I'd love your help deciding what clubs to explore next!
Leave a comment below with your favorite genres, sub-genres, reader identities, and wildcard club ideas. I'll be using your feedback to help shape future polls and decide which themes are the most popular with the community.
While I'd love to make a ticket for every genre and niche interest, that's unfortunately not possible in a single campaign. Not every suggestion will make it into this collection, but I'll be keeping a running list of ideas for future unlocks, future polls, and potentially even a Part 2 collection down the road.
One thing to keep in mind is that very niche sub-genres and highly specific themes are less likely to make the cut. In order to fund new designs, I need to focus on clubs that appeal to a broader audience and have enough interest to support production costs.
So tell me: what clubs are missing from the Reader's Club? 📚🎟️
Hey everyone! So thankful that you are joining me for this project.
If you have a question, pop it into this thread.
There is a lot going on, so feel free to drop your questions here or send me an email. [email protected]. I anticipate a lot of comments and activity for this project because of the trivia and also the leader board. So be patient with me because I might not see your message. I appreciate you so so much, as always!! - XO Stina
We're only a two days into the campaign and I'm blown away by the response so far. Thank you for helping make Admit One such a strong start! 🎉 Thanks to your support, we've already welcomed over 350+ members to the Reader's Club!
Early Bird Sticker!
Just a quick reminder that there are only 4 hours left to qualify for the free Early Bird sticker reward. If you've been thinking about joining the Reader's Club, now's the perfect time to grab your favorite tickets and claim the bonus sticker before the offer expires.
Help decide which reader identity should join the collection next!
If you'd like to help shape the future of the Reader's Club, be sure to cast your votes.
We reached the 300 backer reward!
🛍️ Etsy Discount Reminder
Don't forget that the Etsy discount code is still available! If you've been eyeing anything in my shop, be sure to take advantage of the code before it expires. It's a great way to pick up a few reader goodies while supporting the campaign. Use code ADMITONE to receive 40% off orders of $25 or more in my Etsy shop throughout the campaign.
📖 What Are You Reading Discussion
One of my favorite parts of any bookish community is hearing what everyone is currently reading. If you're looking for your next read, want to gush about a recent favorite, or just want to add a few more books to everyone else's TBR, head over to the Discussion tab and join the conversation! Click here!
Tell us:
What are you reading right now?
What's the best book you've read this year?
Which upcoming release are you most excited about?
I'd love to see what everyone is reading, and I'm sure I'm not the only one looking for recommendations!
Here's my current rotation!
💻 A Small Design Update
I've spent the past several days doing a lot of computer work between campaign prep, updates, design work, and general business tasks. Unfortunately, my wrists and forearms have started letting me know they're not thrilled about it.
I'm taking a few days to rest and recover my wrists before diving back into drawing. The good news is that this won't affect the campaign, and I'll be back to sharing new ticket designs in just a few days.
In the meantime, keep the comments, suggestions, and poll votes coming. I'm keeping a running list of your ideas for future polls, future unlocks, and possibly even a Part 2 collection down the road.
✨ Meet Me at Magic & Meet Cutes
If you're local to the Raleigh area, I'll be vending at Magic & Meet Cutes hosted by Bright Side Books & Wine this Saturday, June 13th!
The vendor market is open to the public, so you're welcome to stop by and shop even if you don't have a ticket to the main event. I'll have a variety of Snarky Co. products available, and I'd love the opportunity to meet fellow readers, talk books, and hear which Reader's Club tickets you're most excited about.
As always, thank you for being here and helping build the Reader's Club one ticket at a time. 💜
The pre-order store is open to anyone who didn’t back the campaign but still wants to grab pins from the collection. Pre-orders close next Wednesday, September 16th, so make sure to get your order in before the store closes!
📦 Pre-order shipping: These orders are expected to begin shipping at the end of September/early October.
Thanks so much for all the love for Admit One! I’m so excited to finally have these pins out in the world. 🎟️📚
The pins have arrived and they are looking fantastic! I am in the process of quality checking them all now but I'm very happy with how they turned out and I think you'll all love them.
I'm just waiting on the stickers to arrive, and then once those get here and I'm done quality checking I can start to ship these babies out. Probably towards the end of this month!
