Steve Jackson Games
CREATOR
2 days ago
Project Update: This is Steve reporting . . .
This is literally an update . . . we are in the middle of a bad situation here, not at its end. As of now we’ve got something worth passing along, but there will be more.
This is also a big apology. As I assume everybody knows already, some Big Box got into the distribution chain before all the backers were even shipped. Not just W23. And we didn’t have an immediate answer for what was going on! Our rep at the fulfillment house went on vacation and . . . you see where this is going, right? It’s been a week since our last update, because we had no data. We knew we had a mess but we couldn’t even get a return call about its size or shape.
How did the early shipment even happen? It was a right hand/left hand thing. The fulfillment house didn’t come close to meeting its original projection for shipping to backers, or let us know how behind they were, but they shipped to distributors on the original schedule. And we put it on W23 when they shipped to us, which was purely our own failure. Arrrrgh!
At least further shipments to distributors have stopped, so we have quit making the problem worse.
As of yesterday afternoon, our fulfillment rep is back in the office, and he returned my call. Hallelujah. He says that 82% of the domestic backers have been shipped. This makes it sound better than it really is. They did the easy ones first. The remaining 18% unfulfilled are the more complex orders (so the more you backed us, the farther back in their queue you are - which is nuts - and one thing I’m going to expect, on further projects, is that that be fixed). I am expecting a call from higher up in their organization to tell me what they are doing to speed things up, and when we can REALLY expect the last domestic order to go out.
Even more aggravating, he told me that the pallets of overseas orders are still sitting on the warehouse dock because the (domestic) fulfillment house “cannot get a reply” from their overseas counterparts. I don’t know how hard they have tried, and I’m not sure why they can’t ship until they get that reply. I asked them today, in pretty direct terms, to try a lot harder, and WE have started calling, as well.
. . . You will have noticed that I’m not naming names. I won’t do so until or unless I feel that someone has been literally fraudulent, unspeakably lazy, or just plain dumb about fulfilling our order, which is YOUR order. If you’re going to be forgiving, thank you very much, and if you’re going to be mad, be mad at us, because we chose these companies.
So what are we going to do?
- We’re going to be checking fulfillment progress daily. I am sure this will be an aggravation to the contractors. Sorry about that, contractors. Y’all made us do it.
- We’re going to go back and look at why we chose these contractors, what the alternatives were, and what guarantees we’d need if we used them again. There are alternatives. (There are about a million companies competing for fulfillment contracts. It seems that perhaps a dozen of them have actual experience. I typed another sentence here and then deleted it; you’ll never know what I made myself not say out loud.)
- We will not resume shipments to distributors or Amazon until (at least) the North American orders have been shipped and those for the rest of the world are on the water.
- W23 shows as “sold out” because we came to a screeching halt with sales there, not because we have none to ship.
- As of today, I intend to ship Big Box to Gen Con. There is a future in which fulfillment continues to go so badly that we don’t feel we can even sell it there. I hope that future does not come.
- We’re going to TRY to learn the lesson “don’t put so many extras in a project.” It’s hard to be restrained when everybody is BEGGING for those extras! But all those extras led to extra time for fulfillment, which worsened the mess.
Some people have suggested that we do some sort of extra gift for the aggrieved backers. Been thinking about that one. I’m not going to try to judge who is justly aggrieved, or send out some little tchotchke and say “We good now, right?” If a meaningful idea presents itself, I’m all ears.
I expect better communication now from our contractors, every day. And if we don’t get it, we can come on here and say so. That will give you better communication too.
Again, I’m sorry. Angry and sorry. We are doing what we can to sort this out.
– Steve Jackson
This is also a big apology. As I assume everybody knows already, some Big Box got into the distribution chain before all the backers were even shipped. Not just W23. And we didn’t have an immediate answer for what was going on! Our rep at the fulfillment house went on vacation and . . . you see where this is going, right? It’s been a week since our last update, because we had no data. We knew we had a mess but we couldn’t even get a return call about its size or shape.
How did the early shipment even happen? It was a right hand/left hand thing. The fulfillment house didn’t come close to meeting its original projection for shipping to backers, or let us know how behind they were, but they shipped to distributors on the original schedule. And we put it on W23 when they shipped to us, which was purely our own failure. Arrrrgh!
At least further shipments to distributors have stopped, so we have quit making the problem worse.
As of yesterday afternoon, our fulfillment rep is back in the office, and he returned my call. Hallelujah. He says that 82% of the domestic backers have been shipped. This makes it sound better than it really is. They did the easy ones first. The remaining 18% unfulfilled are the more complex orders (so the more you backed us, the farther back in their queue you are - which is nuts - and one thing I’m going to expect, on further projects, is that that be fixed). I am expecting a call from higher up in their organization to tell me what they are doing to speed things up, and when we can REALLY expect the last domestic order to go out.
Even more aggravating, he told me that the pallets of overseas orders are still sitting on the warehouse dock because the (domestic) fulfillment house “cannot get a reply” from their overseas counterparts. I don’t know how hard they have tried, and I’m not sure why they can’t ship until they get that reply. I asked them today, in pretty direct terms, to try a lot harder, and WE have started calling, as well.
. . . You will have noticed that I’m not naming names. I won’t do so until or unless I feel that someone has been literally fraudulent, unspeakably lazy, or just plain dumb about fulfilling our order, which is YOUR order. If you’re going to be forgiving, thank you very much, and if you’re going to be mad, be mad at us, because we chose these companies.
So what are we going to do?
- We’re going to be checking fulfillment progress daily. I am sure this will be an aggravation to the contractors. Sorry about that, contractors. Y’all made us do it.
- We’re going to go back and look at why we chose these contractors, what the alternatives were, and what guarantees we’d need if we used them again. There are alternatives. (There are about a million companies competing for fulfillment contracts. It seems that perhaps a dozen of them have actual experience. I typed another sentence here and then deleted it; you’ll never know what I made myself not say out loud.)
- We will not resume shipments to distributors or Amazon until (at least) the North American orders have been shipped and those for the rest of the world are on the water.
- W23 shows as “sold out” because we came to a screeching halt with sales there, not because we have none to ship.
- As of today, I intend to ship Big Box to Gen Con. There is a future in which fulfillment continues to go so badly that we don’t feel we can even sell it there. I hope that future does not come.
- We’re going to TRY to learn the lesson “don’t put so many extras in a project.” It’s hard to be restrained when everybody is BEGGING for those extras! But all those extras led to extra time for fulfillment, which worsened the mess.
Some people have suggested that we do some sort of extra gift for the aggrieved backers. Been thinking about that one. I’m not going to try to judge who is justly aggrieved, or send out some little tchotchke and say “We good now, right?” If a meaningful idea presents itself, I’m all ears.
I expect better communication now from our contractors, every day. And if we don’t get it, we can come on here and say so. That will give you better communication too.
Again, I’m sorry. Angry and sorry. We are doing what we can to sort this out.
– Steve Jackson
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