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!
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!
Hey all! 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 for the project! I've been told manufacturing will be wrapping up this week, so that's pretty much right on time for our original schedule! There is now a more thorough update available so consider checking that out instead.
I'll be participating in Pintopia 2026 with my campaign Gnawesome Predators! 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! Here's the list of species planned:
Hey everyone! Short one today. You might receive some emails about your order being successfully placed if you had a Sleeping Garth the Black Werewolf sticker. That's because the stickers have proven to be not really possible to make. So for those of you who have him as an add-on I have been going through and removing that from your cart to make sure you are not charged, and for those of you who chose him as a freebie I'm adjusting the answer to Valentino (grey werewolf.) Unfortunately when the order is edited the system treats it like a new order, so it sends a confirmation email, and I have no real option to stop that from happening. Please don't worry!
You are not being double charged, you are not being charged for anything you will not receive, and you will not receive multiple shipments!! You can ignore that email completely, there is nothing additional you have to do!
I'm doing this because I received the sticker order and poor Garth came out solid black. Like 100% black ink, not even a hint of any other color, shadow puppet silhouette UTTERLY BLACK. This is already after I tried to adjust it to print properly and was assured it'd come out ok. I've spent a little more time trying to print him and have come to the conclusion that it's simply not going to work out, so I'm removing him as an option altogether and doing what I can to make sure no one is charged for a sticker they can't receive.
Other updates:
Safety testing is ongoing for manufacturing. Plush that will be subject to T H E H O R R O R S are completed, approved, and sent to the partner facility.
The pre-order store is closed. Unstuffed giants can still be pre-ordered on lairbrew.com, but campaign exclusives are no longer available for new purchase at this time.
The blank tags for customization and the tags with default names have arrived and I love them. I hope to do more baubles like this for plush in the future because lookit em I wanna bite em
No new pictures this time, sorry y'all. But I do have info for backers!
The exciting part:
As of today manufacturing will officially be underway! 900 plush total are being made split a variety of ways between the 4 colors (black, trans pride, and gnoll as new, + a reorder of grey because we were really low.) The first steps are a combination of safety testing and getting tags printed and cut. At this time I'm anticipating a full 4 month delay instead of 3 months however, simply due to the tariff circus. Recent weeks have revealed just how difficult it is going to be to get stuff in to the country.
Bad-ish news:
We had to go fully for unstuffed plush due to the jump in shipping costs. Stuff has gotten seriously insane for anything of significant volume (more so amount of space taken than overall weight.) That means I will be putting in significant labor once those plush arrive to stuff and sew them.
I have handled a backlog of stuffing triple the number of plush for the whole backerkit so this won't be an area of inexperience, but doing that triple amount was a nightmare. I have a fortunate solution that will he talked about more below!
Other news:
Stickers and non-custom shape name tags (default and blank) went in to production, got completed, and landed stateside. They will be arriving with me soon for photos!
Boring stuff for transparency:
On the bright side, we have an industrial stuffing machine that just landed stateside and we're just waiting for it to arrive via freight, so we have several months to get experienced with it before the plush arrive! These machines shoot stuffing at high pressure. Think a build-a-bear machine on steroids, basically. This will speed up stuffing the head and limbs of these plush massively. The body cavity itself will still be faster to stuff completely by hand, but it is also wide enough that there is no challenge to stuffing them at all, where as the face and limbs are rather difficult to manage fully by hand.
I was not able to swing an out of pocket Udon. We're expanding sorely needed storage and getting our own dedicated cargo vehicle instead. Lairbrew changed from my fun lil project shop that kept enough money in my pocket for chicken treats in to a full time job last year. I'm still adapting how we do things around my disabilities. Most could build up to these changes over time but our needs evolved too rapidly for that approach.
That is all I have for now, I will be back with another update when I have photos or a meaty info dump!
What's next?
Our next project is going to be one of two projects: either Cauldron of Cryptids, a series of medium size cryptid plush, or Deadweights, a series of weighted creepy-cute teddy plush!
CAULDRON OF CRYPTIDS:
This campaign is a newer one in the lineup but might be launching in the place of our Deadweights campaign. It will depend on the prototyping process for Deadweights- we only have 1 completed prototype so far. Meanwhile for Cauldron of Cryptids we already have 2: Mothman and the Fresno Nightcrawler. There's several other designs that will be stretch goals, so if you like cryptids and are in to the idea of helping me release plush that don't cost so much to obtain I hope you'll follow the project over here!
DEADWEIGHTS:
This campaign will have something for pin and plush lovers, so please consider following the project! A strong start means more designs for everyone in the end, so it is much appreciated. The initial line includes 7 designs, and there are many surprises in store if it happens to be more successful than that. Here's an incomplete prototype of Switchblade the Dead or Alive Cat: His final prototype is a good hugging size and weighs in at about 2lbs thanks to weighted beads in his tail tip and paws!
Carrion Baggage: Second Bite is coming to Pintopia 2026!
This time we'll have more of a pin focus that will appeal to animal lovers, especially those of you with a fondness for carnivores both past, present, and fantastical! But our 3 most popular Premium Cut bags will also be a part of it, so pleasecheck it out to see everything we're expecting to release!
Kobolds are our bread-and-butter plush. They are the design that holds all the weirder ones I like to do out of pocket on their backs, and I am constantly getting asked for different varieties from color changes to themes. I could never afford to make all the things people ask for or that I think of, but I want to give them all a fair shot someday. That is where KOBOLDS - Plush after your 5 gold! comes in. The date and scale is currently undetermined, but if you love these little guys and are interested in getting some novel additions to your hoard that are likely to be one time production runs then it won't hurt to follow the teaser page!
Here are some very early, not finalized examples: albino, copper, and gelatinous kubeold
