Ten Hundred]
P.S. Our customer service email is [email protected]
The Last Orders
about 1 year ago
– Mon, Feb 06, 2023 at 10:29:45 AM
Hey Everyone,
First of all I wanted to say a huge thanks for the outpouring of encouragement after my last post. There was hundreds of comments and emails of support from so many of you. I wanted to say you all really lifted my spirits and gave me an my team a huge boost in positivity. I was at a really low point in all this and it was so amazing to hear from so many of you who love the cards and understand the setbacks we've had.
Thank you so, so much!
--
The Numbers:
There is 908 orders left.
665 of them need a black deck. (Latest update on black decks a little lower in this post)
Which means there is only 243 orders left (that don't have a black deck.)
The fulfillment partners helped discover an issue where 74 orders of the "King of Diamonds Bundle" that were placed as a Backerkit add-on (not on kickstarter) were not broken out into their individual components of what came in the bundle. Which meant the system didn't know what actually came in the order. My team is manually fixing each of those 74 orders right now as I type this. They should be fixed in the next 24 hours or so and be ready to ship.
We discovered we are somehow short by 43 SIGNED original Vivid Kingdoms decks. Those are being overnighted to me right now to sign. I will sign them tomorrow, and then overnight them back to get those 43 orders out the door.
The fulfillment facility has really stepped up and cranked out a ton of really complex orders. The Giclee orders in particular require the team to dawn white gloves and require very delicate handling. They've also added a 3rd step of quality control to minimize errors.
The remaining 126 orders (Showing my math: 908 total -665 black decks -74 "King of Diamonds"bundle orders being fixed -43 hand signed decks) that can be shipped right now are estimated to go out in the next 2 days.
--
The Black Decks:
In my past few updates I have been updating you on the fact that we received many black decks from the manufacturer that had damage. Those got sent back to have new cases made to fix them.
The manufacturers in Texas sent us 200 fixed decks via Fedex 10 days ago. They did this to try and get some of the fixed decks to us as quickly as possible so we could continue filling orders. Those 200 decks have been stuck at a Fedex processing facility in Texas this whole time. Fedex says it is due to bad weather. A claim has been filed to locate the shipment and expedite it to its final destination. It's a bummer and bad luck, but this just happens sometimes when you ship stuff. The manufacturers are in contact with Fedex trying to get those 200 decks moving asap.
The remaining black decks (the ones besides those 200) should be fixed and shipped out this Friday. Those are going via freight and not via Fedex. I'm checking in constantly with the black deck makers and giving you all the latest updates and timelines they are telling me. Right now it's lookin like those final black deck orders are estimated to start shipping to backers in about 7-10 business days (unless those 200 lost Fedex decks get there sooner).
--
Next:
(Please read this next part carefully)
I am going to post another update once they have shipped out everything that can ship out right now.
At that point, I'm assuming, out of 24,000+ of you, there will be some folks who believe they are missing their order but still haven't got a tracking number, or their order.
These will be people who ARE NOT still waiting on a black deck.
These may be people who:
- Had their card declined & didn't read the emails notifying them.
- Didn't fill out the survey.
- Didn't read their tracking email, or it's in a spam filter.
- Some other unique issue that will require some investigation.
In my NEXT update we will ask anyone who potentially falls into that small group of people to email us so we can investigate each of those instances individually and make sure absolutely everyone get's their order who placed one.
---
We are constantly monitoring our customer service email: [email protected]
We check the spam folder multiple times a day everyday.
If you have any issues we are happy to make things right.
--
Thanks again for all the kind words & encouragement after the last post.
I'll be updating here soon once all the orders we can ship right now go out. Which is very soon.
Thanks
Peter
[Ten Hundred]
Laying it all out there.
over 1 year ago
– Sat, Jan 14, 2023 at 09:13:49 AM
Hey Everyone.
-The shipping warehouse is currently sending out 500-750 orders a day. They have brought on additional labor to process my campaign more quickly.
- Since my last update they have shipped out 3521 additional orders
-There are 4439 orders remaining. (I believe maybe a number I provided on a previous update was not accurate because it was based off a text conversation from the fulfillment company with an estimate. They told me this morning 4439 remain)
- The operations manager says they anticipate sending 2200-2500 orders in the next week.
-I had a video call with the company fixing the damaged black decks yesterday and they said they should be done in about a 7-10 days.
- The current estimate on everything being shipped is 2-3 weeks. The exception to this might be those 750 black decks we are still waiting on to get fixed.
- If you have damaged, incorrect, or lost items please email [email protected]
- Tracking numbers are going out when orders ship so you will know when your order ships.
