First and foremost, I want to thank everyone for their sweet messages since the last update - a lot of you were super understanding of the tariff situation and sympathized a lot, I almost started crying with how kind everyone has been, haha!
I want to start off this update with (another) thank you because despite all the challenges with this project, you all have been so nice. It truly has been tough for me not just on a small business level due to all these new changes, but also on a more personal level the past year and a half or so.
I want to share that even recently it has been really tough on me because my dog, Milo, has recently passed away due to a cancer that spread to his liver/spleen at 10.5 years old in late July. His health declined really rapidly in the span of a month and he passed away in his sleep in my room last week He was really struggling with rapid muscle weakness and incontinence, and it's hard for me to even type this out because I really, really miss him.
Here's a cute photo of him. We always had to gently wipe away the lil crusties covering his nostrils due to his condition, we were actually in the middle of it when we took this photo of him. He was a grumpy grandpa and for some reason always had beef with my dad's shoes/feet, but he absolutely loved cuddles and kisses. He'd take that over treats any day. Rest in peace and cuddles, my sweet lil' pupper. ❤️
🇪🇺 Onto other business! Notice regarding EU shipments:
As someone of you may already have heard, there's a lot of information (and panic) being shared online regarding a law that comes into effect starting August 12th (PPWR and EPR). To keep it very short: it affects shipments within the EU that requires business (including micro/small businesses) to - as far as we know - pay an fee for every individual EU country we want to ship to. What this means is that it is possible to get faced with a hefty fine if we don't register within these countries which can range from €100 - 400 per country plus some countries requiring a legal representative.
As you can imagine, this sounds ridiculous and not sustainable long-term since this basically goes against the free trade market that we're used to. In other words, shipping to the USA would now be a lot easier for me than to ship within my own continent, union, even my own country.
It seems like the past two years are full of laws and decisions that actively seem to want to bring down the micro- and small businesses and it's frankly exhausting to keep up with everything. The USA recently opened up for me, only to get hit around a month-ish later being unable to ship within the EU... when does it end, I wonder. 😵💫
🐏 Regarding Funfetti Sheep
The remade Funfetti pins are currently on their way to me but it has been taking unusually longer than what I'm used to. As far as I've noticed, it is currently stuck in customs and has been for a while. I've already contacted my manufacturer about this as well as FedEx to see what's going on but I haven't received any clear information other than it's being actively worked on. All I hope is that there isn't some other packaging law I'm not aware of that's causing this delay, but I'm keeping a close eye on it and keep everyone in the loop as much as possible.
In the meantime, if your pledge includes Funfetti and you're fine with receiving the cooler-toned variant (which was a factory mistake which they acknowledged, hence the remakes) please send me an email to [email protected]. That way I can note it down and send your pledge on the way as soon as I can.
You can see the color differences below:
Left: Cooler-toned variant | Right: Sample that got shown and what I expected to receive in the first place.
And lastly, since I'll be posting this in every update from now on as a kind reminder in case this is something you'd be interested in so your pledge can be on its way a lot faster ☺️:
🇺🇸 USA Reminder: How can I get my rewards earlier? Can I opt to pay for the tariffs so I can receive my rewards sooner?
Absolutely! Since tariff costs have increased since July 24th, it's been a massive dent in my fulfillment plans since I'll be paying for these costs out of pocket on top of also compensating for the upgraded shipping costs that is mandatory in order to be able to ship out the pledges (for more information, please see this update).
This means that shipping will take much longer than anticipated for USA backers, so unless you're fine with covering these extra expenses so you can get your rewards sooner, unfortunately I'm going to have to ask you to wait a bit longer since I cannot guarantee when I'll be able to ship them out. 🥲
If you don't mind covering the tariff costs, send me an email to [email protected] and I'll send a screenshot with the exact amount that needs to be paid. We can discuss it further from there.
It's been a lot of ups and downs this year but at least I'm happy to be making progress even if it's slower than I initially anticipated or would have liked. 😅 Thank you again for your understanding and support, I really appreciate it during these trying times. 💚