Here are some of the pins in direct sunlight:
We also have just a day and change left to pledge in our current campaign Reach for the Stars! Almost everything is unlocked so head over and get your pledge in!
The partner backer sticker just arrived and it's so dang cute! I had to steal one for my laptop-Yah.....I didn't apply it the smoothest 🤣🤣🤣 That's going to haunt me forever HAHA
❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️
An FYI if you are following my next BK Campaign: Final Touch Board Fillers I am pushing the launch day to September 22nd!
Tiny gaps? Meet your perfect fit! These board fillers are made for those awkward little spaces on your board where regular pins are just too big. Fill your pin board to perfection ❤️
🌙 All orders have been packaged. Shipping information has been sent. These will be dropped off at the post office tomorrow morning. Hooray, thank you again for being part of this special expedition! ☀️
This is the FINAL NOTICE to the 5 people who haven't filled their surveys, and the 3 people who haven't paid their final dues.
If you do not complete your survey or pay by end of day September 15, you will NOT receive your rewards. This project WILL close on September 16, and you will not be able to reclaim your purchased rewards. Additionally, all free rewards have been removed from your surveys.
My next project is officially licensed pins featuring 4 of Ryan Cahill's dragons in adorable chibi form! The pins will be full color with some sparkly accents. And I will also have Farda's medallion and 2 Empire currency coins! The pins were designed at my direction by Kiera Worldhopper, and the coin was designed by myself. Finalized mockups coming soon!
Finalized mockups coming soon!
Amor in universum! Carly K | Mythic Mgmt
REMEMBER: for all free items in any pledge from throughout this project... you need to successfully fill out your survey and pay for the final shipping costs to receive your pledge and any free rewards!
I need to order additional quantities of several Admit One designs. I can either continue production with the original factory, which gives us the best chance of the new pins matching the first batch but may mean a longer/uncertain production timeline, or move production to a new factory, which may result in slight differences between batches.
Please choose whichever option you would be most comfortable receiving!
I have a bit of a production dilemma, and after going back and forth about it for the last several days, I decided the best thing to do was explain the situation and ask all of you what you would prefer.
First, the good news: I currently have every Admit One pin design in hand, and they look great! The factory did a fantastic job producing these pins, including the UV-printed details, which were one of my biggest concerns with this collection.
However, I don't yet have the full quantities needed to fulfill the campaign.
I’m still waiting on a few stickers from the printer, but aside from that, I have almost everything I need to begin shipping some orders.
Why I ordered the pins before surveys were completed
When I originally placed the production order, surveys hadn't gone out yet, so I didn't know the final quantity needed for each design. I ordered approximately 50–100 of each design and personally fronted the cost to begin production early.
There were two reasons I did this:
This collection uses some fairly complex UV printing in a very small space, and I had never produced designs quite like these before. I wanted to see the finished pins and make sure the printing looked good before ordering hundreds more.
I have an event at the end of September and was hoping to have some of the collection available for that event.
The first batch arrived in August, and thankfully, the Admit One pins themselves turned out beautifully. I'm very happy with them.
Once surveys were completed and I had everyone's final selections, I was able to calculate the actual quantities needed. For roughly half of the designs, I now need to place an additional production order. And that's where I've run into a dilemma.
The Factory Situation
I've worked with this particular factory for several years, and historically I've had a very good relationship with them. Most of what they've produced for me has been great. Occasionally there might be an issue with one design, as can happen with manufacturing, and they would remake it.
Unfortunately, I recently had a very different experience with another order.
Several months ago, the factory produced a large batch of pins for me that had widespread plating defects throughout the entire order. To give you an idea of the scale, the order contained 3,955 pins, so this represented a significant quantity of merchandise. The quality was substantially below the standard I normally receive from them, so I documented and photographed the issues and asked for the order to be remade.
They agreed and produced a replacement batch, which arrived at the very end of July.
The replacement batch was better, but unfortunately it still had widespread quality issues, including uneven enamel, tarnishing, fingerprints in the plating, missing plating, and other defects.
Thankfully, I was able to grade enough usable pins from the replacement batch to fulfill the customer orders associated with that collection. However, a large portion of the remaining inventory that was intended for my website and future markets can now only be sold as B or C grade merchandise.
I photographed and documented the defects and sent everything to the factory. They asked what I wanted as compensation, and I requested a partial refund for the portion of the merchandise that wasn't produced to the quality standard we had agreed upon.
