We just got home from Otakon late last night! I'm currently recovering. I got in to pretty rough shape through the show, so getting back to it is going to be slow.
Despite my...
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October
30 days ago
Comet & Friends Update - All Quiet Here!
I think until we start having some stuff actually going on I'm going to stick to this every two weeks update schedule. There's simply not enough for me to say at this point and ...
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October
about 1 month ago
HELLO AGAIN! Sorry for the silent week!
I apologize for missing last week! We got some huge news last week that has me grinding myself in to dust trying to be ready. By the time I realized I had only imagined I posted...
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October
about 2 months ago
Weekly Update #4 I think!
Plush manufacturing has begun!
Late last week I gave the pass on the final mass production samples, confirmed the tush tags, and submitted hang tag files. For the main part of ...
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October
2 months ago
Weekly update! Survey lock in progress
June 8th was survey lock day! A 48 hour notice should have gone out. If your survey is locked that means no changes can be made to it, other than updating your address. Make sur...
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October
2 months ago
Weekly update time. Fill your surveys!!! ORDER LOCK IS COMING!
A whopping 49 of you still need to fill out your surveys, and I would ideally be locking things down on June 5th. That looks like it is going to have to be delayed because of th...
We just got home from Otakon late last night! I'm currently recovering. I got in to pretty rough shape through the show, so getting back to it is going to be slow.
Our Otakon booth before show open. Many jumbo Comets & Novas found homes!
Despite my two week silence there isn't a ton to say, but here is what I have:
Manufacturing is continuing as expected!
The dragons are difficult to make because of their high detail and the size of the jumbos, so none of them have wrapped up, but progress is steady. Right now it looks like we should be on time for them to ship at the end of August and arrive for October fulfillment!
I did get some photos of completed plush set aside for future shipment while at the show!
20in Comets and Terras
20in Auroras
20in Novas
Sticker rewards are a little behind.
Both my shipment delay request to the printer and my mail hold to the PO was ignored for the Eclipse sticker reprint delivery. They arrived a little after we left for the con and were left on the porch. It stormed here all week while we were gone. To avoid being too negative I'll leave it at that.
Other rewards are also on time.
The keychains and buttons are shipping by sea due to weight and should be here in early September!
Paused customs work will now resume!
Thanks to the con I had to stop doing much of anything creative that wasn't Otakon prep for all of July. But we're good now! 👍 Expect me to be back in contact with you soon if you were looking for updates.
Over all I have a LOT to catch up on and will be doing my absolute best to knock these tasks out efficiently ASAP. I look forward to getting back to normalcy!
I think until we start having some stuff actually going on I'm going to stick to this every two weeks update schedule. There's simply not enough for me to say at this point and time! If you saw the last update you pretty much know everything that is going on. There have been hardly any changes, and they're all pretty much of no consequence to anyone but me at the moment. Still, I'm happy to share what I can! For general updates:
Replacement black dragon stickers haven't shipped yet.
Keychains and buttons also haven't shipped.
Plush manufacturing has been quiet, no problems on that front.
Something worth noting: It is currently convention season, and acrylic keychains and stickers are big convention items! Many manufacturers are slammed with prioritized requests for folks paying for rush orders. Especially with August coming, since that month is CRAMMED with shows. I don't expect that to ease up until after Labor Day weekend, when the last of a bunch of massive conventions will be done.
For customs:
All 6 custom concepts are complete! Here they are all together:
Melissa's Dragon Form, possibly the most detailed in the batch
Galrin
Elana
Veshtari, might tie with Melissa for the most detailed
Currently Unnamed Dragon, not sure if this individual will be given a name by their owner or not.
Viscule Drache's Dragon Form, most of the detail for this one is in the embroidery not shown here.
Now that they are all complete they will be submitted for patterning shortly.
Work on the custom sound pack and custom scent are starting!
And most importantly:
We are still on-track for October fulfillment!
The only "problems" currently basically amount to having to space out actually paying for things because of card limits. All of which are self imposed at this point for safety- after the card got frozen for that first big payment because of suspected fraud we're taking stuff slower. It is frustrating to have the money just sitting there and feeling allowed to use it on what it's there for. However this is the kind of thing I built time in for and we're far from out of that runway! There isn't really a rush.
As mentioned last time, if you need me for something quickly please contact me via the contact page at lairbrew.com! I do not get alerts for new messages/comments on Backerkit in a timely fashion, but I actively monitor the inbox tied to lairbrew.com during all waking hours.
Non-Backerkit related Lairbrew things:
We will be at Otakon and Megaplex!
Draguette the Bread Dragon Loaf plush and Smash the Pinata Kaiju plush pre-orders launched.
The 1st wave of Love Grub plush bags shipped out, the pre-orders for the 2nd wave sold out.
I apologize for missing last week! We got some huge news last week that has me grinding myself in to dust trying to be ready. By the time I realized I had only imagined I posted an update instead of REALLY doing it, it was already Thursday, and since so little is going on I figured I'd just do it all now instead.
Since I missed last week I'll go ahead and make this a nice, concise bullet list instead of yacking your ears off:
Reward keychains have been ordered
Reward/early bird buttons have been ordered
Replacement black dragon stickers are underway
Plush manufacturing remains in-progress with no notified hiccups
Scent sachets for jumbos have been made and are currently curing
A bunch of boring under-the-hood stuff re: shipping materials has been taken care of after a storm damage related setback
I have a truly insane amount of stuffing on the way to my house for filling up stuffed jumbo orders
Only 1 out of 6 custom dragon designs remains to be finished. It's been a toughie!
