IMPORTANT Update, please check it out! + Some final prototypes
Hey all. Lemme tell you, I've had a great week, just fantastic. Getting my right to vote stripped while my business gets dragged out back and ol' yellered by heinous tariffs?...
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October
21 days ago
Tariff troubles, mini bag prototypes, finalized pre-production bags, etc
So how about them tariffs huh? I feel like I need to say something now even though I don't have a finalized plan yet, just so nobody is left completely in the lurch. These ta...
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October
about 1 month ago
Add-On Arrivals, Production Continues
A bunch of the smaller add-on items have arrived! I took some photos, here are just a few. The buttons are also here and I am waiting until I can take video of them to sha...
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October
about 1 month ago
Wanna see something funny?
I got sent a few prototype photos last night, no mini bags yet, but Bear Chow + Alley Chow really went for it. I neglected to realize that the tail drooping down for...
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October
about 2 months ago
Please Fill Your Surveys! + Some Early Fulfillment
Hey all, mostly this is a quick reminder to say fill your surveys! We are currently at 74% completed, which is great, but it could definitely be better. Other quick housekeep...
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October
about 2 months ago
48hr Freebie Problem Resolved!
Hey all! If you are receiving a freebie pin because you pledged in the first 48 hours, I have good news! The broken part of the survey has been repaired. If you have already ...
Hey all. Lemme tell you, I've had a great week, just fantastic. Getting my right to vote stripped while my business gets dragged out back and ol' yellered by heinous tariffs? Spending hours trying to explain to my incredulous mum who's lived in this country since she was 7 that she needs to be careful about what she puts on facebook because she could get her green card revoked? Seeing that the shiverpigs on the leash of the guy who called me a figment of imagination are getting turned loose on "illegal ideas?"
(derogatory)
Never been better. Anyway. Any of you with the misfortune of living in the same country as me, you already know the shape and stink of all these fires, so I won't keep preaching to the choir. Manufacturing for the most important product of the campaign, the bags, has NOT been completed, and as such there is absolutely 0 chance I can get them staggered and shipped express to race de minimis. That means I need to adapt to the worst.
I am switching to a China-based fulfillment partner, specifically NextSmartShip.
Any goods that are not already stateside (lanyards, plush keychains, mini bags, neon dino bags, and zebra bags,) will be fulfilled by my new partners overseas. This is a fresh deal that I just confirmed Wednesday night and I am still in the process of being onboarded. What this means for anyone waiting on these items: Shipping mixed orders:
Domestic backers, you will only be paying for a single shipping cost even if some of your items are fulfilled by this fulfillment partner and some are received by me. I will be shipping you any second packages at my own cost.
International backers, I will be contacting you when fulfillment time comes if the tariffs China has placed on imports from the US are still in place. We will figure something out then. If those tariffs are lifted, I will be shipping stock to the China based warehouse so it can be included in a single package.
Paying tariffs:
EVERYONE WHO HAS BACKED OR PRE-ORDERED, your paid total will not be getting raised. I will not be charging you more.
International backers, you will not have to pay any tariffs pertaining to the current situation.
Domestic backers, whenever orders come in you will have to pay whatever tariff is in place yourself, if any, for the items you receive fulfilled by the China based warehouse.
Anyone who hasn't already backed, if the pre-order store re-opens it will be with adjusted pricing, but whenever your order is actually placed that pricing will be locked in for you.
I have still left cards uncharged for shipping despite locked orders, and I will be doing so for as long as is reasonable since this whole situation has been changing so rapidly.
With any luck by the time our fulfillment window actually arrives all this tariff stuff will be figured out and done, but I'm not holding my breath. Once manufacturing is complete, if tariffs are lifted or suspended with a believable certainty on how long it will last, I will be moving everything in the China warehouse to the US warehouse on my dime for domestic fulfillment to ease shipping costs or risks of tariffs being inflicted again. This won't be immediate because I know better than to think minds won't get changed, especially after a week like this.
If we reach fulfillment time and all this is still going on, all domestic backers with packages that would be fulfilled from the China warehouse will have 2 options:
Receive your order knowing that you are responsible for any tariffs incurred.