I specifically did not want them to make the order a third time. At that point, I already had thousands of defective pins taking up space, and producing even more merchandise that might have the same problems didn't feel like a reasonable solution.
The factory declined to provide any refund.
Their position is essentially that they already absorbed the cost of producing the order twice and that they also lost money to PayPal processing fees. My position is that I paid for merchandise produced to an agreed-upon quality standard, and producing the order twice doesn't really resolve the problem if both batches contain widespread defects. I also don't understand why they believe they shouldn't be responsible for the PayPal seller fees, since their own terms and conditions state that sellers are responsible for those fees. Those fees are part of the cost of doing business through PayPal, and they were something the factory agreed to when they accepted payment through the platform. I don't believe those fees should be used as a reason to deny compensation for merchandise that was not produced to the agreed-upon quality standard.
What's further strange is that I didn't even ask for a full refund. I only requested a partial refund, so I'm not sure what the seller fees even have to do with anything.
So unfortunately, we've reached a disagreement that we haven't been able to resolve.
Why This Affects Admit One
Normally, I would simply place the remaining Admit One order with the same factory.
And to be completely clear: the Admit One pins they already produced are NOT defective. They look great, and I am very happy with the quality of this particular collection.
The problem is that this larger situation has made me question whether I want to continue working with this factory.
There have also been some recent issues with their production timelines. An order I was originally told would take approximately 20 days ultimately took about two and a half months. When I recently asked for an updated production estimate before placing another order, I was told that they had just received a $600,000 order and were extremely busy, but I wasn't given an actual estimated production timeline.
So I currently have two options.
Option 1: Keep Admit One With the Original Factory
I can essentially eat the financial loss from the defective merchandise from the other collection and place the remaining Admit One quantities with the factory that produced the first batch.
The biggest advantage is consistency.
They already have the molds, enamel colors, pearl effects, measurements, and production specifications for these designs. Since the first Admit One batch looks great, the additional pins should theoretically match the pins I already have.
The downside is that I would be continuing to give business to a factory I'm currently having a significant unresolved issue with, and I don't have a concrete production timeline from them.
Option 2: Move the Remaining Production to a New Factory
The other option is to take the designs to another factory.
This would mean paying for new molds and essentially starting production over for the remaining quantities, but it would allow me to begin transitioning away from the current manufacturer.
The concern is consistency between the two batches.
Enamel pins aren't manufactured from standardized files in quite the same way something digitally printed might be. Different factories create their own molds, mix their own enamel colors, and may use slightly different materials or production processes.
That means the second batch could look slightly different from the Admit One pins I already have.
For example, two ticket pins that are intended to be the same dimensions could potentially have a small size difference if they're produced by two different factories. Colors could vary slightly. The pearl effect used on some designs might look a little different. I may also need to adjust a few colors during proofing to get the new batch as close as possible to my original artwork and the first production batch.
If your order contains two pins that are supposed to coordinate or be the same size, it's therefore possible you could receive pins with slight differences between them.
They would still be the same designs and I would still quality-check the new production, but I can't guarantee that pins manufactured by two completely different factories will be visually identical.
So...I'm Asking You!
I've been going back and forth about this for several days because there isn't an obvious perfect answer.
On one hand, I really value consistency, and I know the current factory is capable of producing these particular designs beautifully because I already have the first batch sitting in front of me.
On the other hand, I'm extremely disappointed with how they've handled the defective order and I'm not sure I feel comfortable continuing to give them my business, particularly without a reliable production timeline.
Since these are ultimately your rewards, I thought it made sense to ask what matters more to you.
Would you prefer that I keep the remaining Admit One production with the original factory so that the pins are as consistent as possible with the first batch, even if that means potentially waiting longer for production?
Or would you be comfortable with me moving the remaining production to a new factory, knowing that there could be some slight differences in size, color, pearl effects, or other details between the first and second batches?
I'll leave the poll open for a few days and take your feedback into consideration before I make the final production decision.
I know this is probably much more behind-the-scenes manufacturing information than most people ever hear about enamel pins, but I wanted to be transparent about what's happening rather than quietly make the decision for everyone and potentially have people wondering why two pins look slightly different.
Thank you so much for your patience and for weighing in. I really appreciate it. ❤️
