Hey everyone! Thanks for your patience as always as we’ve been working on things. As you may have seen on Instagram, we had almost all of the filler pins arrive last month, and a few of the larger pins as well. I’m dropping by to give another status update with things.

There is one key item that I did want to make clear with the campaign as I believe I didn’t articulate it as well as I could have, and for that I apologize for misaligning expectations. The original estimates for the campaign were for a 20-25 pin design campaign. With the campaign ending with 55 designs, that put a ton of manufacturing workload + design complications as we were suddenly finishing an additional 30+ designs. As we hand vector everything which is usually a day for each pin, that’s over a month in vectors alone - with nothing else included. Obviously, we still would have wanted earlier shipment dates if we could have, but with so many pins, it was near impossible that all 55 sets would finish early (even barring a miracle where no errors or art adjustments occurred).

We’ve also had some… minor manufacturer drama, where we had a rep who lied about being fired from one of our factories and started trying to contact us elsewhere, which led to some major ghosting and confusion… and it turns out she was illegally using the factory’s resources to make pins afterward, had notices sent to all her old contracts and… it was a mess. We did get a new representative there, but it took a minute to get straightened out. Then we had another rep from a different factory get majorly sick (like hospital sick) and stopped responding for several weeks; on returning, she forgot about a few pins for months in a sick-haze, and only realized she hadn’t submitted them when we inquired about the confirmed pins on where progress was. While both of these situations are now sorted out, while dealing with so many designs, we had to juggle a bit.

All said, my current target date is to have all items graded before NYCC (where Venetia is also attending!) and to start shipping packages out. This is early-to-mid October. That show is the first one we’ll anticipate having the pins present, but we may only bring seconds grades there (depending on how far we are with fulfillment at the time). The priority will always be securing and setting aside the best grades for backers, so it largely will depend on how far along the process we are for those pins at that time. 

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The last thing to get finished this last month was the Guardian Sword, as you guys voted early in the year. It was the final chest drop from our story, reimagined from Tim Kaminski’s Inktober sword sketches. The finalized artwork ended up being a deluxe pin. We won’t change the pricing on anyone, of course, and you’ll just get it for way cheaper than intended (or free, if you had a full set). We just couldn’t add in the sword in a way that didn’t compromise the design at anything less than 3”. This is in production now. :D

Other than that, the campaign by the number:

Some photos of some more of the pins:

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All said, we are truly excited that we started getting these pins in. It’s weird to see the whole adventure unfolding in physical form. We’d love to know what your favorites are from the showcased pins! Let us know. :D 

I’ll touch base again sometime in the middle-to-end of next month; I’m hoping to see most of the items currently in mass manufacturing complete, and most of the items in sampling into mass manufacturing, but I’ll keep everyone posted then. 

Thank you again! 

 
- M