April 1st Fulfillment Update
about 3 years ago – Fri, Apr 02, 2021 at 02:24:48 AM

Hello everyone!

Another month is upon us, and we're back to check in on how fulfillment is going, and what progress we're making towards wrapping up this fulfillment. Let's dive right in.

State of Fulfillment

First, the positive news: as of now, the campaign stands at just over 81% fulfilled. Unfortunately, though, that still leaves almost 19% remaining to fulfill, as well as pre-orders. So what's going on?

As you're all aware, we've hit some snags late in our fulfillment, and our suppliers have been facing some issues hitting our targets as we enter the home stretch. As a result, we've been unable to close out some orders while we wait for the items to arrive.

The main thing holding us back is wood dice. Our supplier fell behind in January of this year. Part of this was due to a planned delay impacting production far more than intended, and part was due to weather and other events outside of their control. It added up to a significant delay with the January order. Unfortunately, when the January order arrived, we found that many of the items weren't up to the quality standards we expected, which was highly unusual. Upon the vendor being made aware of this, to their credit, they indicated that those items never should have been shipped, and began work immediately on replacements. In addition, they inspected the February product, already in progress, to make sure the same situation wouldn't be occurring there. They did find other similarly poor specimens in that product, and pulled all of them for replacement.

The good news here is that we and our supplier are committed to giving you the items you backed for, at the highest quality we can achieve, but the bad news is that we've reached the beginning of April, and we're talking about waves that were due to ship in January and February, which is obviously not where we want to be. We are checking in regularly and looking to get a good handle on how we can accelerate things.

As of this writing, the vendor is finishing up January replacements and the February order, and those should arrive here shortly. They have the March numbers and have begun that order, with April and May to follow as closely behind as possible.

Our gemstone stock is looking much better, but still has had some holes in it. That said, we are receiving a shipment on Monday that fills most of those, so we're looking good on the gemstone front. But, at this point, the vast majority of remaining orders contain wood dice. So, what to do? Read on.

Partial Shipments

We have been avoiding shipping partial orders for several reasons in this campaign thus far:

1) We didn't have a solid estimate of just how late our stock would be. If we went through the considerable challenge and expense of splitting orders in the system and shipping partial ones, only to have the outstanding product for those orders arrive a week later, it would be a huge waste.

2) It's very expensive. We kept shipping prices as low as we could on this project, which was feasible since most of the orders are low-volume items. Splitting orders to fulfill separately essentially doubles the cost of shipping those orders, and shipping has already gotten more expensive in the intervening months as a function of the pandemic and other market forces. Obviously, we wouldn't pass any of these costs on to backers, so these costs would not be recovered.

3) It's difficult to keep track of split shipments. Splitting shipments, especially a large number of them, is a tedious process, and there is a considerable risk of error. It involves using our shipping software to split each order, selecting which items are in which shipment for each one, to make sure the packing slips are correct. This means it's much slower than simply shipping orders normally, and if there is an error, it can really wreak havoc with our records, or cause customer confusion or, worse, cause a customer to actually receive the wrong items. So it must be done with care.

All this means partial shipments are to be avoided if possible. However, at some point, enough is enough, and we are not willing to let you wait any longer. It is my opinion that we are nearly at that point, and so we're going to be moving forward next week preparing for partial shipments to begin going out, beginning with the oldest outstanding orders and working forward through to the March orders. We should be ready to start shipments next week, once we inventory our latest gemstone shipment and properly train our shipping staff on how to split orders correctly.

We sincerely apologize for all of the delays, and we certainly share your frustration with them. We are taking steps to remedy this as best we can and prevent similar situations in the future. We will not rest until all of you have every item that you pledged for,  as promised. Of course, this includes our pre-order customers as well.

Thanks to each and every one of you, as always, for your support and patience while we wrap up this project, our most backed (in terms of number of backers) project ever. We sincerely appreciate your support and passion for what we do, and we hope that the delays do not overly diminish your enjoyment of the items you'll be receiving. On the bright side, it seems like we may all be getting close to a time when we can use these dice on a tabletop, sitting across from each other, together once again. I know that we're all very much looking forward to that.

~ Ed Maranville, VP Crowdfunding for Wyrmwood

March 15th Fulfillment Update
about 3 years ago – Tue, Mar 16, 2021 at 02:28:27 AM

Hello everyone, time to check in with another fulfillment update.

January Wood Dice Orders

In our last update, we were expecting the imminent arrival of the January order of wood dice. It DID arrive, and we have begun shipping those orders. That's the good news.

The bad news is that, unfortunately, a good number of the sets we received were not up to the expected standards. This appears to be an oversight; generally, the quality of the wood dice we've received has been excellent thus far, so this was unexpected. Our supplier has been made aware of the issue and immediately took responsibility and resolved to correct the error. They've been given the numbers on the faulty dice, and that subset of product was shipped back overnight for evaluation.

They are currently verifying that the February order is free of any such issues, and will be getting replacements for the returned product as soon as possible. These products are being fast-tracked, and we will be continually checking in to make sure that progress is being made.

Fulfillment Progress: by the Numbers

We mentioned that orders were actively shipping. To go into a bit more detail, at this point, the majority of the orders in the January wave have shipped, around 90% of the wave in all. To zoom out to the whole project, about 80% of the Kickstarter overall is fulfilled. We're working hard to get the remaining orders out as soon as possible... but not at the expense of quality.

To that end, we wanted to give you a final reminder on our Craftsman's Promise guarantee, should you have an issue with an item in your order:

The Craftsman's Promise

There is only one acceptable outcome for our Craftsmen: a product that they can take personal pride in and an -absolutely- satisfied client. If you are unsatisfied with your product for -any- reason at all, we will fully refund or replace the item (at our discretion) free of charge. We always guarantee our products, and we will always pay for shipping.

