I just got back in the door from dropping some boxes off a bit ago, so here is an overdue update on fulfillment! We're most of the way there!
Buddy I don't know what you mean by "you're done" but I appreciate the encouragement
I apologize for how late fulfillment has ended up. To say this campaign has been a challenge at every step would be an understatement, and it has honestly kicked my butt (and my wallet) pretty darn good. The upside: I've learned SO MUCH for future projects! The downside: oof ouch ow my butt and wallet. If I ever crowdfund for designs this size again it will be for just 1 at a time with a much more informed-by-experience timeline, far fewer add-ons, and no pay-in-4.
I've been keeping my head down with my nose to the grindstone to get stuff done instead of writing updates, so this one has to be a little completionist. That means this is pretty text heavy so strap in!
If you'll recall, we specifically wanted to have BBB plush arrive stuffed and sewn, but thanks to the still-evolving shipping hell we're all struggling in right now that didn't happen. It was the difference between the plush arriving in 8 boxes per hundred or 50 boxes per hundred, and thanks to the budget issues caused by pay-in-4 I did not have deep enough pockets to stubbornly forge ahead with stuffed. It has been a large part of our delay woes!
Last update we'd stuffed everything for the Backerkit, but we ran out of Anthrocon prep time and had to make a call. AC prep and BBB fulfillment timelines were never supposed to overlap. AC this year was the largest display we have ever put together, and we had multiple hired helpers depending on us for a paycheck, so I ended up deciding to take what wasn't already sent out to AC with us and to pull unstuffed stock set aside for conventions to replace it when we got back. We're keeping our con stock and shop/Backerkit fulfillment stock separate. That meant all that work would need to be redone. This ended up being the single biggest delay since last update. While many Big Brew Bash orders had already been fulfilled by AC it sucked to have to pause right when we were getting going. We're back in the saddle now and have been going at a good clip, but still, making the decision in the moment sucked.
It was the correct call to make, as it helped us cover some big shipping cost changes detailed further down.
We'd heard back from some folks who had issues with their packages. We're not sure if it was the bags we were using, the post being really rough with them, or both, but some arrived with partly opened or torn seals. That issue continuing was not acceptable. So we switched from soft packaging to cardboard boxes, and the big guys are also wrapped in bags within to protect them in case of tears. It was an expensive shift but necessary. We have not yet heard back from anyone saying their boxes were in poor condition, so that is very good news!
This did cause additional small delays:
One size of box, the one we needed the most of, was on back-order.
Another size was a ship-to-store kind of pickup, but the shipment ended up late.
Boxes are a lot more difficult to take multiples to a drop off location than soft packages, and more trips means more time spent driving and less doing anything else.
Luckily we were still able to work on re-preparing plush in the meantime since we'd just gotten a fresh stuffing order. That pretty much covers what's been going on since the last update.
Shipping related news:
Some of you might have actually gotten your plush without even knowing they shipped. That's my bad, I forgot you have to manually tell Backerkit to send out tracking numbers I apologize if those arriving after the packages gave anyone a scare!
Most boxes are also now shipping via UPS. USPS had another dramatic price hike very recently, and it has become untenable for us to continue using them for domestic shipping for packages over a pound (or via Backerkit Postage for that matter, I'm having to manually do every label on PirateShip now.)
We are still shipping smaller packages, flats, and international packages via USPS. We want to give as much business as we can to our local post as we have a good relationship and it keeps the money going to employing people in our community, so when the price difference is a narrow margin we still choose USPS as well.
Your tracking number email should tell you which provider is ferrying your plush!
Just to make sure it is clear:You do not owe more for shipping! We covered it, you're good, please don't worry!
We're rural and live pretty far from the nearest UPS drop off that can handle more than 4 or so boxes at a time. If your tracking is not moving, it is packed and sitting at our door waiting to be loaded and sent! It is just a victim of the dreaded package volume bottleneck. Since we're already having to eat such huge cost difference we're trying to avoid wasting too much gas and time that could be spent getting the final boxes ready to go, but we're doing larger drop-offs whenever we have any other reason to go in to the city.
MOST IMPORTANTLY: There are now only 16 packages to finish up!