This next section is me expressing some frustration about the experience of fulfilling the campaign. If you are just interested in the progress, you can pretty much stop here.
----
On Jan 9, I had yet another video call with my fulfillment partners. On this one I told them point blank they must put more man power on my campaign right now. This is ridiculous. Here we are coming up on 4 MONTHS of this campaign shipping out. I expressed that I found this timeline completely un-acceptable and I would have been better off shipping all this stuff out myself. 4 months is no-where near what they initially promised me when they were trying to convince me to hire them. In this conversation I asked them "Exactly how many people are currently shipping out orders on my campaign right now?". There answer was 2. I was shocked. 2?! I currently have more employees than that who work for me everyday. Why on earth am I hiring a company who is providing less resources than I could provide on my own, when I was told this campaign would be done in about a month?
Since that conversation they now have 5 people working on the campaign. The amount of orders going out each day has tripled. I am trying to get them to provide even more manpower to get this thing done and they have added 2 additional people who work half days on the campaign. I am trying to have them bring on additional temp labor to further increase the output.
They apologized to me at how this campaign has gone. They expressed that the way my campaign has gone is out of the ordinary for them and they agreed this has taken way too long. Which is a statement I have heard several times during these 4 months and I am pretty tired of hearing it.
I have been talking to these folks since day one, going over every little detail of the campaign, and telling them there would be complex orders with many items, talking about the shipping materials that would be needed, and the different types of handling strategies that would apply to certain types of items such as giclee prints and decks of cards. My opinion is that there was not adequate attention paid to these conversations and the company was not properly prepared to fulfill this campaign in any kind of reasonable timeline. In other words, in my opinion I was ignored or simply not prioritized. All the while, I believed I was being heard and action was being taken on the insight I provided.
Ultimately I wish I would have done all the shipping on my own. I would have been better off just hiring additional help and purchasing or renting a larger warehouse space to hold all the rewards. I got so many suggestions from backers and other people in the kickstarter community saying I should hire a fulfillment company and this isn't something I should try and handle on my own. But with 20/20 hindsight I don't think that was a good decision. No one cares about my art and my fans as much as I do, I have a decade of experience shipping and fulfilling orders in house and a team that is equally as passionate about my art as I am, and the moment I start involving outside people is when the vision gets diluted, the urgency drops, and things like this happen.
In the end my reputation gets damaged in the eyes of the people who supported me the most, and now many of you are left with a bad taste in your mouth and feelings of anger and distrust towards me at how this campaign has gone. Both with the long manufacturing timeline and the long shipping timeline. To me this is the absolute worst outcome from all of this. I am so incredibly grateful to the amazing folks who support me and my art. I am so appreciative of my fans and the community of people who have sprung up around the projects I do. Your support means the world to me. But now, to some of you it appears as though I don't care about you at all and this campaign is something I've simply forgotten about or don't really care about. That is not the case and I am working everyday on trying to get this thing done. This campaign has been my number 1 priority for this past year.
This has absolutely been the worst year of my life. If I could go back in time I never would have designed this deck of cards. It's not worth it. This collection of art has turned from something I was incredibly proud of to a source of endless stress and hatred. Just holding my sample decks in my hands gives me a sick feeling in my stomach. It has been a catalyst in a portion of my supporters turning against me, loosing trust in me, and even accusing me of orchestrating a giant scam.
It is so incredibly frustrating to feel like my arms are tied behind my back as I try to solve problems for such a large amount of frustrated people. I internalize the angry comments and emails and take them all to heart. I never anticipated this campaign blowing up how it did. I'm an independent artist who thought it would be cool to make a deck of cards. My original goal wasn't even .05% of what it actually raised.
But this is my project and my campaign and the buck stops here. It's my responsibility to get you all your rewards, and for about 20,000 of you, we have done that. But for those who remain, I am so very sorry at how long it has taken. I know you are frustrated, and understandably so. I am incredibly frustrated too. It is so frustrating to have to rely on others to try and address these issues and time and time again be let down on the lack of urgency associated with my campaign.
Currently, I am actively taking steps to make sure I have to work with as few outside resources as possible in the future so I never have to deal with an experience like this again.
--
I really didn't wan't to have to write a post like this because I think it will cause some of you to think you won't get your rewards. You absolutely will get your rewards. The amount of orders going out daily has increased after that heated call I mentioned above.
If you get the wrong stuff, or damaged stuff, or lost stuff. We will fix it. We have been handling these issues the whole time.
You will get your stuff.
My next update will be Feb 6 if not sooner.
I am so deeply sorry. I am so sorry I have let you down.
Thank you all so much for your support.
-Peter
[Ten Hundred]
