Laying it all out there.
about 3 years 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]

Checking In.
about 3 years ago – Tue, Jan 03, 2023 at 01:45:44 AM

Hey Gang,

In my last update I said I would make another update on Jan 2nd and here we are.

Since my last update an additional 1100 orders have shipped.

That is with Christmas and New Years and also the midwest of the United States got hit with a pretty epic blizzard and the shipping facility was shut down due to the crazy storm. I know here in Michigan my whole team had to take 2 snow days and it was really bad.

--

The damaged black decks are currently in Texas having new packaging made for them.

I received a couple emails from people asking if the gilded black deck cards are smaller than the regular deck. They are the same size and they are the same playing cards made by USPCC as the rest of the decks.

The tuck cases and outer sleeves were made from scratch by Gamblers Warehouse (These are the same folks who made the custom outer sleeves for all the decks) because the black decks have custom die cuts on the outer sleeve AND the tuck case. 

This is so that even if you don't remove the plastic wrap, you can still admire the gilded gold edges on the deck of cards without removing them from the case (and because its just freakin cool). USPCC does not do this kind of custom work, so Gamblers warehouse custom made all the packaging for the black decks. 

I guess the tuck case template they used is a couple millimeters larger (maybe less that that, I'm American so I don't really know millimeters) than the stock USPCC tuck case, so the tuck case has just the tiniest bit more ullage than the other decks.

Here is a little video I shot for a backer who was emailing me about this if you are interested in seeing a size comparison. -->>

--

I have continued to see confirmations that backers are getting tracking emails when their orders ship.

If you received your order in the past two weeks and never got a tracking email, first search your email for "infoplus" (this is the shipping software) and "Ten Hundred" (this is the sender) and check your spam. And if you use Gmail check the "Promotions" and "Social" tabs too for good measure.

 If still nothing, maybe shoot us an email so I can verify again that the fulfillment partners have the tracking set up correctly. I have checked in on this several times and I think we should be all good, but I am down to keep checking to make sure people know when their stuff is coming.

We can check if there was a typo on your backerkit email, or if this is a repeat issue that needs to be addressed. 

--

Besides that I don't have any major updates since my last update 13 days ago.

Things are doing much better now that the operation has moved to Kentucky.  Josh, the operations manager down there, communicates with me daily and makes sure to ask lots of questions before making any decisions which is a good thing.

The Golden Ticket decks are still being distributed randomly into orders and those folks still waiting have the exact same opportunity for that bonus deck as anyone else.

--

My Next update will be January 14, this will be around the estimated timeline of the black decks being fixed so hopefully the manufacturer will hit that estimated timeline and I can share some news on that along with an update on how many more orders have shipped.

Thanks and happy new year!

-Peter

[Ten Hundred]

I Promised...
over 3 years ago – Sat, Dec 24, 2022 at 12:22:31 AM

Hey Folks,

In my last update I promised I would be back with another update on December 20. So here we are.

When last we spoke there was a lot of frustration on my part at how the shipping was not progressing (and understandably, frustration on your part too).

The Kentucky facility has been doing much better. I am getting daily calls and texts from the operations manager over there. Since the tubes arrived 2,500 orders have shipped from that facility.  Orders are going to continue going out every day this week.

The operations manager in Kentucky said it is going a bit slower than he expected because some extra steps are being taken to reduce damage.

The print shipping process has 7 steps including filling the empty space in the tube with packing materials for protection and taping both ends of the tube to ensure nothing opens in transit.

He told me they're going as fast as they can while still taking extra care to ensure things arrive in good condition.

Approximately 6500 orders remain to be shipped. This number should have another good chunk taken out of it by the end of the week.

Black Decks

In my last update I shared that I ordered extra black decks, but the manufacturer sent me 100 fewer black decks than what I needed to fulfill the orders. 

They are sending me more and I am being told those should be shipping out from the manufacturer around the 2nd week of January.