There is a total of 6 packages that will be delayed a little. Specifically ones with name tags for Garth and Skye. I had to re-order those because I was shorted on the amount and didn't realize until I was reaching in to an empty basket. The order is very small, so it shouldn't take too long to arrive.
If you don't have tracking yet, your stuff is being actively worked on right now. I'll be stepping away from my desk to go sew once this update is published. There is not a lot left to do! A lot of the slowdown is just manual label entry, at this point.
The 2 boxes that went missing during transit were never recovered and they were both boxes of Skye, so the trans pride werewolves already sold out. We've decided to do 1 more run of him out of pocket, and he is already in production. If you saw the batch 2 unstuffed preorders on lairbrew.com, don't panic! You are still getting your Skye from the first batch, we've had them set aside waiting.
I apologize again for the length of time this has all taken. It was not meant to go this way, and I've learned a lot of hard lessons from this. Even if it hasn't gone perfectly, I deeply appreciate all the support for the project. I'd do it all again if I had to so these guys could get out there and make people happy. We're still crossing the finish line, even if I'm moving like the rat poison energy drink guy from that marathon in St. Louis back in 1904. Thank you for all of your patience! I look forward to getting the last packages out very soon.
PS: If you haven't seen it already,Deadweights are our next big project. The current plan is still in-house fulfillment, but we've also lined up a distribution partnership that we can make the decision to switch to, which is partly thanks to the lessons we've learned from BBB. Some of you might find these guys pretty cute, so maybe check it out!
Hey everyone! Just checking in with our current progress! To start us off I'll be up front: Our # of packages shipped doesn't seem very impressive yet compared to the amount of work and hours we've been putting in.
When you consider we're having to stuff and complete the sewing on every plush it makes a little more sense. That said, packing and shipping is the final step. The biggest hangup here has been the plush themselves! And guess what! ALL THE BIG BREW BASH PLUSH ARE STUFFED!!! The tail on that Garth at the top is literally touching the ceiling. It is floor-to-ceiling big friends for a roughly 6ft x 10ft area. The gnolls and gryphons are buried in there. They were the ones we had the fewest to do, so they got done first- especially since they're our most stuffing hungry designs. 1 giant stuffing shipment and a lot of work later and we're in the home stretch for these being completed! The urge to climb in to this pile for a nap is very powerful but I must resist.
They are getting packed, labeled, and shipped as they're sewn shut. It's currently just one of us working on these at any given time since we're having to balance this with Anthrocon prep (our biggest con this year) but 1 person is still enough for steady progress. I think our current big limiting factor is, as usual, the post office's capacity. Normally I would drive in to the city and drop off more at once, but I did not budget this project with gas being $5 a gallon in mind, which is significant when the other places we can go are like 45min away.
Other stuff:
All approved full custom tags are done and on their way to us!
Stickers are all sorted and packed just waiting for their bags so that won't be a potential hangup.
Custom name tags are about 50% complete. Just waiting for the humidity to drop since my sealer of choice really reeeaaaally hates it.
Smaller add-on plush that require stuffing and sewing, such as kobolds, are good to go!
One last thing. We're participating in Pin Quest this year! It launches in less than a week. We will be continuing to prioritize Big Brew Bash even once it is live since it is a relaxed project and a very small collection. If you like cockatrices you might find something you like! If you don't like them things I don't have anything for you this time, but maybe you'll like something else from among the Pin Quest projects!
FWA is over! That means fulfillment time is now. It took my wife and I 2 days longer to safely travel home than we planned for, but we've spent some time recovering, and now the work of fulfillment is getting going. She's running the current business side of things while I throw myself at getting Big Brew Bash fulfilled.
In short: the time has finally come for all these werewolves to start flyin the coop!
There are a LOT of plush that need to be done. I'll be buying shipping as packages are completed, packed, and ready to be put out. In the past I've done batch buying ahead, but that's not a good option when I need to be getting these plush out the door at a similar speed to completing them. They take up a truly insane amount of room and the amount I have to do are a floor-to-ceiling workspace filler. That means when you get your tracking number your package will be completed! It might be in the next day's pickup, or it might go in a dropoff on a weekend. Don't panic if it isn't moving right away- the pickup vehicle and the box truck that takes stuff from our tiny PO to the closest sorting facility can only fit so much! Past experience has taught us that we'll need to supplement with drop-offs in our personal vehicle, and we will want to keep those to a minimum to save on gas.
