great news! Wave One has landed at port! Once it gets out of customs, it'll get on a truck and get to the warehouse, in the meantime. In the mean time, ill be sorting through orders to see which can be fulfilled immediately so we can start getting rewards out.
GAMA - industry insider info Also, Two weeks ago was the GAMA Trade Show, which is the Tabletop Game Association (previously known as the Game Manufacturers Association, but expanded to all things tabletop industry). This is a convention mostly for FLGS and publishers-creators, where publishers like Wizards, Paizo, Warhammer and other bigger publishers show off their upcoming products to retail stores. For me, i just had a small booth in a large expo hall to show off our plushes (prototypes) and some of our books. Overall, it was a good show, and talking to retailers really gives me a lot of insight of how they sell plushes, and what we can do better. I did find that retailers were receptive to the keychains (as they should worked well for people who were not large plush people). I was really surprised that many were also excited for the accessories (as in ttrpgs ancillary product is usually 50% or less of the reception of the core). Main bits of feedback I heard was about shelf displays, number of plushes per box, accessory packaging (which is something i need to look at), and that it isnt evident that there is a magnet in the plush (but they love it once they find out it has it, so ill need to look into ways of making that more apparent. Oh! and for some reason,retailers really are not happy with squishables
Wave 2 Manufacturing Workers only recently came back, so I've started communication back and forth to make sure final details are nailed down. Slated for after CNY we had included more production of our colored owlbears (snowy, mossy, charcoal) so that we would have sufficient quantities for fulfillment. In addition, I am waiting for confirmation on fixes to some of the accessories (like magnet placement) before those begin manufacturing. I should be getting a status update on those things soon, and will be posting when i have more information.
Hey all! Apologies for the delay in an update. But for the last two months, we confirmed error phoenix hats, owlbear colors and quantities, new owlbear keychain colors, and made comments to the second pass of accessories. Also we confirmed shipping quantities to our warehouses (US, UK, and AUS).
Schedule-wise, we're at the following.
Shipping (from manufacturer) before CNY (only to US warehouse) - Owlbear Keychains - Drgon Turtle Keychains - Error Phoenix Keychains (with little hats) - Brown Owlbears - Dragon Turtle Plushes - Phoenix Plushes
PS, i notice a few people asking about getting rewards (for those who just got pins or a single owlbear thats in stock), in the next few days ill run a couple filters and see which ones we can get fulfilled (usually its messy to spit things up, esp when export actions, but ill do what i can)
Christmas came early for me this week (well it was supposed to arrive monday, but ill take what i can get)
Here is a new purple owlbear, (and brown and purple dice for reference)
What i did this time was provided them with the pantone of the purple dice we have, since i thought that was a pretty good purple)
pantone for reference Now as you know, this wasnt our first purple owlbear, we had our prototype owlbear from our first manufacturer (below on the left), and as you can see that one is a little bit darker still.
And just because (with the fuchsi, below) (Left to right) Old manufacture sample, new sample, wtf is this purple sample
I think this new purple is far better, now as you can see there is some shaping of the owlbears that needs to be corrected (esp looking at the cheast and heads), but
overall, I think this color is good. but what do you think? (Darker? Good? if we go darker then ill have to pick a new pantone (and additional sample cost).
Schedule Also looks like me getting product will come in two waves (Freight leaving before Chinese New Year and after (which goes till march 3rd) Feight Before is (this would likely arrive ~April 2026)
Brown Owlbear Plush
Dragon Turtle Plush
Pheonix Plush
Owlbear Keychain
Dragon Turtle Keychain
Error Phoenix Keychain (with santa hats)
Freight After CNY is (likely arrive ~June 2026)
Mossy Owlbear Plush
Purple Owlbear Plush
Fixed Batch of Phoenix Keychain
Accessories (all of them)
Accessories In regards to the accessories update (they've confirmed they're going to finish their new sample on dec 22nd (so prolly arriving next after)
Tarrifs one unxpected benefit from this taking so long is that at least the tarrifs are not 100-300% anymore. they're still elevated (i think in the 20-30% range, but faaar better than that madness we had earlier).
Hope you have a great christmas holiday and more updates to come when i have them. Andreas
Hey Caretakers, Apologies for the late update, I was hoping from my last update, that i'd get news sooner...but that wasn't the case. Past couple weeks have been talking about the salvage phoenix plushes, but since there are soo many things going on (and ive been waiting for), i asked for a full update on everything, so we can get a full picture of where things are at (since i was unsure where things were on production timing, if even at all) . Got that response last night, and here is where everything stands:
Keychain Plushes (since production is paired with the owlbear plush restock)
Owlbear Keychain - qty 3500- planned production finish of mid December.
Dragon Turtle Keychain - Qty 2500 - planned production finish of mid December. I want to see pictures of the production model (since back spikes were in question).
Error Phoenix Keychain - qty 2500 -We found a solution, though it seems like they would charge me full price for them (that said, Christmas hats are just 0.5 each).
Phoenix Keychain - qty 2500 -unsure on status on fixed phoenix keychain (no beard), they say i should get an update next week
Plushes
Brown Owlbear - qty 1000 (prolly need to update to 2k) - Production planned to finish mid December.
Mossy Owlbear - qty 1000 - was waiting for approval (i have no issues with the mossy sample they produced, so I approved, and will get update on production timing).
