Reaper Kickstarter

[Braxandur]

I thought that reaper were using some of the money they made to get a plastic casting system in Texas. I guess that takes a while to set up though.

If I recall correctly, they stated that they would buy a plastic casting system and I thought I read that they have now bought it. They also stated that already during the kickstarter that this entire kickstarter would be "cast" in China.

[Sangennaru]

From their newsletter:

First, our Canadian customers.

During the run of our Kickstarter campaign, we promised that we'd get you your stuff without you being nailed with a bunch of customs fees. To that end, we've had to apply for non-resident importer status to Canada. This way, we absorb the cost of the customs fees, and you get local delivery of your pledge packages. Unfortunately, we're caught in a bureaucratic morass of red tape. We were led to believe that we would be finished with this part of the process in December 2012, but we've been there for months now. Happily, we've received word from our customs broker that we're very close to having our application finalized, and as soon as we have the all clear, you'll start receiving your things. We're terribly sorry for the delay, but this was the only way to do it without sa ddling you with the import fees.

tl;dr: We're stuck in red tape, but the end is near, and we start duty-free shipments to Canada soon.

Now, everybody else.

You know we've been partnering with a company in China to manufacture your Bones figures. They sent us the first of several staggered shipments for fulfillment: five shipping containers with the Vampire boxed sets. We've received and processed those containers, even renting more storage space to hold it all. We also broke down a number of those vampire boxes to process add-ons that were included within the Vampire box. Then we started fulfillment, and we blasted through several thousand pledges much more quickly than we anticipated.

Now we're waiting on shipment two from China. These containers include many of the larger add-ons. We have documentation that we will receive them any day. As soon as we do, we'll continue fulfilling the orders that include the items that arrive in this wa ve of containers. We didn't expect to go so fast with the first wave, and China took longer to ship wave two than originally promised.

On the bright side, if past performance is any indication, there won't be a huge turnaround time between our receipt of the Bones and shipping them to you. Once we get to your order, our system will send you an email with tracking information for our US customers and a customs confirmation number for our international customers.

tl;dr: We've shipped all we can and are waiting for more stuff from China so we can send out the rest. We'll email when we fill your order.

There isn't anything we would rather be doing that sending you your stuff, and we will be resuming that process as soon as humanly possible.

We appreciate your continued patience and again thank you for your support.

Sincerely,
Ed Pugh
CEO, Reaper Miniatures

[OLeary]

At least they've put out a press release. The wait isn't souring me on Reaper. I did come across one guy who got his and is painting them and posting them on his blog. He seems to love them, so that's a bit of good news.

[dijit]

I have to say I've been impressed with the level of communication from them. Yes, they're late, but the project also went beyond their wildest imaginations, and they're not really that behind, when you take it into consideration. But the waiting doesn't make the antticipation any easier!

[Sangennaru]

At least they've put out a press release. The wait isn't souring me on Reaper. I did come across one guy who got his and is painting them and posting them on his blog. He seems to love them, so that's a bit of good news.

Link? the Reaper forum is a little messy, some clean links might help.

Yeah, no rage from me as well. Just envy

[Neotacha]

Link? the Reaper forum is a little messy, some clean links might help.

Yeah, no rage from me as well. Just envy

That was probably the update sent out via Kickstarter.

[Sangennaru]

sounds all very slick and professional

now no more:

We are currently waiting on only 4 more shipments (Containers) from China, the last of which should be leaving China about one week from today!
It normally takes 3-6 weeks from ship date to arrive at our dock, with 5 weeks being the Average.

As things arrive over the next few weeks we will be able to resume shipping orders, but we are thinking that the bulk of your orders will be waiting for that last shipment to arrive.

We appreciate your patience and support throughout this process!

~Ed

apparently, they knew that the container wasn't arriving since at least 5 weeks ago. Ew.

I've never been so comprensive about the difficulty of managing a few thousands packages (they ARE a lot, but you are professionists! You can hire people or whatever, and if it is too expensive it means that it is a bad business), but this is being ridicolous.

[Centaur_Seducer]

You mean hiring more people that will cost more money and eat into the profit margin that most businesses try to get?
I think they've run the numbers on many occassions, but fucked up a bit with the million chooses being available.

[Sangennaru]

You mean hiring more people that will cost more money and eat into the profit margin that most businesses try to get?

