Hello everyone;

This update is copy pasted across a lot of open campaigns, sorry if you get spammed all at once. And some of it won't be relevant to every campaign, I do have updates for each but it'll have to be next month, we're very busy with this latest shenanigans -_-. ALL currently open campaigns have their pins on order though, everything is moving forward at least.

Sorry this update is a bit late. The last few weeks have been rough - my assistant and I both got Covid. I can't do any physical packing without her help and she ended up with a nasty cough that lingered for ages. Then we lost a close friend of ours very suddenly. Its been very difficult.

Today we got notice that EU shipping regs are changing again. Once more charges are going up MASSIVELY. They're moving to a £5 handling fee per item code. So that's one fee for enamel pins, one fee for stickers, one fee for notebooks, etc. A large mixed order can easily stack up a £20+ handling fee which is insane, which is on top of the shipping fees themselves. And then there's also new paperwork requirements that we're not sure our manufacturer can fulfil. 

Changes are coming into place from Nov 1st. We've dropped everything else to fulfil as many EU orders as we possibly can before then. Unfortunately the Curiosity Shop pins aren't here yet (although they are on order now). Tarot orders are going to be fulfilled without cards for now, since sending a single pack of cards later on will be much cheaper anyway. If that's you, you should just have gotten an email warning we're charging your shipping soon. We'll be sending orders out as soon as your shipping payment is processed to your card, you won't be charged again to ship the cards later on, we'll cover that.

Unless something stupid happens, we intend to have all EU orders fulfilled for Midnight Ocean, Mythical Garden and the Summer Sale before the new regs come into place. If you have multiple orders across these three campaigns (but no others), we might be able to combine your orders for lower fees; you'd need to email us within the next three days. Unfortunately we don't have all the products needed for the other open campaigns yet. We do have a couple of bounced pledges and shipping charges for the EU on those campaigns. I totally understand if you can't afford to clear it right now, just please know this might be the last chance to. 

While we pride ourselves on continuing to ship worldwide, we might have to cease shipping to the EU after this if we can't find a way to fulfil the paperwork obligations. If that's the case, and you have an open order, you will be refunded in full. We will be leaving the option open to back future campaigns, with the warning that if it comes to shipping time and nothing's changed, then you will have your pledge cancelled and refunded automatically. That's because it changes so often, there IS a chance it'll be fine, or something will be in place, by the time it comes to fulfilment. Just please know there's a risk of cancellation; but you won't lose any money.

Our advice is that if you do choose to support us anyway, keep the number of different items to a minimum. We'll make sure that either freebies aren't included, OR we'll send along something that matches a code you already ordered. 

Unfortunately this is all very much out of our hands. 

Hello;

Sorry no big update this month, everything's just still underway with the manufacturer. The rep is being quite slow, not sure what's going on with that and well. I just gotta keep at it. 

The plan remains to get the major arcana printed, then process orders with those but no minor arcana next. We've had a few requests to refund minor arcana so you can get into that bracket - we absolutely will do that, but only after we've charged cards for the other major arcana only orders. That's just so we can afford the refunds safely, right now I need to make sure we have the funds free for the card printing. I'll make a news post giving plenty of warning before we charge cards and give instructions on requesting refunds then. (Basically, the money tied up in the add-on store is for products we've already had manufactured and are ready to ship out, so we can use that money to refund minor arcana orders without potentially running out of printing funds.)

Otherwise its an uneventful month, sorry. I'll keep you updated.

 Hello everyone ~

How the hell is it August already.

For anyone who didn't know... Shipping rules changed again for both the EU AND the US. Tariffs and fees increased across the board, and there are new packaging rules coming into place. Its taken us a long time to figure out how to move forwards.

We think we've got it. The rest of the pin only orders are going out next week.

Please note that shipping costs will increase across the board by the time we charge the next lot of cards. EU import VAT/customs fees now have to be paid upfront, and the US tariffs have increased to 15% on pretty much all the products that we sell.

The new samples came back just this week, we're still debating how to proceed with the manufacturer. Its not a problem with our files, which is good news; it is a problem with the paper texture and matte finish combination, so we're troubleshooting. Hopefully we'll shortly be moving ahead with the major arcana print run, then shipping out orders that are just pins and major arcana decks. Then we'll do the minor, major and pin orders. Staggering them means its less likely the rules will change on us in the middle of getting orders out, we've already had a situation where we had to charge people extra and its not fair on backers.