I'm heading to bed shortly to get up bright and early and start working away at this. I just need to get some other updates out first. But yeah! At long last!! Thank you all for your patience, I look forward to you all getting to heft your new lads out of the bag and go "oh no that's big." G'night!
Hello everyone! Long time no see. I'm here to give a full rundown on what's up and where we're going from here!
Fulfillment is on the horizon. We're currently being held back by 2 things:
Time - all my labor keeps getting siphoned in to preparing for the conventions that are keeping a roof over my head. This wouldn't have been an issue if I'd received the full amount since I had money to float us through a break in cons to focus on fulfillment in that budget. I'm doing the best I can with the slashed budget, I've had to pull some miracle work just to get us this far and I do need to keep on the slow and steady to avoid disaster.
Materials - Specifically, stuffing. I may have mentioned this before, but polyester fiberfill is a petroleum project. This means both the price and availability are affected by whatever is going on with oil. Those 2 sentences are secretly a short horror story for anyone stuck in the US right now. I would've started fulfillment earlier this month when I was due for another stuffing order, but I was only sent 150lbs last time. I typically order around 1200lbs at a time. You can see how this'd be a pipe to the knees when every jumbo takes 3 to 5 lbs a piece. I've been having to use what I can get on, again, con prep.
I am going to be vending at Furry Weekend Atlanta, which was a pleasant surprise to get in to, and we did better at the last convention than expected. So I am taking all of May after FWA and all of June off from cons. My wife and I have that pencilled in as Work On Big Brew Bash time. I will start sharing fulfillment updates as soon as we begin, so expect to see more frequent communication around May 18th (giving us some grace time to travel home and decompress.) The end of the wait is on the horizon! I believe we'll be squeaking in at around 1 year from project start to project end.
If we run out of stuffing, I have money set aside and will be in the area of my source in early July. I'll be going with a truck and trailer to get some full compressed palettes of the specific kind I use. I'm usually limited to uncompressed boxed fiber since full bales are a local pickup only item, and making the 2 day drive JUST for stuffing hasn't been worth it (especially with gas prices, since we'll have a 16ft trailer loaded down- we get like 10mpg when hauling it is BRUTAL,) but we'll be within a 4hr detour I'm happy to take advantage of. So we might be delayed by material availability temporarily, but I have as good a plan as it gets for that too.
I apologize. This has turned out to be a mess in a number of really scary ways. Both financially and labor-wise it has turned in to far more of a hungry beast than expected, demanding a lot more of me than hoped. I've been working extremely hard to keep things going and make sure we cross that finish line no matter what, and I've had to be careful to keep my head above water in the meantime. Being careful means more time passing, but we're finally almost there. It will feel good to finally have those werewolves and gnolls arriving at their final destinations and getting hugged by their new person for the first time. They are coming, you will get your plush, I'm doing the best I can as quickly as I can, and I promise they will be worth the wait! Thank you deeply for your patience so far. I'll see you soon in May!
TL;DR: Fulfillment starts around May 18th and goes through June. Stuffing supply problems may stretch it in to August.
Big Brew Bash plush have arrived! The story, the developments, the plan.
You might remember from the last update that manufacturing had wrapped up. That meant shipping was next, and ship they did! 60 cartons containing over 1 ton of weight in unstuffed plush left the manufacturer and the chaos began. It has not been completely clean-cut and there were some mishaps, so let me tell you what I've been dealing with!
The plush were slated to arrive early on November 26th!
Thank goodness! The original delivery date was anticipating delivery being while we'd be away at Midwest Furfest, and I was not looking forward to an exhausted drive home to move all those packages and then an even worse drive back. But then on November 25th my wife comes in from work and says nervously, "Were we expecting some boxes?" A bunch of plush got stealth delivered in the pouring rain with not one knock upon our door and had been sitting out there for HOURS. Thankfully the fact the plush are packed under such absurd pressure means they need every single inch wrapped in tape, practically waterproofing them. Only boxes that had split on the sides got any water in it, and we got those inside, dried in heavy airflow with multiple dehydrators running nearby, and inspected thoroughly.