Then we discovered a manufacturing defect on the black decks. Some of the edges of the die cut areas had a fold, or a tear on the outer sleeve. This defect happened on around 800 of the black decks.

The Vivid Kingdoms, Kings Blood, and Golden Ticket all have the same Triangle Die-Cut out of the front and none of them have this issue, so I think there was some error when the black sleeves were being made.

The fulfillment team went through and pulled every bad black deck that they saw and we shipped those back to the manufacturer to have new sleeves made for them. I am being told the ones with new sleeves should be shipping out from the manufacturer around the 2nd week of January as well.

So out of 2500 black deck orders, we currently have around 1600 available to ship now. We will fulfill as many orders as we can from the good decks we have, and then the rest will go out after we get the new ones back.

The manufacturer says he is prioritized fixing this mistake and hopefully it should be handled quickly.

If a bad deck slips through the cracks and you get a defective one. Please email [email protected] with a couple pics and we'll sort it out.

On a positive note. These black decks look so dang good. They are totally my favorites and the gold on them is gorgeous!

I think a lot of you could tell I was pretty frustrated and stressed in the last update. There were a ton of you who sent kind words and positivity my way in the comments, and some of you even sent personal emails with words of patience and understanding. I got a lot of "Don't stress dude." messages. I wish I was a little better at taking those messages to heart, but I just wanted to say thanks for that and I really appreciate it.

The best way to alleviate that stress is to get everyone the awesome rewards they ordered. I am incredibly focused on that and I am so very sorry at how long this process has been.

You are all super awesome for supporting this project and for supporting my art. I just want to say thank you all again for coming on this ride with me (even though its been a little longer than some of us may like).

I am gonna circle back with you folks on Jan 2 for another update to let you know where the orders are at and what's the progress on the messed up black decks and anything else that needs mentioning.

Thanks everyone.

-Peter

[Ten Hundred]

The final shipments.
over 3 years ago – Mon, Dec 12, 2022 at 03:04:59 AM

This is taking way too long and I am so sorry about that.

This freaking sucks.

I am on the phone daily with the folks shipping the orders trying to get movement on the final orders.

I am incredibly frustrated. 

It seems like my fulfillment partners got slammed with with Black Friday/ holiday orders and just removed resources from my campaign to work on other orders.

Why was my campaign de-prioritized? I don't know. Why are these other clients more important? I don't know. 

Frustrating.

They were so backed up at their Utah facility, that their solution was to load all my stuff onto trucks and ship it express on their own dime, to their Kentucky facility where (according to them) they are much less busy and have a team dedicated to just my campaign. Since my stuff obviously wasn't moving in Utah, this seemed like the best solution. The stuff arrived there Friday. Things will start moving tomorrow according to what I have been promised.

Prints:

The tubes (The ones where prints weren't arriving damaged) were ordered, but they were back ordered till December 13. Orders with prints should start going out December 13. 

Why wasn't this handled earlier? I don't know. I have been discussing the prints and uncut sheets with them since day one. I should have asked to review all the packing materials with them when I was out there in Utah signing all the stuff. I was making signatures the whole time and we came down to the wire there before we had to return home. That was a major oversight on my part and I am so sorry for that. I thought hiring professionals for this step in the process would mean that things would be taken care of to make the shipping run smoothly. This hasn't been the case.

Black Decks:

I ordered 2500 black decks, plus an extra 200 or so in case there was any damage, or if packages got lost in the mail. It's always a good idea to get a few extra than what you need incase any issues arise. 

The folks who made the black decks only sent me 2400 of them and about 10% of them arrived damaged. We are shipping out as many good ones as possible. The damaged ones are being replaced, and the additional decks are being made so that we can fulfill all 2500 orders.

I stressed over and over how incredibly important it was for these premium decks to arrive in absolutely mint condition to my fulfillment partners, because replacing them is more difficult than the other decks. This is how my fulfillment partners said they would be shipped:

In a box with padding.

Brick Boxes:

Brick boxes are done, I have signed the ones I need to sign. My shippers have them. They should be shipping out with all the other orders.

