hey guys! just wanted to give yall an update that I'll be (officially) opening the preorder store later today. it's been open since the end of the campaign if you had a direct link, but I was hoping to do some tweaking to available variants and such before promoting it publicly. it doesn't look like I'm able to do exactly what I want it to do, however, so we're just gonna for for it 👍

there IS one big update, however; the price of the batpacks will be changing, and ill explain why...

at their current backerkit price of $75 USD, the batpacks are priced at a little over double their unit cost. I figured double would be acceptable since it's still technically a "profit" (not counting for shipping costs/sampling/storage/error rate...), but i realized a bit into the campaign that if I sold batpacks for wholesale (the average wholesale pride rate is 50% of retail), i... would basically be selling them at-cost, which just isn't sustainable. it also doesn't give me a lot of wiggle room in terms of funding future production costs, accounting for error rates, basically anything beyond just the base cost of making the initial order of batpacks.

i talked to a lot of my artist friends about this who also make merch, and they shared that they generally price things around 3x the unit cost; 1/3 to pay for the price of production, 1/3 to help pay for the next one, and 1/3 as profit/to handle all the other added expenses. but I also didn't want to immediately jack the price up for preorders since I'd been saying since the end of the campaign that you could wait for preorders to get a batpack for the same price if you couldn't get one during the campaign!

so, here's the deal: the preorder price for batpacks will be going up to $80 USD, and once preorders are over, the standard retail price will be $95 USD. this way, you guys still get a nice discount for preordering, but it gives me juuuust a bit more of a cushion to work with until preorders are over!

as to how long preorders will last... im not sure yet! with the sampling period taking longer than estimated, it pushes the time until production out as well, and I only need to secure concrete numbers once we begin mass production. so it could be a month or two until preorders close! we'll have to see.

thanks to all of you for your continued support (and for listening to me prattle on about production nuances, lol). i always strive to be as transparent as possible when it comes to my work, so I hope that comes across well here!

have a great rest of your week 🦇