However, you can see not all of these are wrapped in tape, and that this certainly doesn't look like 60 boxes. All those out-of-place boxes with no tape protecting them had loose plush contents from boxes that couldn't hack the journey and were ripped beyond continued use. Like these things rip DRAMATICALLY whenever they give way. Some of those plush were.. not in the best shape. I'm glad I was able to order more than needed for this campaign, because I wasn't sure I was going to be able to salvage those.
Digging through tracking for all 60 boxes, it seemed one half of the order was scattered around Illinois, and the other half was marked with an unwelcome yellow exclamation mark. From there it was a slog of issues. At first the big problem was just these boxes sitting around not getting scanned. Then we got a bunch of snow and continued getting snow, so Fedex decided they would not be trying to deliver to us. So as the boxes slowly started accumulating in one spot they were just sitting at a facility where we had to somehow make the time during con crunch to drive way out and pick them up before they were shipped back. That would have been a VERY expensive problem to reverse. It's a long drive, the weather was making it dangerous, and we had to do it multiple times. I was gonna be so mad if I died over some stuffed werewolves y'all. I love plushies but yikes.
The rest of the boxes were still MIA. It took a couple weeks past the first arrivals for me to obtain most of them. At current there is still a single box out there somewhere, and every effort to track it down has failed, so that one is unfortunately in the process of having a claim filed for it.
But the important thing: enough plush have gotten here safe and sound!
As a refresher since it has been a bit since this was all announced: our original fulfillment window was February, but that was pushed back to May due to Pay-In-4 delaying me actually receiving sufficient funds to pay for manufacturing. I have not reverted that window! Since I did not expect these to come I'm booked solid through til mid-April. I will start working on fulfillment here and there, but I won't be committing to it full swing as our focus until we're approaching the current fulfillment window. Some potentially relevant updates:
I've gotten lots of practice with the industrial stuffing machine and have come to understand most of the quirks! My wife is still learning, but she's getting there. With 2 of us running the machine we can switch often to prevent repetitive motion injuries which keeps things moving!
Unlike my other campaigns I will not be the only person working full time on Lairbrew! My wife quit her job to work on the business with me instead, and having 2 people instead of 1 makes a huge difference. That will help prevent delays in fulfillment!
We have a new stuffing provider! They can fulfill much larger order volumes than how we were previously getting it, which is excellent since we will need a LOT to handle all these big plush. If it wasn't stuffing speed getting in our way before it was simply running out of stuffing and needing to wait for more, so that nips one particular bad issue in the bud.
With all that said, fulfillment for Carrion Baggage just concluded. So other than conventions and the upcoming launch of my Pintopia campaign Gnawesome Predators there's not much to get in the way of me starting to pick at things where I can! Which for that campaign, a couple designs might be of interest to y'all:
I'll see you when I next have something significant to report!
Big Brew Bash Update - Manufacturing, Pintopia, etc!
HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!! Time for a super scary update!!!! Which is to say it is scary for my wallet oooOOOoooOOoo~
Manufacturing is always a boring dead air period where I'm simply waiting for time to pass while things get tested and sewn. However I finally have news! Manufacturing just wrapped up this week, so that's pretty much right on time for our original schedule! A whopping 60 BOXES full of unstuffed plush under pressure are on the way. I hope you can see why I had to swap to unstuffed... that's with them packed in so tight you'd expect them to explode with a pin prick. They literally burrito them in a heavy tarp and strap them down like you would a palette to keep their power contained. Here's a box of garths getting ready for shipment! You can see the sides of that box are still bulging.
Truly this is very early for how things turned since our manufacturing period was pushed back by Pay-in-4. That said, I am not reverting the changed fulfillment window. Shipping has been very unpredictable, everything has been arriving late for me lately. It's likely that these plush won't be on a boat until mid-November and holiday shipping chaos will be in full swing by then. These 60 boxes will be getting stateside just in time to hit an exhausted and overwhelmed workforce. I also didn't expect to be receiving these early so I stacked my schedule pretty full.
