Hi Ultimates,
It's Friday! That's means time for another...
Project status update
Pledge Manager
90% of the Pledge Manager surveys have been completed. Only 10% more!
Thank you all for responding in a timely manner!
I'll send another reminder out soon to those that haven't interacted with the PledgeBox Pledge Manager yet. Since last week only a few questions from you all have come up, but it's still going pretty smooth
Final Quotation
The request for the "Best And Final Offer" has been send out to ten different and well respected suppliers in the dice and tabletop gaming industry. Of these three have been on my shortlist for quite some time and most of the new ones I've learned about through Spiel in Essen.
Because the final quantities and styles varied a lot from previous quotations it will take some time for the manufacturers to revise their quotations. For this I have given them until November 13th to do so. After that I will be able place the order and make the payment before the end of November.
Planning
This bring us to the planning of the project...
I will not be able to send out all dice in December of this year.
This idea of delivering in December was created by me somewhere in July before the Kickstarter was launched. I simply calculated that it would take two months to manufacture the dice and one month to arrange all the details surrounding it.
However, I now learned that there are so many more steps to a crowdfunding campaign and a lot of steps take much more time then expected, especially when you have to rely on third parties. For instance, it took half a month to set up the PledgeBox Pledge Manager, now it's taking another half a month to get everyone to complete it. Next up is the approximate month to get the final offer and order through, and only then the manufacturing can start. Also take into account that many of the Chinese manufacturers are dealing with power cuts several days a month. All of this changes the planning by quite a lot.
So what do I expect the planning is now?
November: final offer and placing order
December: producing first sample and checking the quality
January: manufacturing of dUltimate batch for all Kickstarter backers
February: shipping by boat to the Netherlands
March: quality check and start fulfillment
I've taken the liberty to pad this planning with some extra buffer days, so it might be too long, but I believe this to be much more realistic at this point. And lets all hope that the global shipping and manufacturing delays will become less of an issue over time.
I am very sorry to disappoint everyone that was expecting the dUltimate dice to ship sooner. I hope you can appreciate that I stay transparant in this process to you and I truly hope that you can accept this delay. I will do my absolute best to shorten this planning as much as possible!
Expectations for the next weeks
Final Quotation
I will spend time discussing with manufacturers and answer their questions such that they can supply me their final quotation for the dUltimate dice in a timely manner.
Hall of Fame
As soon as the Survey Progress hits 100% the Hall of Fame will be created and added to the dUltimate dice page. I've already seen that people made some great submission, looking forward to the final product!
Keep on rolling!
-Len