Receive a gift card for Lairbrew.com equal to your total.
This isn't me being greedy or selfish. I have seen a lot of creators promising their US backers won't be paying for tariff fees, but I beg you to please understand there is a huge difference in unit cost between a pin and a plush. As it is, with this project + the 800 kobolds I funded out of pocket on the way, I would currently be on the hook for over 30 thousand dollars that I do not have. That's minimum size orders for just 10 plush/bag designs. If I don't re-direct these goods to the warehouse they will sit unclaimed until they are destroyed. Even if I cancelled production right now we are far enough along that I would not be refunded for a single cent, so I can't just do that, blanket refund everyone, and close the project. This is me doing the best I can with the cards I have been dealt.
YOU DO NOT NEED TO MAKE A DECISION RIGHT NOW, AND IN FACT SHOULD NOT! Things are changing a lot and who knows what it will be like months from now! This is just the current plan, and it is worth thinking on a bit.
Now for another break from the doom & gloom, I've got some more completed prototypes for you to see!! Mako Chow was the first completed, but now Bear Chow and Alley Chow are done too!
ALLEY CHOW!
Smaller drip on one side
The embroidered lid
Trash goop at the bottom
Alley chow didn't turn out as metallic as originally intended, but lookit it standing by itself! Wow! I'm very happy with how this one turned out and am curious to see how big it is in person. It is made in the same manner as the other bags, but holds its shape a lot better.
This poor salmon looks a bit overfed
The meat front
Poor Bear Chow doesn't look too good without anything inside it. That is one of the downsides with these bags, they prioritize space over empty appearance, so they look a lil saggy with no filling. But I look forward to getting it in hand here at home and filling it up to see how it looks! The front is more of a preview of what it would be like without the effects of gravity weighing it down.
With those two all the bags currently in prototyping are complete! Poor Royal Chow was unpopular enough that I didn't send it in for this. With how things are I am holding off on placing an order for any of these just yet. I don't want to start production on anything new until stuff is more stable and we can better understand what is going on. I will be sharing if/when anything else goes to production because enough dust has cleared.
Anyway. Sorry for the long and gloomy update, y'all. Please be safe out there and make sure to take as many little moments of joy for yourself as you can possibly find. Thank you all for supporting the project, and I'm sorry that things are going to what they are. See you soon!
So how about them tariffs huh? I feel like I need to say something now even though I don't have a finalized plan yet, just so nobody is left completely in the lurch. These tariffs are bad. Like, a worse than I have words for kind of bad. I am currently scrambling to find a solution so I can still keep operating even once I have sold all my current inventory. That mostly affects projects I do beyond Backerkit, but it might affect the fulfillment style that plays out here. As such I have postponed charging cards, though orders are locked.
I won't really know what is up until around this time next week at earliest, but as soon as I have any finalized plan for moving forward I will be letting you all know. What I DO know that is important to this campaign:
You will still be getting your 2-bone and haunch bags!
Lanyards are most likely going to be canceled, and production of mini bags is going to depend on the outcome of all this scrambling I'm having to do. If they can't move forward those who have pledged for them will receive full refunds.
If anything else changes for this campaign, it will only be where fulfillment ships from!
Prices will not be raised on established pledges or pre-orders that have already been placed! Even if prices for future pre-orders are raised (which has not been done yet due to all this uncertainty) you are not going to be expected to throw more money at me, so please don't panic!
I'm so tired y'all. I suddenly have so much extra work to do mid-con-prepping-while-sick. I apologize if this isn't very articulate, the energy reserves to write an impassioned rallying speech is not there for me, though I envy the creators who are managing. Every small business is going to be struggling, and things are intentionally exhausting and unclear right now, so we're for sure all going to be encountering some nasty surprises. If you have it to spare patience will be appreciated by all small businesses right now, especially creatives.
Anyway, to not be all doom and gloom, I got some good stuff too. Mainly these! Mini bag prototypes! These are finalized. Many curves are flattened out both by the bag being empty and also just to have the design play nice with having a zipper, but I like them. Right now it looks like only the t-bone steak will actually be produced, but that may change in the future depending on how things go.