Speaking of pay in 4, there's still almost 2k that hasn't been collected for folks paying with this feature, and over a whopping 8 thousand dollars from failed card payments. That's a 4th of what was pledged that I have not received, but manufacturing has to be fully paid for now. This order after safety tests and current shipping prices clocked in at roughly 31k and is paid in two parts. All the rest of that has come out of my pocket to keep things moving. Cards have been charged, orders are being locked, and I am about to engage Very Annoying Mode for folks who need to get a working card on file or finish their pay-in-4, because the scary thing I needed to deal with for this Halloween was manifesting all that missing cash from my own savings right when it's time to take care of stuff like electricity and house payments. I apologize in advance for the pestering y'all, but only so much.
Anyway have some fun photos from the manufacturing wrap-up! Deflated lads everywhere. Just piles of em. They look like they threw themselves on the floor in a tantrum and they're all mad about how that turned out.
Smaller updates:
We received the stuffing machine and have finished the installation! Just in time since our old setup was BECOME SPARKS AND FLAME, DESTROYER OF SCHEDULES, MELTER OF FLESH TO SYNTHETIC FABRICS. It is different from our previous set up so we're practicing a lot.
Other rewards are in hand and on standby. Non-plush fulfillment might come early if there ends up being time, but I can't promise that right now. We've been slammed with enough unexpected stuff to juggle as is, to the point my online shops are currently stickers only.
This does mean we're still playing the waiting game! It is just the next stage where I'll eventually have a tracking number to obsessively refresh twice a day.
Upcoming Project
I'll be participating in Pintopia 2026! I'll be releasing pin sets of meat eating animals and meats for them to eat, along with a couple surprises thrown in the mix. Maybe one of your favorites will be a part of it? Follow the teaser page to get a freebie if you back, and there will even be a way to pledge early for yet another freebie soon!
I just got back in the door from dropping some boxes off a bit ago, so here is an overdue update on fulfillment! We're most of the way there!
Buddy I don't know what you mean by "you're done" but I appreciate the encouragement
I apologize for how late fulfillment has ended up. To say this campaign has been a challenge at every step would be an understatement, and it has honestly kicked my butt (and my wallet) pretty darn good. The upside: I've learned SO MUCH for future projects! The downside: oof ouch ow my butt and wallet. If I ever crowdfund for designs this size again it will be for just 1 at a time with a much more informed-by-experience timeline, far fewer add-ons, and no pay-in-4.
I've been keeping my head down with my nose to the grindstone to get stuff done instead of writing updates, so this one has to be a little completionist. That means this is pretty text heavy so strap in!
If you'll recall, we specifically wanted to have BBB plush arrive stuffed and sewn, but thanks to the still-evolving shipping hell we're all struggling in right now that didn't happen. It was the difference between the plush arriving in 8 boxes per hundred or 50 boxes per hundred, and thanks to the budget issues caused by pay-in-4 I did not have deep enough pockets to stubbornly forge ahead with stuffed. It has been a large part of our delay woes!
Last update we'd stuffed everything for the Backerkit, but we ran out of Anthrocon prep time and had to make a call. AC prep and BBB fulfillment timelines were never supposed to overlap. AC this year was the largest display we have ever put together, and we had multiple hired helpers depending on us for a paycheck, so I ended up deciding to take what wasn't already sent out to AC with us and to pull unstuffed stock set aside for conventions to replace it when we got back. We're keeping our con stock and shop/Backerkit fulfillment stock separate. That meant all that work would need to be redone. This ended up being the single biggest delay since last update. While many Big Brew Bash orders had already been fulfilled by AC it sucked to have to pause right when we were getting going. We're back in the saddle now and have been going at a good clip, but still, making the decision in the moment sucked.
It was the correct call to make, as it helped us cover some big shipping cost changes detailed further down.
We'd heard back from some folks who had issues with their packages. We're not sure if it was the bags we were using, the post being really rough with them, or both, but some arrived with partly opened or torn seals. That issue continuing was not acceptable. So we switched from soft packaging to cardboard boxes, and the big guys are also wrapped in bags within to protect them in case of tears. It was an expensive shift but necessary. We have not yet heard back from anyone saying their boxes were in poor condition, so that is very good news!
This did cause additional small delays:
One size of box, the one we needed the most of, was on back-order.
Another size was a ship-to-store kind of pickup, but the shipment ended up late.
Boxes are a lot more difficult to take multiples to a drop off location than soft packages, and more trips means more time spent driving and less doing anything else.
