Greetings Backers!

Time for another full status report. This one is mostly about shipping posters.

TL:DR: 

We’re about half way through shipping out the posters that are being mailed in tubes. Then we’ll have a pause while we wait for the Maxims books to be delivered from the printer. Your next status report will be the week of May 27-31. 

We’ve still got 62 backers who haven’t filled out their surveys. If you’ve lost your link you can click here to login and finish your survey. I can’t ship your items until I know where to mail them!

We’ve shipped out 811 orders. Many of those were “digital only” or orders that became “digital only” because physical items were combined with Mandatory Failure. We’ve also shipped out orders that were posters only, posters + pocket reference, and posters + M70 fobs.

This week we’re working on orders that contained both rolled posters and books. We’ll be sending out 277 posters in tubes over the next week. The books and other items will ship out once we have books in hand. 

The remaining 688 packages will start shipping as soon as we have books. 

If you have questions about the status of your particular package, I’m happy to answer them, just email [email protected].

If your order contained only posters, pocket reference, and M70 fobs then it is already in the mail. 

Details

The shipping management on this project was far more complex than originally anticipated. Hopefully I managed to prevent too much confusion for all of you. We had a manual process of changing orders to combine shipping with Mandatory Failure. We’ve also got orders that will split shipping because rolled posters have to ship in tubes while books have to ship in boxes. Fortunately Backerkit’s fulfillment system is completely up to the task. Everything is going smoothly. 

We’re keeping the shipping crew pretty small for this portion of the fulfillment process. It is just me, my warehouse manager Aidan, and one additional worker who gets called in when we have more than 75 packages to go out that day.  There are 277 more packages to ship (posters in tubes) before we hit a pause and have to wait for the books to arrive. I expect a couple of weeks wait time. We’ll use those to do general warehouse clean up and to prep the Random Merch bundles and the Random Art Bundles. We’ve got some nice surprises to go into both. 

The first task of prepping for poster shipping is to put caps on one end of all of the tubes.

At first we were using a mallet to get them into place, but then we discovered that the caps are flexible enough that we can press them in using our thumbs. That sped up the process considerably. (The old tubes required a mallet.) 

I didn’t get any pictures of the poster rolling because Aidan handled all of that on a day when I didn’t go to the warehouse at all. It is really lovely to be able to just assign work and have it happen when I’m not looking! (I spent my day working on Structuring Life to Support Creativity instead.) 

Then we have a day where we put in packing slips, any other items, and put labels on the outside of the poster tubes.

A quirk of these particular labels and tubes is that if left to themselves, the labels will slowly disengage from the poster tubes. We’ve solved this problem with an application of packing tape along the edges of the labels. The packing tape has no problem sticking to the cardboard tubes. 

Once everything is in place, we push caps into the ends of the tubes and they’re ready to be hauled to the post office for mailing. Hauled along with them are the regular store orders that Aidan packs at the regular shipping station.

We’ve already begun assembling boxes for the Random Merch bundles. We’ll get started on filling those as soon as we’ve got all the poster tubes into the mail.

Progress on all aspects of this project are nearing completion with the only question mark being exactly when the books will arrive. I am traveling during the first two weeks of June, so I’m REALLY hoping that we can get delivery of books before I take off. But if they do arrive while I’m gone, that is exactly what I’ve hired Aidan for, to manage my warehouse in my absence. 

Thank you so much for backing our project! Your next update will be the week of May 27-31. 

Howard and Sandra Tayler