There is a new campaign live now that you can check out above, and it includes some awesome new enamel pins. There is a set of 3 stained-glass style enamel pins, two filler pin sets, new limited edition seasonal pins, new pin banners, and more! With some new designs still to come.
Now that the Goblins pins are shipping out this week, it's a great time to take a look at pride pins!
For Pride, we're teaming up with local Denver pup, Pup Cabe, to make some puppy pride pins. If they tickle your fancy, and who doesn't need a WOOF! pin in their lives, take a look and support a small queer creator! If not, no harm no foul. Happy Pride y'all.
Well, pins are in hand, and they are really great. One issue, not a big one, is that the Journey Pin Set got their pin set cards printed with the wrong front graphic, so they both just say Goblin Pin Set. Which is frustrating in a small way. It just means trying to sell them later in-person will be weird. On the register it will say "Journey Pin Set" but for any helpers, they'll just see two "Goblin Pin Set"s. Oh well-- the pins look great, and the collab pins look AWESOME.
FINALIZE ADDRESSES
Now is your time to go into your survey and update your address if you need to! You have until Monday next week, then I'm gonna be shipping orders out over next week.
NEED MORE?
If you want any additional items, now is your time to email me @ [email protected] for me to help unlock your order and get extra items as you finalize your address. Monday the 16th, everything will be finally locked in and shipping, so you're about out of time!
Get ready for your Glammys and pins to start landing at your front door friends! Just one week now,
Glammy plushies are in storage, and our enamel pins are on the way in June! That means now is a great time for you to look at your stuff and make sure your order/survey is turned in with the correct address. I'll be hand-packing orders in June to head out to everyone.
So stay tuned friends, the Goblin's Journey is going to be coming home sooner than you might think.
This has been quite a time for small businesses lately. Don't know how much many of you are familiar with the political situation, but tariffs have gone up and down and up and, at this point, most other pintopian project creators have been freaking out and doomspiraling about how this is going to ruin their business. I was in the same boat, but being patient about it.
At this moment it sounds like the tariffs are going to be walked back, but we have no idea how low they will go. For people unfamiliar, right now we are at a 145% tariff on Chinese made goods. What that means for us is that, because our plush and pins are made in China, the manufacturing cost is charged to the importer (me) when it arrives to the US to the % of the tariff.
If plushies cost me $10 to manufacture a piece, I pay the $10 per plush to the manufacturer, then I pay to have it shipped, then when it arrives to the US, I pay the US government $14.50 per plush for having the item made in China while they have a tariff placed on them by the US.
In this example, plushies end up costing me 24.50 to manufacture. I only charged $30 during the campaign. Considering advertising costs, sample costs, freight shipping, and backerkit platform fees and credit card charging fees, I would be taking a loss per plush. And unfortunately, it cost me more than $10 per plushie to manufacture in reality.
As of this moment, the plushes are generally on their way to me from China. Also as of this moment, the tariffs are still in place. They said as recently as this morning that they are walking back the tariffs, but not when it will happen or how low they will get, other than Trump saying they won't go down to 0%. So they could be anywhere from 1-145%.
This level of uncertainty has caused multiple small businesses to already shutter their doors, there's just no way to trust our numbers when an insane king can just implode our economy on his whims, then say he doesn't mean it, then impose it worse, then roll it back. And until it's actually rolled back, we won't know.
I have confirmed the enamel pins have been fixed to my satisfaction, and I have placed the order for the pins to be made (and paid) as of yesterday, but even the manufacturer is suggesting we just wait a little bit to see how much it will cost to ship/what the tariffs will be, since it sounds like they are being walked back.
Because of all this, we are just kind of... twiddling our thumbs as we wait to see what the king will choose. When will it be rolled back? How low will it go? And when the pins are on their way to me, will they go up again? We frankly just can't know.
But the pins are ordered, the plushies are on their way, and we're all just crossing our fingers that this dick measuring contest will end so we don't have to cough up 1.5x the manufacturing cost to the US government for literally no reason.
Thanks for your continued patience, I'll let you all know what arrives and what it costs, I suppose!