Luckily we were still able to work on re-preparing plush in the meantime since we'd just gotten a fresh stuffing order. That pretty much covers what's been going on since the last update.
Shipping related news:
Some of you might have actually gotten your plush without even knowing they shipped. That's my bad, I forgot you have to manually tell Backerkit to send out tracking numbers I apologize if those arriving after the packages gave anyone a scare!
Most boxes are also now shipping via UPS. USPS had another dramatic price hike very recently, and it has become untenable for us to continue using them for domestic shipping for packages over a pound (or via Backerkit Postage for that matter, I'm having to manually do every label on PirateShip now.)
We are still shipping smaller packages, flats, and international packages via USPS. We want to give as much business as we can to our local post as we have a good relationship and it keeps the money going to employing people in our community, so when the price difference is a narrow margin we still choose USPS as well.
Your tracking number email should tell you which provider is ferrying your plush!
Just to make sure it is clear:You do not owe more for shipping! We covered it, you're good, please don't worry!
We're rural and live pretty far from the nearest UPS drop off that can handle more than 4 or so boxes at a time. If your tracking is not moving, it is packed and sitting at our door waiting to be loaded and sent! It is just a victim of the dreaded package volume bottleneck. Since we're already having to eat such huge cost difference we're trying to avoid wasting too much gas and time that could be spent getting the final boxes ready to go, but we're doing larger drop-offs whenever we have any other reason to go in to the city.
MOST IMPORTANTLY: There are now only 16 packages to finish up!
There is a total of 6 packages that will be delayed a little. Specifically ones with name tags for Garth and Skye. I had to re-order those because I was shorted on the amount and didn't realize until I was reaching in to an empty basket. The order is very small, so it shouldn't take too long to arrive.
If you don't have tracking yet, your stuff is being actively worked on right now. I'll be stepping away from my desk to go sew once this update is published. There is not a lot left to do! A lot of the slowdown is just manual label entry, at this point.
The 2 boxes that went missing during transit were never recovered and they were both boxes of Skye, so the trans pride werewolves already sold out. We've decided to do 1 more run of him out of pocket, and he is already in production. If you saw the batch 2 unstuffed preorders on lairbrew.com, don't panic! You are still getting your Skye from the first batch, we've had them set aside waiting.
I apologize again for the length of time this has all taken. It was not meant to go this way, and I've learned a lot of hard lessons from this. Even if it hasn't gone perfectly, I deeply appreciate all the support for the project. I'd do it all again if I had to so these guys could get out there and make people happy. We're still crossing the finish line, even if I'm moving like the rat poison energy drink guy from that marathon in St. Louis back in 1904. Thank you for all of your patience! I look forward to getting the last packages out very soon.
PS: If you haven't seen it already,Deadweights are our next big project. The current plan is still in-house fulfillment, but we've also lined up a distribution partnership that we can make the decision to switch to, which is partly thanks to the lessons we've learned from BBB. Some of you might find these guys pretty cute, so maybe check it out!
Hey everyone! Just checking in with our current progress! To start us off I'll be up front: Our # of packages shipped doesn't seem very impressive yet compared to the amount of work and hours we've been putting in.
When you consider we're having to stuff and complete the sewing on every plush it makes a little more sense. That said, packing and shipping is the final step. The biggest hangup here has been the plush themselves! And guess what! ALL THE BIG BREW BASH PLUSH ARE STUFFED!!! The tail on that Garth at the top is literally touching the ceiling. It is floor-to-ceiling big friends for a roughly 6ft x 10ft area. The gnolls and gryphons are buried in there. They were the ones we had the fewest to do, so they got done first- especially since they're our most stuffing hungry designs. 1 giant stuffing shipment and a lot of work later and we're in the home stretch for these being completed! The urge to climb in to this pile for a nap is very powerful but I must resist.
They are getting packed, labeled, and shipped as they're sewn shut. It's currently just one of us working on these at any given time since we're having to balance this with Anthrocon prep (our biggest con this year) but 1 person is still enough for steady progress. I think our current big limiting factor is, as usual, the post office's capacity. Normally I would drive in to the city and drop off more at once, but I did not budget this project with gas being $5 a gallon in mind, which is significant when the other places we can go are like 45min away.
Other stuff:
All approved full custom tags are done and on their way to us!