They should have done that. It might be expensive, but in that case something is wrong in your business plan.

I think they've run the numbers on many occassions, but fucked up a bit with the million chooses being available.

Honestly.
17500 different lists. they are a lot, but a simple program can handle them as well as 5. No need for a dedicated server, nor for a cluster of machines. Just a pc.
They spent 1 month on creating a misterious pledge manager, when that time could be used by a dozen of people manually inserting the data (a cheap cost, after all), or using some basic php forms online.

All that thing is a big mess, but they choose to fall in it!

[Verderer]

I thought the problem was they havent received all the necessary minis from China, and so cannot ship them? What has size of the personnel or data systems got to do with it? (Maybe I've got it wrong?)

[Sangennaru]

yep, that was another problem, i just wanted to say that. ^^"

[Verderer]

Right, personally I aint too bothered, because the deal was so ridiculously good. So I don't actually mind that this massive hoard of minis is arriving a little later. My plate is full as it is. But that's just my personal situation, and not meant as a defence for Reaper.

But I got to say that having dealt with Reaper for several years as retailer, they've always been fair and professional. I guess this new situations has caught up with them as well, don't you just hate having to depend on others to fulfill you robligations? You cant do anything about it, and any explanation may sound as an excuse.

[PatrickWR]

My FLGS has already received their kickstarter (presumably) and have started selling the individual, loose plastic figures. I gotta say, they look great!

[eMills]

They should have done that. It might be expensive, but in that case something is wrong in your business plan.

Their business plan is fine.  I don't see why they should have to incur more expenses after already giving us a ridiculous amount of stuff at such a low price.

You're upset it is delayed, I get that.  So am I.  But you are being a bit silly with these off-the cuff generalizations and criticism.

Honestly.
17500 different lists. they are a lot, but a simple program can handle them as well as 5. No need for a dedicated server, nor for a cluster of machines. Just a pc.
They spent 1 month on creating a misterious pledge manager, when that time could be used by a dozen of people manually inserting the data (a cheap cost, after all), or using some basic php forms online.

All that thing is a big mess, but they choose to fall in it!

Where did they say anything about a dedicated server or a cluster of machines?  Writing and testing a program, any program, that is to handle large amounts of data takes a bit of time.

Labor is anything but cheap, and you have clearly never had to manually insert large amounts of data into a database.  Nevermind all the time it would take, the mistakes are likely to cause even more time and money to be wasted.

Where did you see that they knew 5 weeks ago that the latest container was delayed?

I'm disappointed that I have to wait longer for my stuff of course, but I will be giddy with joy when I receive it. Lol.  I feel that Reaper have been more open and communicative about the KS fulfillment than a lot of other companies have been, so I'm still satisfied over all, personaly.

~Eric

[Sangennaru]

Their business plan is fine.  I don't see why they should have to incur more expenses after already giving us a ridiculous amount of stuff at such a low price.

You're upset it is delayed, I get that.  So am I.  But you are being a bit silly with these off-the cuff generalizations and criticism.
Where did they say anything about a dedicated server or a cluster of machines?  Writing and testing a program, any program, that is to handle large amounts of data takes a bit of time.

Labor is anything but cheap, and you have clearly never had to manually insert large amounts of data into a database.  Nevermind all the time it would take, the mistakes are likely to cause even more time and money to be wasted.

Where did you see that they knew 5 weeks ago that the latest container was delayed?

I'm disappointed that I have to wait longer for my stuff of course, but I will be giddy with joy when I receive it. Lol.  I feel that Reaper have been more open and communicative about the KS fulfillment than a lot of other companies have been, so I'm still satisfied over all, personaly.

~Eric

Actually, i'm not that angry because of the delay, i've plenty of other stuff to do here.
I'm more upset by the way they're managing this. Not the worst way, but i don't like that people are now just defending them because they offered a great deal. The two things are simply unrelated. ^^"


About the pledge manager, they said how hard was to organize such a big program, and how hard was managing the forms. Even using some kind of protections to avoid frauds, that is a form.


for the 5 weeks:
they said that the container takes 6 weeks to arrive, and it was shipped now. So, starting from 5-6 weeks ago, they should have known that this big boy wasn't going to arrive in time.



That said, i can happily wait, and i'll be really happy at the end too. But still, they are just playing a little with us. Other companies were even worse... well, that's not an excuse ^^"