Schlock Mercenary Shirts

Shirt orders placed, we have and estimated ship date
almost 8 years ago – Thu, Jun 21, 2018 at 11:55:16 PM

Greetings Backers,

TL;DR The orders have been placed and I'm told that they will be put into the mail to me on July 3. This means I'll be able to begin mailing to all of you around July 15. This matches the original schedule promised in the Kickstarter.

More detail:

I placed the final shirt order last Friday. I approved the proofs yesterday. All seemed well. Then this morning I get yet another email saying essentially "We don't have this exact size-and-color combination that is part of your order. Do you want to substitute this other shirt with nearly the same texture and a different name for that color? Or would you prefer to wait endlessly for us to restock what you ordered?" I've paraphrased here. I chose to switch because I want you all to have your shirts ASAP. This is the third or fourth time I've been asked to make an adjustment to my order. I don't think the company I'm working with is negligent, this is just the nature of a business where each item has a multitude of color/style/size combinations.

For Australian backers:

I'm very sorry for the Australia folks who will not get their shirts before the end of June (thus avoiding and additional fee from package fowarders.) If I'm shipping directly to you, then that extra fee will land on me, not on you. If you're from Australia and you're using a forwarder and would like to talk to me about switching, go ahead and email [email protected]. We can do a cost comparison. It may still be to your advantage to use the forwarding service even with the extra fee.

Thank you all for your support. My next update will be a quick one when I have confirmation that the shirts were shipped to me, or a slightly longer one when I have photos of delivered shirts.

--Sandra Tayler

Shirt order progress
almost 8 years ago – Mon, Jun 11, 2018 at 09:28:51 PM

Greetings Backers,

Today I placed the order for the Property of PM, Schlock with plasgun, and Stupid/Lucky shirts. I'm still waiting on final quote for the other three shirts, but I'm relieved to finally have three of the shirts in process. According to the quote I was given, they'll ship the shirts to me nine business days from today. So I am hoping to be able to begin shipping the first packages of shirts starting the week of June 25. Obviously there will be some packages I can't ship until I have the other shirt designs, but I'll get started on the orders that I can ship.

Why did it take so long to place the order? That is a very good question. The shirt company says that their slow response times are because they are in the middle of switching over to a new computer system. That makes sense because their website changed and required a new login from me between the time I first planned my order and when I submitted for purchase. It might also explain why some of the size/color combinations that appeared available when I planned the Kickstarter turned out not to be available after all. I'm still going to need to contact some of you with tall size shirts to make sure I can deliver as close to the colors you want as possible. (If there is a problem with one of your shirt colors, I'll contact you.)

I've had word from some Australian customers that there is a legislation change which goes into affect on July 1 and which means that package forwarding companies are going to charge about 10% more. If you fall into this category, please email [email protected] and I'll pull your order into a priority pile so I do everything I can to get it shipped before that deadline.

Thank you all for your support. I'll update again when the remaining three shirts are ordered or when I have pictures of a shipment to show you.

--Sandra Tayler

Quick Update on Shirts
almost 8 years ago – Thu, May 31, 2018 at 09:22:30 PM

Greetings Backers,

I've spent the last two weeks waiting for the shirt company to get back to me with quotes (and being distracted by many other things, which led me to not nudging them sooner.) Yesterday I nudged. Today I have three out of six quotes.

The quotes look good, but I've been informed that the color charcoal is not available in 3X sizes. Also the color purple is not available in tall sizes. If you had either of these color combinations, I've sent you an email so that you can update your color choices.

I may make a similar discovery and email about size/ color combinations on the next set of quotes as well.

Sorry about the confusion there. In my prior phone calls to the shirt company I was led to believe these options were available. As soon as I've got updated colors, I'll place these orders and we'll have half the shirts on the way to me.

Thanks for all your support.

--Sandra Tayler

The Process of Counting Shirts
almost 8 years ago – Fri, May 18, 2018 at 11:46:19 PM

Greetings Backers,

TL;DR: I'm still waiting on a final price quote from the shirt printer. Once I have it, I'll place the order and at that point I should have a specific estimated date of delivery. The next update will be in two weeks.

Details

Last week I said I'd provide some details about how the shirts are counted so I can place the shirt order. Then I got distracted by a delivery of RAM books, combining orders, and assorted family things. But this week I have that information for you.

I explained back in the Survey Instructions post, how (and why) I had to create each shirt in the system twice. This meant I couldn't just use Backerkit's handy "Counts" tool and get a simple count for each particular design/color/size combination of shirt. I had to get counts in two places and then add them together. And I had to do this across 500 SKUs. (SKU= Stock Keeping Unit, a single design, size, color combination.) I needed a system that helped me keep human error to a minimum. This was my first attempt:

It was not ideal. It was too easy for me to accidentally write numbers in the wrong column. You can see several places where I did exactly that and scribbled it out. Additionally all the SKUs were listed alphabetically in the database, where as my chart had the colors and sizes in an order that makes sense to human brains, but is not alphabetical. This meant that I was jumping around on the sheet as I was trying to record numbers, thus increasing my error rates. I re-created my system, putting a separate column for each version of shirt, a column for the added numbers, and also putting the shirt sizes and colors in the same order than I found them in the database.

 For added clarity, I used different colors of pens. The red numbers are the total count of each specific SKU. Once I had these counts, I was ready to submit to the shirt company. I reached out to my contact and asked if he had any specific instructions on how I should deliver the order. He said, "just send it to me" So I sent six Word documents, one for each shirt design.

 That was when the guy got back to me and fessed up that he was their sticker and label guy. He handed me off to their shirt expert. She and I exchanged emails over several days where we pinned down exactly which model of shirt would be needed to cover the sizes and colors I intended to use. I then reformatted everything into a spreadsheet. Or rather, six spreadsheets. One for each shirt design.

 This format seems to be approved, the email I got back said I should have a quote in a couple of business days. So I'm expecting the quote Monday-ish. I will be going over the quote in careful detail to make sure that it matches my counts and requirements.

Thank you all for your support. Next update will be when I have the estimated delivery schedule from the shirt printer.

--Sandra Tayler

Shirt Order Begun
almost 8 years ago – Fri, May 11, 2018 at 06:52:03 PM

Greetings Backers,

Thank you to everyone who got their surveys answered!

There are still 17 who haven't answered your surveys. We will still honor our commitment to deliver shirts to you, so go ahead and answer when you can. After the first bulk shipment of shirts arrives and is distributed I will create a second order of shirts to get yours and to correct any errors we discover in the counting and shipping process. (With an order as complex as this one, we're certain to make some error.)

I've submitted shirt counts to our printer to get an official price quote. I've already had some back and forth emails to get precise shirt models and counts nailed down. Once I have that quote, I can place the order. I'm not sure how long it will take them to get back to me with the official quote, I'm guessing 3-5 working days.

I've gathered information to write up a post about the complex process of getting accurate shirt counts. Hopefully I'll be able to get that written up over the weekend. For right now, I need to do my weekly accounting, shipping, and go update the RAM kickstarter.

Thank you for all your support.

--Sandra Tayler