Stickers are all sorted and packed just waiting for their bags so that won't be a potential hangup.
Custom name tags are about 50% complete. Just waiting for the humidity to drop since my sealer of choice really reeeaaaally hates it.
Smaller add-on plush that require stuffing and sewing, such as kobolds, are good to go!
One last thing. We're participating in Pin Quest this year! It launches in less than a week. We will be continuing to prioritize Big Brew Bash even once it is live since it is a relaxed project and a very small collection. If you like cockatrices you might find something you like! If you don't like them things I don't have anything for you this time, but maybe you'll like something else from among the Pin Quest projects!
FWA is over! That means fulfillment time is now. It took my wife and I 2 days longer to safely travel home than we planned for, but we've spent some time recovering, and now the work of fulfillment is getting going. She's running the current business side of things while I throw myself at getting Big Brew Bash fulfilled.
In short: the time has finally come for all these werewolves to start flyin the coop!
There are a LOT of plush that need to be done. I'll be buying shipping as packages are completed, packed, and ready to be put out. In the past I've done batch buying ahead, but that's not a good option when I need to be getting these plush out the door at a similar speed to completing them. They take up a truly insane amount of room and the amount I have to do are a floor-to-ceiling workspace filler. That means when you get your tracking number your package will be completed! It might be in the next day's pickup, or it might go in a dropoff on a weekend. Don't panic if it isn't moving right away- the pickup vehicle and the box truck that takes stuff from our tiny PO to the closest sorting facility can only fit so much! Past experience has taught us that we'll need to supplement with drop-offs in our personal vehicle, and we will want to keep those to a minimum to save on gas.
I'm heading to bed shortly to get up bright and early and start working away at this. I just need to get some other updates out first. But yeah! At long last!! Thank you all for your patience, I look forward to you all getting to heft your new lads out of the bag and go "oh no that's big." G'night!
Hello everyone! Long time no see. I'm here to give a full rundown on what's up and where we're going from here!
Fulfillment is on the horizon. We're currently being held back by 2 things:
Time - all my labor keeps getting siphoned in to preparing for the conventions that are keeping a roof over my head. This wouldn't have been an issue if I'd received the full amount since I had money to float us through a break in cons to focus on fulfillment in that budget. I'm doing the best I can with the slashed budget, I've had to pull some miracle work just to get us this far and I do need to keep on the slow and steady to avoid disaster.
Materials - Specifically, stuffing. I may have mentioned this before, but polyester fiberfill is a petroleum project. This means both the price and availability are affected by whatever is going on with oil. Those 2 sentences are secretly a short horror story for anyone stuck in the US right now. I would've started fulfillment earlier this month when I was due for another stuffing order, but I was only sent 150lbs last time. I typically order around 1200lbs at a time. You can see how this'd be a pipe to the knees when every jumbo takes 3 to 5 lbs a piece. I've been having to use what I can get on, again, con prep.
I am going to be vending at Furry Weekend Atlanta, which was a pleasant surprise to get in to, and we did better at the last convention than expected. So I am taking all of May after FWA and all of June off from cons. My wife and I have that pencilled in as Work On Big Brew Bash time. I will start sharing fulfillment updates as soon as we begin, so expect to see more frequent communication around May 18th (giving us some grace time to travel home and decompress.) The end of the wait is on the horizon! I believe we'll be squeaking in at around 1 year from project start to project end.
If we run out of stuffing, I have money set aside and will be in the area of my source in early July. I'll be going with a truck and trailer to get some full compressed palettes of the specific kind I use. I'm usually limited to uncompressed boxed fiber since full bales are a local pickup only item, and making the 2 day drive JUST for stuffing hasn't been worth it (especially with gas prices, since we'll have a 16ft trailer loaded down- we get like 10mpg when hauling it is BRUTAL,) but we'll be within a 4hr detour I'm happy to take advantage of. So we might be delayed by material availability temporarily, but I have as good a plan as it gets for that too.
