Hi everyone,

Another little update on the frustratingly long road to fulfillment today!

First up, here are some photos from my manufacturer of the finished Lobster pins:

I'm really happy with how the details have turned out on this one and I'm looking forward to taking better photos to share when they arrive!

Now the frustrating bit: after waiting 3 weeks I finally got a second set of sample photos for the screenprinting on the Mandarinfish and the Oarfish and they're pretty dissappointing; the print is still misaligned.
They also did some uv print samples (which I didn't as for) but although the alignment is somewhat better I really don't like the raised look and texture of the ink.

I've spoken with my rep again who has finally told me that since they're company has gotten bigger they now use several different factories to produce their pins and that the production team assigned my order to a factory that is not very experienced with screenprint.

This is obviously extremely frustrating but I have received assurances that production of these two pins will now be moved to a factory with more screenprinting expertise and that I will have more sample photos in 1 week. I'm hoping third time is the charm! 🤞😬

I'll update you on progress again once I have the third set of sample photos next week.

In the meantime all the other pins have been finished so I've asked my manufacturer to ship those to me now, with the aim to start fulfilling the orders without those two pins as soon as possible. I'm waiting on a shipping estimate for those but I'm hoping to have them within a couple of weeks. 🤞

I want to apologise again for the delay in fulfillment for these pins.

I have been very frustrated that my first manufacturer took 6 weeks to tell me they couldn't make the pins, and the slow progress with the screenprinting has been extending the timeline far more than I expected.

This is my first time working with screenprint and I was unaware that manufacturers could take weeks for each sample round. In future I will know to factor in much more time for sampling when including screenprint in my designs.

Thank you all for your patience in this!

I'll be throwing random free stickers into everyone's orders once I can start shipping.

All the best,

Abi