Updates:

I thought my last update would be the last one I needed to post regarding shipping. As I spoke with my fulfillment partners it always seemed as though solutions were in place and the campaign would be wrapping up shortly. This was not the case. I am so sorry. My next update will be December 20 to let you know how the Kentucky team is progressing and any other updates I can share.

I was asking that everything be shipped by Christmas, and my shipping partners said that is a possibility. I can't 100% guarantee that will happen, but it is a goal we have.

--

For many of you, this is your first experience with me, and my art, and how I run my business. I am so ashamed at how long this is taking and how poorly this reflects on me.

Everyday that passes with backers not having their rewards the burning ball of anxiety in the pit of my stomach grows. 

I hate to have people frustrated and waiting. I hate to have people who supported me and my artwork have a negative experience. You supported me, you deserve better and I feel like I am letting so many of you down.

Your frustration is 100% valid. 

I am so sorry.

The wait should be over soon.

Thanks

Peter

[Ten Hundred]

Update on Shipping, Black Decks are ready, & more...
over 3 years ago – Fri, Nov 04, 2022 at 07:02:13 AM

Hey Folks!

First off, In my last update I went over the best ways to contact us.

I wanna repeat that here so its part of the latest update:

Email [email protected]

If you have any issues with your order, a lost package, damaged items, incorrect items, please do not hesitate to reach out and we will figure it out.

Ok, cool.

Some updates.

1. 13,000 orders have shipped so far. Which means about 11k orders left to ship.

2. The special edition black decks are done being made and are traveling from Texas to Utah right now.

3.  Both International and USA orders are shipping.

4. My shippers sent me a test shipment with an uncut sheet in the packaging we were going to use. However It arrived damaged, so we had to order new better packaging for them. Some more additional test shipments are on the way to me now, so we can make sure the prints arrive in good condition. This means orders with uncut sheets and prints on them haven't shipped yet and are next to ship. I know this can be disappointing to hear for some folks, but I think it's better for your stuff to arrive in good condition, than to rush it out in sub-par packaging.

5. My shippers have sent me test tracking emails and I received them. The name displayed in Gmail as "Ten Hundred" with an email address of [email protected]

6. The daily instagram stories and posts I am seeing of people getting their stuff and being excited makes me super happy (this doesn't really have much to do with anything... it just makes me happy)

---

Some Early Issues we had...

1. The first 130ish orders were shipped out in just plastic poly-mailers. This was due to some kind of miss communication with the people packing the orders. Some decks were arriving damaged. You may have seen some comments from disappointed backers who got damaged decks.  This led to anxiety among backers who had yet to receive their order. It certainly led to anxiety for yours truly, from day one I was constantly stressing the importance of the decks arriving in pristine condition.

This issue was spotted relatively quickly by a manager at the fulfillment facility and the packaging was fixed immediately. A couple hundred orders waiting to go out were also yanked off the loading dock and re-packaged.

We have shipped replacement items to anyone who reached out to us about damaged goods, and since the mistake was caught, we have had very few emails about damaged decks.

2. Some of the cartons of Vivid Kingdoms decks were incorrectly labeled by the manufacturers as "Kings Blood" or "Kings Blood with Signature" and had the wrong UPC on them. This led to people getting two Vivid Kingdoms decks instead of 1 of each deck like they ordered. The incorrect labels were found and fixed, and this issue seems to be resolved. The affected backers were sent the correct items they ordered.

---

That's it for now.

If you haven't got your stuff yet, your order should be coming up soon.

The shippers are more than half way through the orders.

Even with the early issues, the black decks being finished, and the new print packaging, there hasn't been any pause in shipments going out every day. So all in all things are moving along pretty well.

I'll say it again

**PLEASE reach out to us via email if you have any issues with your order.**

The saga of the Vivid Kingdoms kickstarter is nearly complete.

Thanks so much to everyone. This has been a long and crazy ride :)

Thanks

Peter

[Ten Hundred]