FULFILLMENT COMPLETE!
about 2 years ago
– Sat, Feb 26, 2022 at 01:37:53 AM
Greetings Adventurers,
I’m pleased to announce that as of yesterday, we are finally finished with shipping the Iron Kingdoms: Requiem rewards. Some rewards as well as replacements are still in transit and should be arriving to their recipients imminently. And of course, should anything arrive amiss (or not arrive at all) please contact us so that we can correct the problem. We will monitor this Kickstarter campaign’s comments and messages through the next week or so, and once we can confirm everything has been delivered, we’ll make a final update to officially close this project, after which any needs can be directed to Privateer’s customer support at: [email protected]
Requiem has been a project like no other for us, and it is impossible to say enough, but thank you for your incredible patience, support, and generous understanding as we have navigated some of the biggest challenges that Privateer as a company has encountered in over two decades of publishing. Despite the on-time and seamless handoff of our print files to our printer, it seems like everything downstream of approving our samples was a textbook lesson in Murphy’s Law. Not ones to waste the opportunity of a good lesson, there are several things we’ll be doing differently in the future to mitigate the potential impact of forces out of our control, some of which we have already implemented on upcoming projects.
Sometimes, it’s the best intentions that lead to speed bumps. With the Requiem campaign, we offered a selection of miniatures as add-ons in the pledge manager, which we thought would be desirable for use in IKRPG campaigns. This inspired many request for additional miniatures from our extensive catalog to be added to the pledge manager, and what started as a couple dozen became a couple hundred different individual items in our effort to accommodate as many requests as possible. However, in doing so, we greatly complicated the fulfillment process for our packing team which added to the overall time we would need to pack and ship orders. We realized this was going to slow things down well before the printed materials ever showed up, so we got as much of a head start on it as we could, but also realized that as much as we love sending out all those minis with the orders, it was not a good plan for future projects, which is why we did not offer a-la-carte miniatures add-ons for the Borderlands and Beyond project. Going forward, we will streamline our projects as much as possible to ensure that the fulfillment process can be kept simple and efficient. This means fewer option for getting lots of different things from Privateer into a single order, but it will allow us to take advantage of other opportunities for improving our deliver process as well.
Streamlining our future projects means that we can make better use of the fulfillment services we work with. Until now, all our rewards were packed at our own warehouse and the shipped in bulk shipments to international fulfillment services, who then handled the local shipping in those countries. In the future, we will split-ship from the vendors producing the books or game components directly to the fulfillment services, who will handle the packing of the individual parcels. This will decrease overall fulfillment time by removing an entire leg of the international shipping process as well as dividing the labor of fulfillment over multiple teams. We are trying to arrange this for the Borderlands and Beyond shipment, but it is due to ship soon and we’re not sure if the original plans can be altered. However, we are building this into our planning for all future projects manufactured outside of Privateer’s facilities.
The supply chain issues contributing to international shipping delays are expected to continue for the foreseeable future, but the issue we ran into with the container shortage is one we hope to mitigate through multiple, smaller shipments.
In the wake of the great ‘Make-Ready’ debacle, our printer has pledged to redouble their quality control protocols. And while the situation with these bad copies that got mixed in with our production run is an isolated and unique occurrence in our long history of working with this printer, we will be conducting a rigorous quality control check of our own when future shipments of product arrive to ensure that we catch any issues before they are sent out the door.
As well, we are upgrading our packaging materials to better protect contents during shipping, particularly for our international shipments that seem to endure considerably more abuse these days than what we have observed in the past.
We still don’t have a great way to address freak snowstorms or debilitating pandemics, but lowering our ambition for a speedy delivery — or rather, planning time into our schedule for the inevitable speed bumps — will ensure greater success in delivering on our projected timeline.
Armed with the new tools and experience gained from overcoming the challenges of this fulfillment process, we look forward to bringing you more projects and more great rewards in the future. Thank you, again, for backing Iron Kingdoms: Requiem, for bringing the Iron Kingdoms to life again as a role playing game setting, and for your encouragement and support from the moment this project launched to the time it delivered. We are ever grateful.