T-Bone Steak Mini Bag
Egg Mini Bag
Salmon Cut Mini Bag
Also the bizarre side-tracking dilemma of trying to get the prototypes 100% correct without something else being done wrong in the process is finally over. The Neon Dino bags all have the colors they are supposed to, no baby yellow bone bellies, and best of all THE FRONT AND BACK BONES MATCH. This took way more time than I had anticipated. I was just sent the finalized pre-production prototypes yesterday. I am not sure if our estimates will be changing yet, but I'm hopeful that it won't.
A bunch of the smaller add-on items have arrived! I took some photos, here are just a few. The buttons are also here and I am waiting until I can take video of them to share, because they turned out SQUISHY which I love! I was expecting them to have a texture but not for them to have any give.
For these types of items we are now just waiting on the plush keychains, collab pins, and lanyards. The meat plush keychain have had their final production models approved and have entered full production. The zebra 2-bone and haunch have also been approved and are ongoing. The mini bags are still undergoing their initial draft, but I will share those ASAP.
With the arrival of the items above a few more orders have been fulfilled early since everything they had were in stock! If you haven't received tracking information then your order still has items that need to arrive even if you got mostly small stuff.
The neon dino bags have been a very bizarre problem. I am not sure what it is about this bag.. there is one specific thing I kept asking for them to fix, and pretty much everything but that one thing keeps getting changed??
What I have been asking to have fixed
Historical re-enactment of my manufacturer trying to correct the bag
I just want them to change the color of the bone applique on the front of the haunch bag to match the bone on the back, because at first it was a unique color, then changed to match the zebra bones, then I was told it matched but it didn't when the sample arrived. The most recent incorrect iteration of this request was changing the yellow on the bottom to match the bone color. This is not a dig on my manu's designers, they are doing their best! But the language barrier can make things go a bit sideways sometimes.
The only reason this is an issue I bring up at all is because right now they are trying to produce safety testing prototypes that should be finalized, not still requiring adjustment, and a ton of time passes between each iteration only for it to come back addressing a problem I didn't have and ignoring the one I did. I am very sorry if this ends up delaying the neon dino bags at all, but right now I don't think it will make us late for any estimates.
That's all for now! We're still in the very early stages of this campaign, so updates will get slower and slower from here now that the smaller items have mostly arrived, but when there ARE updates they will be MILESTONES hurray!
I got sent a few prototype photos last night, no mini bags yet, but Bear Chow + Alley Chow really went for it. I neglected to realize that the tail drooping down for Bear Chow and the simple cylindrical shape of Alley Chow would affect the overall scale of the bag and it turned out uh, well
Oh no
OH NO
Oh geeze
CHUNKY.
PLEASE NOTE THOSE ARE TEST FABRIC COLORS FOR THE GENERAL SHAPE, NOT FINAL COLORS!
These are big. Like bigger than the beetle backpack I designed that turned out to be like wearing a mattress on my back. Which is great for me with my busted spine having an instant resting spot but practical for literally no other purpose that I have found. You could probably throw a whole child away in that fabric trash can. I actually kinda like Alley Chow this size but it would be wildly out of budget. So we're chopping about 8 inches off these, but size-wise that will be just to make the scale match the existing bags.
HOWEVER!!! Mako Chow looks great!! It is larger than expected too, but the taper and the tail saved it. It is not stuffed in these photographs, which it carrying things will make it a appear less tall and to have more of a pinch at the taper of the spine. You can kind of see the same issue with the salmon bag, how it looks too tall/wide, but when a bag is in use with actual items being stored inside it looks very different. That's the big con of going for maximum usable space, but I think the pros of it having even more room to use and it being a lot easier to ship, store, and travel with is worth it. Especially since most folks won't be carrying it empty to begin with.
Mako Chow in profile, meat forward
Mako Chow in profile, tail forward
I will not be raising the price on the pre-order shop just yet, but the final price for Mako Chow is likely to be a bit higher than originally expected. So now is a great time to lock in the current price! I might actually lower the number of orders needed for each bag. I haven't sat down and crunched the numbers yet, but thanks to add-ons being added from surveys we would be far enough along to unlock another stretch goal if this was still the active campaign. I'll be spending some time figuring that out soon!