Happy Autumn folks! I'll keep you posted. 

Parts of this update are copy/pasted across different campaigns.

The overview currently looks like this;
Midnight Ocean ~ In production/shipping phase one
Mythical Garden ~ Shipping (temporarily on pause)
Curiosity Shop ~ In production
Pods and Pots ~ In production
Literary Critters ~ Survey coming soon

This is going to be a rough one folks, I'm sorry. If you're backing from the US or Europe please make sure you read it all over. This kind of hit us out of nowhere. And there's some production stuff too, so keep scrolling. Its a lot and I'm sorry.

There are new paperwork requirements going into place for items moving into the US. The wording is... Extremely unclear, and we're pausing shipping while we figure this out. If you haven't had a shipping notification, it hasn't gone out yet. All the orders that don't include tarot decks are packed and ready to go here, we're just confirming our obligations in case we get into trouble. There are no extra fees associated, just a shipping delay. We're intending to send the remaining orders out at the same time as the summer sale orders, but because they're packed already and because of tariff charges, we cannot combine shipping. 

This one's the kicker, and there's just nothing I can do about it.

As of July 1st, a new rule went into a place that introduced a flat handling fee of £3 per item type included in any package heading into the EU. This is standard across all the EU countries as far as we can tell. We are not sure if that includes free items at the moment, we're still trying to figure out the details. So every EU package that hasn't already been shipped now owes an extra £3 postage per item type.

On top of that, some EU countries are now requiring us to pay customs/import fees up front (so at point of sale). We no longer have the option of shipping 'recipient pays fees'. We aren't entirely sure which countries yet; we're still investigating. So from now on, and including all packages that haven't yet been sent from this campaign, shipping is going to have to include the appropriate customs fees for EU countries upfront.

Until these extra fees are paid, we can't send out your EU orders. We're working with Backerkit at the moment to see if there's an easy way to do this, or if we need to contact everyone individually and request payment that way. Unfortunately, customs fees have always been the responsibility of the customers; but we've always been able to mark that it'll be paid on receipt of the package rather than up front on our end. I know in the UK we aren't always charged when a package arrives. I'm sorry if that was the case but from now on, we just can't do that any more. 

For non US and EU backers, packages are still going out. If they haven't gone before then, we intend to get them out in a big shipment with the summer sale orders.

This is also extremely unfortunate and we're still trying to figure out how to resolve it. 

A while ago we had to change our chosen production manufacturer for the cards themselves for a number of reasons. We switched to someone we'd already gotten samples from and started work towards getting the major arcana printed for phase two of shipping. Their default sizes did not include the size we'd opted to go for, so first we got a whole test print done with one of their default sizes to make sure it met our quality control standards. Since those looked good, we went ahead and paid for the custom die cut mould to get the size we wanted, and paid for a whole test run of the major deck in the size we wanted. They came back a few weeks ago, and unfortunately they look like this;

Its hard to see, but the print is blurry. Its not the same standard as the smaller, default size test prints. We sent these pictures back to the manufacturer to ask what could cause this and it took a very long time for them to get back to us. Their best guess is its either the paper surface, or the matte finish; but both are the same options we chose at the smaller size too. Also I tested the file sizes, these are the same files I used to make the a6 notebook covers, they are definitely large enough and high resolution enough to suit this size. The manufacturer has agreed to send us more samples, the same designs printed on various paper and finish options to see if it helps. And also to retry the matte test print, because honestly I don't want to switch to any satin or gloss finish. I suspect, perhaps they used to proof files from the smaller sized card print and just sized them up; that would cause this blurry finish. I asked them to make sure they were working with the correct size files. But now we are waiting again, and this process takes weeks each time. 

I'm just sorry its taking so long. We had samples made before we even ran the project, I had no idea it would go on for such a long time. All I can do is promise I'm working on it in the background. We will get there... Eventually.

That's it for now. We'll work on resolving the EU charges as soon as possible and I hope we will have the rest of the prepared packages out asap, its just... Very unfortunate its worked out this way. I'm sorry for the delays, as always.