I apologize. This has turned out to be a mess in a number of really scary ways. Both financially and labor-wise it has turned in to far more of a hungry beast than expected, demanding a lot more of me than hoped. I've been working extremely hard to keep things going and make sure we cross that finish line no matter what, and I've had to be careful to keep my head above water in the meantime. Being careful means more time passing, but we're finally almost there. It will feel good to finally have those werewolves and gnolls arriving at their final destinations and getting hugged by their new person for the first time. They are coming, you will get your plush, I'm doing the best I can as quickly as I can, and I promise they will be worth the wait! Thank you deeply for your patience so far. I'll see you soon in May!
TL;DR: Fulfillment starts around May 18th and goes through June. Stuffing supply problems may stretch it in to August.
You might remember from the last update that manufacturing had wrapped up. That meant shipping was next, and ship they did! 60 cartons containing over 1 ton of weight in unstuffed plush left the manufacturer and the chaos began. It has not been completely clean-cut and there were some mishaps, so let me tell you what I've been dealing with!
The plush were slated to arrive early on November 26th!
Thank goodness! The original delivery date was anticipating delivery being while we'd be away at Midwest Furfest, and I was not looking forward to an exhausted drive home to move all those packages and then an even worse drive back. But then on November 25th my wife comes in from work and says nervously, "Were we expecting some boxes?" A bunch of plush got stealth delivered in the pouring rain with not one knock upon our door and had been sitting out there for HOURS. Thankfully the fact the plush are packed under such absurd pressure means they need every single inch wrapped in tape, practically waterproofing them. Only boxes that had split on the sides got any water in it, and we got those inside, dried in heavy airflow with multiple dehydrators running nearby, and inspected thoroughly.
However, you can see not all of these are wrapped in tape, and that this certainly doesn't look like 60 boxes. All those out-of-place boxes with no tape protecting them had loose plush contents from boxes that couldn't hack the journey and were ripped beyond continued use. Like these things rip DRAMATICALLY whenever they give way. Some of those plush were.. not in the best shape. I'm glad I was able to order more than needed for this campaign, because I wasn't sure I was going to be able to salvage those.
Digging through tracking for all 60 boxes, it seemed one half of the order was scattered around Illinois, and the other half was marked with an unwelcome yellow exclamation mark. From there it was a slog of issues. At first the big problem was just these boxes sitting around not getting scanned. Then we got a bunch of snow and continued getting snow, so Fedex decided they would not be trying to deliver to us. So as the boxes slowly started accumulating in one spot they were just sitting at a facility where we had to somehow make the time during con crunch to drive way out and pick them up before they were shipped back. That would have been a VERY expensive problem to reverse. It's a long drive, the weather was making it dangerous, and we had to do it multiple times. I was gonna be so mad if I died over some stuffed werewolves y'all. I love plushies but yikes.
The rest of the boxes were still MIA. It took a couple weeks past the first arrivals for me to obtain most of them. At current there is still a single box out there somewhere, and every effort to track it down has failed, so that one is unfortunately in the process of having a claim filed for it.
But the important thing: enough plush have gotten here safe and sound!
As a refresher since it has been a bit since this was all announced: our original fulfillment window was February, but that was pushed back to May due to Pay-In-4 delaying me actually receiving sufficient funds to pay for manufacturing. I have not reverted that window! Since I did not expect these to come I'm booked solid through til mid-April. I will start working on fulfillment here and there, but I won't be committing to it full swing as our focus until we're approaching the current fulfillment window. Some potentially relevant updates:
I've gotten lots of practice with the industrial stuffing machine and have come to understand most of the quirks! My wife is still learning, but she's getting there. With 2 of us running the machine we can switch often to prevent repetitive motion injuries which keeps things moving!
Unlike my other campaigns I will not be the only person working full time on Lairbrew! My wife quit her job to work on the business with me instead, and having 2 people instead of 1 makes a huge difference. That will help prevent delays in fulfillment!
We have a new stuffing provider! They can fulfill much larger order volumes than how we were previously getting it, which is excellent since we will need a LOT to handle all these big plush. If it wasn't stuffing speed getting in our way before it was simply running out of stuffing and needing to wait for more, so that nips one particular bad issue in the bud.
With all that said, fulfillment for Carrion Baggage just concluded. So other than conventions and the upcoming launch of my Pintopia campaign Gnawesome Predators there's not much to get in the way of me starting to pick at things where I can! Which for that campaign, a couple designs might be of interest to y'all:
I'll see you when I next have something significant to report!