Purple Owlbear - qty 2500 - Since the fuchsia color, I had sent them a Pantone for them to match (which is the same color as our purple foam dice), they're going to send pictures of that dyed swatch next week.
Dragon TurtlePlush - Qty 1500 - I've requested to see final version, they say they'll send a picture next week.
Phoenix Plush- qty 1500 - I had received a small stock for GenCon last year, they say that production will be finished mid December (though I would have figured with the GenCon stock they would have finished producing all of them).
Accessories Kits
Fighter Kit - qty 2000 - (my last feedback was that the material didnt feel good and magnets needed to be stronger), "We have adjusted the design of fabric pieces and send them for printing. Because there are much components involved, we anticipate it will take approximately one more week to complete."
Wizard Kit - qty 2000 - Same update as Fighter Kit.
Fishing Kit - qty 2000 - Same update as Fighter Kit.
Velvet Kit Bags (for the accessories, with gold foil stamp) - Will get an update next week (i had previously sent them files early on in the process, so we'll see if i need to resend files).
Error Phoenixes, they came back with a little chistmas hat,
It works, and would be paired with the bearded phoenix (not affixed). A little mixed, since it sounds like to them, id pay normal price for the production (even through they messed them up (i was hoping i could get a discount on them, since they're wasted work).
And as noted above, we should be getting pictures of final production (fingers crossed of no issues, in the next week)
Hope you had a great thanksgiving as everyone prepares for the christmas to come, All the best, Andreas
Hey all, I apologize for the delay on updates I was hoping for more information to make a more meaningful update. However, now that nearly two months have passed, Ive already delayed long enough for an update. Though, I will probably have a second update after Essen Spiel (a convention in Germany, because my manufacturer contact is attending and I will get updates after they get back -_-)
So where are things at. Slowly progressing..mostly.
Keychains
You're here for keychains so updates for that first. As so far I am only aware of Phoenix plushes and phoenix keychains that have been produced (there is a chance they've gone ahead with other approved productions, but at this time I am not aware if any others have been manufactured).
Owlbear (brown) Keychain is approved for production.
Dragon Turtle Keychain (should be approved, there is a weird point where they had given us back spikes for the dragon turtle keychain, but then walked it back saying they couldn't produce those spikes in manufacturing despite that's what their sample team made. I have a version that I believe is the final, but sanity confirming.
Phoenix Keychain - On the last update they gave us some, what i call, Beardy Phoenixes... since those were not part of the production spec, I had to send my own good sample back to them. I was hoping that in the box iI received this week would have had a new model to review, but that is not the case...so I need to wait till they get back from Essen Spiele to get an udpate on whats going on with them, and any potential ability to salvage the bearded phoenixes (to not waste them), they have yet to provide me with pricing for error phoenixes or any cost to give them a little Christmas hat.
Pins
I 90% of pins I have in-hand. For some reason, I underestimated the number of collab pins (owlbear marshfrog pin) i needed when i did my first order. So doing a count on inventory and actuals I made a re-order to ensure we have enough inventory. They've already been manufactured, and are shipping next week to the warehouse.
Accessories
Last month I had recived the accessories samples, overall they were good, but the main point of issue i pointed out was that the texture of the material used is not good.
For example you can kinda see it here with the fishing rods where the texture of the their version(top), is not as 'fuzzy' as the base one (bottom)
There was also some weirdness going on with the fish, where there was some bad stiching (left) on the gullet of the fish, versus the base (right) And the bit about the magnet is that, we found that during GenCon the fishhook could barely support holding up an owlbear...and now that we've achieved that, we expect that to be the norm. As I tested their version, it was not even able to lift it up, so that made it easy to call out that stronger magnets needed to be used all around.
Owlbear Colors..
So on the Owlbear colors front, this week I got a box of the colors they were going to produce. (already had brown), Mossy and Purple. They included keychain versions of those colors, which is cool, I wasn't anticipating making keychains of the colors, but I don't hate it so wouldn't be opposed to producing some, but I also have bigger fish to fry in getting things fixed. Now this is very Fuchsia, like anime levels of neon. Now I dont hate it, but it was not what i was expecting, since they were to match the more royal purple color I going for.
At this point, with how things are going, I'm pretty much going to for sure go with an additional manufacturer to produce more plushes, and get a restock going.. so we could include the Fuchsia in this production, i have submitted a color request for them to try and match the purple of the dice/other owlbear, but konwing how long things take ....i might want to just take the credit from this purple owlbear and go to a new manufacturer.
Speaking of which, ive been getting samples of the owlbear from other plush manufacturers, given how much chaos this has been, and I've seen an available swatch that should more closely resemble the royal purple I was looking for. I am keen to get production going, so a smaller order of owlbears (as a general restock for us, and to include the purple is a possibility). On their swatch card is this purple, id have to ask to get a smaple, but curious what people think about which colors to go with...cause i think for sure ill be doing a small order of brown/snowy owlbears from them as part of our general restock. BUT WHAT DO YOU THINK (since you're the ones ultimately getting them) USE THIS FORM - https://forms.gle/Ei1QpSRmnU4CvWYc6
So yeah, thats where we're at ATM.... Sorry again for the dealys, I should have another update to answer the questions I have after the manufacturer gets back from Essen Spiele. Thanks for your patience, Andreas