I am going to be remaining extremely busy this month because we got in to Otakon last minute! It is Art Fight as well. which I participate in every year, but that is secondary to any work for conventions and this Backerkit. So I might be a little hard to get a hold of through comments here since I'm not alerted to them and don't have a lot of time to check through the day right now. If you need me, contact me through the Contact Us page on lairbrew.com since I am monitoring that inbox whenever I'm awake!
We are still on-track for October fulfillment!
We might even be early, but it is a little too soon to tell. Also for some non-backerkit related things:
We will be at Otakon and Megaplex, which prep for these cons is taking up all my free brain cycles right now! Maybe we'll see you there?
A couple other plush have been released by Lairbrew, Draguette the Bread Dragon Loaf and Smash the Pinata Kaiju.
Late last week I gave the pass on the final mass production samples, confirmed the tush tags, and submitted hang tag files. For the main part of this project we have officially reached the "time to sit and wait" stage! Manufacturing typically takes a month, but I have never ordered this many at once, so it might be mid-August before shipping time hits.
Reward stickers are here!
The original stickers for Comet, Nova, Terra, Eclipse and Aurora are all here! These are the ones that will be going out with rewards like dragon bundles. Thanks to a sale I got to get rid of the redundant color borders. They're on transparent vinyl now, so each is just an unfettered dragon! I'mmmm gonna have to have Eclipse reprinted out of pocket though. Probably with a different printer. Because this color disparity is ridiculous, and they don't have a proofing process. RGB to CMYK or not, there's no reason they should've received the image they did, looked at a solid black blob produced, and not gone "this probably isn't what they wanted." I'm pretty frustrated!
All 5 stickers!
Aurora
WHAT
Terra
Nova
Comet
I did film the unpacking as promised! I didn't have a lot of video editting time though so it goes by extremely quickly. Watch that here if you want!
Custom Plush Work Continues, Again
Most of the concept art is finished and just waiting for submission! 4 are complete. The other two have been slow to continue since I've been trying to do these in order of contact, and then they're both "try it and tweak it" designs instead of ones with solid refs. I've shared 2 finished ones so far, so here are the remaining 4:
Veshtari has a completed sheet
Elana also has a completed sheet!
Trying stuff out for this one still! This started as artist choice with some prompts and now we're tweaking it from there.
Dialing in some stuff since character decisions are getting made at the same time
That's all I have for now!
We're still waiting for the card unlock, and everything else remaining is less "will give concrete update points to share" and more "I'm making a big mess of things finding out what works and that's all that will be happening until it is very suddenly done." So there isn't much to share. I will see you next week, or sooner if something comes up!
June 8th was survey lock day! A 48 hour notice should have gone out. If your survey is locked that means no changes can be made to it, other than updating your address. Make sure you keep your address up to date if you're going to be moving in the next few months!
Most everyone with an unfinished survey either has no shippable rewards (the $1 tier.) Others have failed credit charges and haven't paid, so this is probably their way of ghosting. However there is still a small number of people with charged cards who haven't done them! I could only lock completed surveys, so if you are those people: prepare to be slightly annoyed by me continuing to email you until it gets done, because it needs to!
Freebie Sticker Replacements Arrived!
The dark horned king is all fixed up as expected! White flame goddess still arrived glossy despite them saying it would be matte this time. I'm just going to have to roll with it. Anyone who has paid for extra copies of this design, I will be emailing you to ask if glossy is ok and placing a small order to get matte for those who require it. Keep an eye out for that email as I will have to record your answers manually!
Custom Plush Work Continues
It has been tough working on 5 designs all at once since I am prioritizing dealing with them in the order they arrived! When waiting for feedback on the 1st I worked on the 2nd, for example, and when waiting on feedback for 1 and 2 I worked on 3, and so on. #2 now has approved concept art, 2 others are very close (they need minor changes,) 1 has the initial lineart and is partly colored, and 2 more are still in the sketch stage. Here are the current states of those with significant updates!
The approved plush! This one is moving to manufacturing now.
Nearly done! The owner decided to have visible iris and pupils which hasn't been done yet.
Completed profile view! I have fabric matching in hand now so when this one becomes priority it won't take long.
A quick reminder that I only work on these during the week and give myself weekends off!
No full spending breakdown this week!
This is because of a wrench in the gears! Because of the massive amount of money we moved around to pay for manufacturing, our bank flagged it as potential fraud and locked the card down for 14 DAYS. We resolved the fraud stuff, but they are unable to remove the card lock early. The vibes of when we were like HOW DO WE BUY GROCERIES and the response was just "idk lol."
We have other cards, but I gotta prioritize utilities and the ability to eat, so I haven't wanted to risk those getting locked as well. So I didn't get to do many goals last week, and won't be doing much this week either, spending wise.
The most important thing is already in motion!
I have not received plush testing updates yet, which is normal. A bunch of plush to test had to be sewn first! Since this is a large number of designs going to testing at once, and some of them are VERY large + have an external metal part (the zippers,) this is not going to be a quick process. Unfortunately I won't really know what's going on until they tell me the plush have passed.
Preparing In Advance
I want fulfillment to be as smooth as possible to get y'all's stuff to you ASAP. As such I've been setting up things like package inserts, building new shelving, and establishing a new inventory system. By starting now I should have any problems worked out well in advance! I will be working on this probably from now right up until arrival day.
Storm Damage
Minorly related, we had nasty storms last week, including one that busted in to my shipping area and messed up a TON of stuff. This mostly only got stuff for Lairbrew's current operations, but some of the paper goods I'd already gotten were destroyed by rain water. Gonna be fixing that when the card unlocks!
