Hey all,
I just pushed the button to lockdown orders (it does a 48 hr notice before locking), so that we can move to charge cards and finalize the counts and volumes. T...
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Baby Bestiary
28 days ago
Production Update and (finally) Surveys
Hey Caretakers,
Thank you for your patience. I seem to have bad luck when it comes to manufacturers because its always just another thing....
Anyways as you know, we were u...
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Baby Bestiary
3 months ago
Pledge Manager Incoming, and tariff update
Hey all,
I want to apologize for the delay in updates. Its been, as always, very busy in the backend of things. Though the past month Ive had my hands full while on pate...
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Baby Bestiary
5 months ago
We did it!
Huzahh!!
We did it! I want to thank everyone for joining us on this miniaturized adventure
In the next two weeks backerkit will process payments for your pledge, and I will...
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Baby Bestiary
5 months ago
24-Hour Countdown
Hey all!
I just got back from the snow, and I brought my camera with my to take some snow pictures!!! a
and so to celebrate our 24 (technically its 28hrs) Lets have a loo...
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Baby Bestiary
6 months ago
Keychains are funded!!
Hey all,
Just a quick update!! We've already reached our funding goa!l! Which means we hit our production minimums for the keychains (which is a great thing)!
I was sti...
Hey all, I just pushed the button to lockdown orders (it does a 48 hr notice before locking), so that we can move to charge cards and finalize the counts and volumes. This is especially important as I look to our international inventory counts. If you havent gotten to it, here is the link to your survey/pre-order https://owlbear-keychain.backerkit.com/
Production-Wise
Production is currently ongoing, and i hopefully will get some more pictures and updates about timing.
GenCon!
We're going to be at GenCon! If you're there, please stop by our booth at #2238 and say hi! As much as I was hoping to have all the accessories and keychains there, timing just wasnt on our side. We will be shipping in a few Pheonix plushes (not the keychains) to sell at gencon, and we'll also have the pins for you to see as well. If you want to pick up some of your rewards/pre-order, let me know by filling out this survey. We'll only have owlbear plushes (all but purple), phoenix plush and pins].
Ill post more updates as things become available. Andreas
Hey Caretakers, Thank you for your patience. I seem to have bad luck when it comes to manufacturers because its always just another thing.... Anyways as you know, we were using a new manufacturer for these plushes, and ended up bringing over the owlbear accessories to this manufacturer as well in an effort to save costs (even before tariffs but even more importantly so now). That was going alright, and I thought things were shaping up to the point where we had submitted payment for production and was working with production staff to keep things moving. Turns out, person I was coordinating with, was no longer with them, and several things that were going on in the process just never made it to the production staff — like confusion on the dragon turtles green just missing other items in the order entirely -_-. Ideally, I was hoping to have all this product fulfilled and by or before this years GenCon, but it's likely that product will only begin its freight journey in July/August, which is unfortunate for everyone. Im currently working with the new rep to make sure everything is accounted for and moving so we dont waste away on any more of the schedule. ---------- New Items in Backerkit, Since we're merging production with the accessories project, everything that we're producing in both projects will be made available to all backers. This includes:
Owlbear Accessories Kits (fighter, wizard, and fishing)
All the pins we've produced
The Purple Owlbear Plush
Phoenix and Dragon Turtle plush (which arent part of either campaign, but were priced into production because of the keychains), which will also has a magnet and work with the accessories)
Shipping Shipping costs have been added in addition to relevant VAT. As promised, Tariffs are not being added.
One thing to note, if you ordered just Pins, and/or just Owlbears (not purple), we'll be able to ship those out asap after order lockdown. (if you're out of the US, availability may might vary as we dont have charcoal/green or all of the pins available internationally yet). SURVEY LOCK AND CARDS WILL BE CHARGED JULY 12th! If you have not received a link to your survey, you can get it here https://owlbear-keychain.backerkit.com/backer/survey
If you have any questions id be happy to answer, and also I apologize for not getting back sooner, but things are moving. I also did not expect this project to run as long as it currently has, but at least the finish line is in sight (assuming the Trump administration doesn't do anything else stupid too late, they did). Thanks for bearing with me,
Hey i understand stuff has happened with tariffs and such but i feel like i am being ghosted with little to no updates about when surveys will be send out me and probably alot of others would love more information and communication on when/if there will be progress
Hey all, I want to apologize for the delay in updates. Its been, as always, very busy in the backend of things. Though the past month Ive had my hands full while on paternity leave (mostly hands full with the toddler) and preparing everything for tax season. That said, things have been moving.
Production update
Keychain Plushes
As far as Im aware, the keychain plushes had their design finalized (we had some tweaks when it came to hte back spikes, color and materials), and they had started production. Im just finishing the last of the hang-tag designs, and (unfortunately don't have pictures yet, but I should be getting them soon) the production is nearly done! (that said tarrifs impose a new problem, see below)
Pins We were already starting to run low on our pins, so a re-order was about due. Even though we haven't yet sent out surveys, we still had a good idea of how many additional pins we needed to order (esp since we wanted to introduce the pins to retail). With that goal, we took a step back to number and define design-sets for our pins. So now, moving forward, every pin has our logo, pin number and on the back, we have the name, set, pin artist, barcode and sku (which is good for retail).
Manufacturing for these is nearly done (pretty sure they were saying they were gonna finish next week. From this order we're producing around 15,000 total pins!
All of the art in the background was done by Koit Paales!
When backerkit opens you'll have pick on all the pins that are being produced
Tariffs and current political realities
So, this is the section that everyone been talking about, because it does suck and it does literally affect everyone. As of right now there' a 145% tariff on goods from China. And that really sucks. At this point we're evaluating our options. I am not opposed to just fronting the bill and getting the product... (with this manufacturer, the cost per unit is low enough that we could still come out positive after sales), it just sucks a whole lot more with a more than double the cost per unit increase. I will still be coordinating with our Australian and United Kingdom warehouse to facilitate fulfillment (no reason to slow those down). But for the Americas, we're still figuring things out, we might eat it, we might storage it in china for a few months and see when things drop, or we'll find another way (other manufacturers have talked about potentially importing to other countries then importing to the US under that country's tariff rate, though thats speculation at this point). We're currently figuring that out and letting you know when a decision is made. But at this point I have no intention of asking you to pay for more (of course chipping in always helps), but Im not going to demand or hold back because of the chaos that is happening.
That leads us into confirming what numbers we'll be looking at.
Pledge Manager
Now that I've gotten some of my other immediate hurdles out of the way with (like taxes), I can get the Pledge Manager up and running. (im sorry theres been a long delay), Fortunately, I don't really have to do a count on product, since we're ordering nearly double of what's currently existing for the campaign (around ~2.5-3kof each of the keychains). And smae with the pins, we already have rough number estimates, so I was able to extrapolate and expand, so that production was going (despite me not posting updates, apologies!).
I think things are crazy, but we're getting through it. Caretaker Andreas
Huzahh!! We did it! I want to thank everyone for joining us on this miniaturized adventure
In the next two weeks backerkit will process payments for your pledge, and I will be working on the backer portal to make sure we nail down counts and collect addresses. When its done ill do another post and let you know the survey is coming.
And on the production side, since the manufacturer is back from Lunar New Year, we can back up our work with them and get the ball rolling!