New Dice: Coming to a Game Table Near You Soon

Thank you for your support and patience as we close out fulfillment of this project - our most-backed ever. We hope the new dice will assist in making your upcoming game sessions that much sweeter... I know many of you are joining us in looking forward to many game nights with friends and loved ones ahead.

~ Ed Maranville, VP of Kickstarter Projects for Wyrmwood

Pre-orders Being Charged MONDAY, March 8th
about 3 years ago – Fri, Mar 05, 2021 at 03:43:14 PM

Hello, everyone!

Apologies for this quick update for our pre-order customers (late backers), who also receive all of our updates. Now that pre-orders are closed for this campaign, we'll be going ahead and charging those to catch them up to the rest of the campaign pledges. Pre-orders will be charged on Monday, March 8th.

As we draw nearer to the end of the campaign fulfillment, this will allow us to keep moving on to the pre-orders smoothly. Thank you, and we look forward to wrapping up fulfillment as soon as possible!

~ Ed Maranville, VP of Kickstarter Projects for Wyrmwood

March 1st Fulfillment Update
about 3 years ago – Wed, Mar 03, 2021 at 07:41:06 PM

Hello, everyone!

We're back to check in on the first day of March with a fulfillment update.

Wood Dice Incoming

We've been keeping in contact with our supplier, who has informed us that the January order of wood dice is finally on its way. That should be here this week, and we're going to do everything we can to get them shipped ASAP, ideally before Friday draws to a close. So be on the lookout for those shipping confirmations towards the end of this week or beginning of next.

They've been working on the February order, as well, and we're told that batch is on track to follow closely on the heels of the January order - assuming everything keeps moving properly, that could arrive as soon as next week. When it does, of course, we'll move right into shipping those, as well.

We're working on closing out these few remaining road blocks and accelerating fulfillment as much as possible. If you're one of those still waiting on your order, thank you for your patience and bearing with us as we push forward. Of course, all January and February backers with late orders will be receiving a complimentary $25 Gyft Certificate with their order, to make up for our inaccuracy on our original fulfillment estimates. You can use that for anything on our website, WyrmwoodGaming.com, or use it to add to a Kickstarter pledge in any other campaign. If you choose the latter option, there is a campaign coming up you might be interested in... see below for details.

Pre-orders

Pre-orders are officially CLOSED. Our order numbers are now completely final, so we can get the last orders placed with all of our suppliers. Thank you for your support of this campaign!

You might be wondering - does this mean the end of Dice by Wyrmwood? Good question.

Dice 2.0 - Wyrmwood X Dispel Dice

...And there's your answer. You can watch some recent episodes of our vlog, Wyrm Lyfe, for more. This first episode covers our strategy meeting to go over our plans and options for the campaign:

And this one is perhaps of special interest to you, as a backer. It was a conversation with Karen of Dispel Dice concerning the big question - why launch a new project when you haven't fully fulfilled (and are in fact late on fulfilling) your current project? This applies to us, as well, so we wanted to highlight this valid and important question here.

Onwards and Upwards

Thank you all for your support and patience, and we look forward to closing out fulfillment on this project. You made this project a rousing success, so much so that we felt we had to follow up with more. We hope that you're as excited to see what's next as we are...

~ Ed Maranville, VP of Kickstarter Projects for Wyrmwood

Mid-February Fulfillment Update
about 3 years ago – Tue, Feb 16, 2021 at 09:16:59 PM

Hello everyone!

As time marches on, we're back to check in on how everything is going.

Fulfillment Update

First off, we are waiting on a shipment of the wood dice but should be receiving it in about a week. Shipping them out by the end of the month shouldn't be a problem, however, we're still going to be behind for February's orders as well. We are aiming to get fully caught up during March and still meet or exceed our goal of wrapping up during May in accordance with our original estimates. Thank you for your patience while we get these last remaining orders from our suppliers in and close out the project over the next few months!

Pre-Orders CLOSING in less than Two Weeks

As mentioned in the last update, we'll be closing down and turning off pre-orders at the end of this month, February 28th. Our goal will be to roll into fulfillment on those orders as soon as we finish the final Kickstarter tiers. We'll be placing all necessary orders with our suppliers as soon as possible after pre-orders come to a close.

This marks the last chance to get some of the dice in this campaign; while we will be moving forward with a follow-up campaign soon, not all of the dice from this one will be returning. Dice we have no plans of offering at this time include:

• Gold Sandstone
• Ivory Jade
• Crown Crystal, Black
• Crown Crystal, Purple
• Dahlia Candy Glass
• Primrose Candy Glass
• Tiger's Eye
• Watermelon Tourmaline
• Cinder Fortune
• Bobby Bennett Dice
• Paulie-hedrals
• Chaos Cubes
• All Wood Dice

You can consider this the official "last call" on these dice, which you can find until the end of the month right here.

Onward

As of this writing, more than 75% of the campaign is fulfilled, and we are doing everything we can to accelerate fulfillment on the remainder. At this stage, while fulfillment closes out the project, we're looking into development and getting things in place for the follow-up - which we've been thinking about since we wrapped up this campaign!

The latest episode of Wyrm Lyfe (above) shows some of what we have in mind. We have some things in store that we think you'll love, and we're really excited for Dice by Wyrmwood 2.0. Our goal is to make it bigger and better. Not just that, but we have our sights set on breaking a record with this one. Not, like, a Kickstarter record... a world record. So, yes, we've definitely got a lot planned.

Of course, we don't have everything figured out. For one thing, the name isn't final. We have to change it because this time... it isn't just "Dice by Wyrmwood" - we're being joined by a collaborator. 

Who, you ask?

All in good time, friends, all in good time... stay tuned!

~ Wyrmwood