Hey friends! We really hope the beginning of the year has gone well for you! We’re here again to update on Purrtagonists events - so let’s get to it!
To start with a positive, here’s a board Mel assembled (of seconds) of the pin designs. There are a few missing (notably Jess’s designs and a few fillers) as these are just the seconds that are sold at shows, but there’s something charming about seeing them all together. (As a reminder, no standards are currently being sold; seconds are being sold to begin covering the extreme remake costs. Even with the end-of-year sales and conventions, we’ve only covered an eighth of that cost so far so we're still largely negative with costs in the campaign and using our own funds to cover residuals.)
In general news, all of the remade/replacement pins are here for the flawed pins. While this probably seems like a “why haven’t you begun shipping” status, it’s more complex than it originally sounds. Despite having these new replacements, we still have to grade the initial batches for three reasons: to get any potential standards out of them (there are sometimes only one or two per 50, but we’ve seen bags with no standards at all, but it’s still something we need to do since we placed new orders based on their expected error rates), to provide numbers back to the first manufacturer in an attempt to get any more refunds due to their massive quality standard blunders, and to, finally, figure out if the remade counts will fully cover the errored batches.
As such, we’re working through almost double the number of original pins for Venetia’s designs, documenting the errors, and seeing if the standard number suffices. We’re also finishing grading for all of the rest of the pins (but that’s closer to done). That’s our current hurdle.
However, we are beginning to near the finish line, with many pins having the acceptable sendout amounts, so we are tentatively putting a shipping lockdown for February 18th, 2024. Please have your addresses correct in the system by this time! We’re hoping to start shipping packages by month’s end, or the beginning of next.
Some of you expressed interest in just getting a seconds batch of pins since you didn’t mind flaws. You can request this HERE which will substitute your pins for high-seconds (so just very small flaws). We will handle any requests on this list first (just due to how sequencing works, we’d have to pull them first to handle grade adjustments).
As a quick addition, with the help of Mel’s family, we have gotten all of the accessory items finished. This includes finishing the vinyl sticker packs and the thank you “quest” notes. Many of you were wondering what the “Guild” designation meant in the surveys, and it correlated to these small seals on the quest notes (Mel’s mom and sister largely did these - sister called it a “creative project,” which was her contribution to prep because she hates grading). This is obviously more of a fun thing for aesthetics. We'll have extra seals listed up if anyone wants to snag the missing seals later, but more on that later.
Again, we want to thank everyone for all of the patience you’ve shown with the campaign with all of the weird hurdles. We’re excited to get these out to you soon!
