Last Call for Shirt Surveys
almost 8 years ago
– Fri, May 04, 2018 at 01:05:06 PM
Greetings Backers,
Thank you to all of you who have filled out your surveys. I appreciate your promptness.
There are still 59 unanswered surveys. I need your survey answered by Monday May 7. If you have not yet filled out a survey to say which shirts you want, please check your email for a message from Backerkit. If you can't find an email message, you can go to this link and enter your email address to reach your survey.
https://schlock-mercenary-shirts.backerkit.com/
If you are having trouble filling out your survey or are having some other issue that has prevented filling out your survey, please email [email protected] so that I can help you.
I plan to create final shirt counts first thing Tuesday morning (May 8) so that I can place an order with the shirt printer. I have to order all the shirts in a single order to get the prices that allow this Kickstarter to function. If there are any unanswered surveys, I'll make best guesses on what to order so that you can get your shirts, but my guesses are not a sure thing and you may not get exactly what you want.
Please fill out your survey if you haven't done it yet.
Thank you to everyone for your support.
--Sandra Tayler
Survey Progress and FAQ
almost 8 years ago
– Thu, Apr 26, 2018 at 05:56:46 PM
Greetings Backers,
As of this morning 56% of you have filled out your survey. That is a very solid start considering that I pushed the button to send them only a day ago. All the surveys have been sent. If you haven't seen your survey email, please check your spam folder. If you still can't find it, go to this link and fill in your email address:
https://schlock-mercenary-shirts.backerkit.com/
If that doesn't solve the problem, email [email protected] and I'll investigate.
Some questions that have come up:
I forgot to configure the additional cost for 4XL and 5XL shirts. This is my error, and so any of you who selected these sizes will benefit by not having to pay the additional dollar or two per shirt. Trying to fix it with over half the surveys answered will create additional problems. If you feel like throwing additional dollars into the tip jar, I won't turn that down, but I'm not going to attempt to collect any more money for 4XL and 5XL sizes.
For those combining their shirt order and their RAM order from our prior Kickstarter. If you logged this preference in your survey, there isn't anything else you need to do at this time. Starting sometime next week (after more surveys are completed) I'll begin contacting you and arranging for shipping refunds or additional merchandise.
Thank you all for your support and for fast survey responses.
--Sandra Tayler
Important Survey Instructions
almost 8 years ago
– Mon, Apr 23, 2018 at 06:16:20 PM
Greetings Backers,
This is a long update with all kinds of details please make sure you read it thoroughly. Your surveys will be coming this week. They'll be sent out in batches, but you should have it by Friday.
In this update:
- Survey related plea
- Quick announcement about sketched books
- Updated timeline
- Detailed survey instructions
- Special instructions for international backers
- Information about add ons and shipping costs
- Process for special requests and questions
- How to update your shipping address as needed
- Crunchy details on how the survey is set up
Your surveys will be sent out this week (details below.) When you get your survey, please answer your survey promptly. The sooner we get survey answers, the sooner we can place an order for shirts.
Quick announcement about sketched books
We're offering you the opportunity to order a Sketched edition of the soon-to-release Schlock book Random Access Memorabilia. This means that Howard hand draws a Schlock character on the final page of the book. If you haven't already ordered one as part of our prior Kickstarter and would like to get one, all you have to do is add it during the "add on" portion of your survey.
Updated timeline
Good news, the timeline is moving up by a week because I accidentally included three calendar weeks in the first two week period. Surveys will go out April 25-27 instead of in May as previously stated. This pushes up all the other dates by a week as well.
Detailed survey instructions
Errata Note: The Schlock with Plasgun shirts are only available as white. The survey will offer the color Heather Purple, but if you attempt to select that color, the shirt will not appear in your final order. Sorry for this error. It is due to the way that items are generated there are more crunchy details below for those who like details, but the short version is that trying to fix it would likely create another similar problem. So just ignore the Heather Purple option for the Schlock with Plasgun shirt.
The email for the survey will come from Backerkit. It will include a link that is personalized to you. When you click on the link, it will take you to a page that looks like this:
If you need to change your shipping country, this page is where you do that. Please be aware that changing the country will affect the shipping prices for your order. Once you click "Get Started" you'll be taken to this screen:
This is where you will select which shirt design you want for your first shirt. Once you have selected the design, options for color and size will appear:
If you are in the single shirt pledge level, you'll fill this out once. If you're in one of the four shirt levels, you'll be asked to fill this out for each of your shirts. Once you have filled out for all of the shirts that are included into your pledge level, you'll be taken to the add-on page. The add-on page is where you can select additional shirts for your order, add on a sketched Schlock book, or pick up some challenge coins. Be aware that some add on items will have additional shipping costs. After the survey instructions there is a table that will show you what the add on shipping prices are. If you don't want to add any items, you can click past this page. The add on page looks like this:
Once you've added on or clicked past the add on page, you'll be taken to the page where you'll fill out your address. If there is uncertainty about where your address will be in May/June 2018, then see the instructions for changing your shipping address listed below.
The final screen of your survey is where you will enter payment information if you need to give additional payment for items you added on. If you have no add ons you shouldn't see the payment page because you've already paid.
Special instructions for international backers
If you live outside of the United States and want to add on more than one item to your order, please email [email protected] so I can handle adding things to your order manually. The Backerkit system does not have a mechanism for grouping the weight of individual items and calculating shipping cost. I can probably get a better shipping cost than what is calculated automatically in Backerkit.
These prices are set based on item weight and shipping method required to mail them out with your shirts. If you want to add on a lot of things and live outside the United States, please read the special instructions above.
Process for special requests and questions
If you have a special request or a question, please first read through updates and the project FAQ to see if your question has already been answered. If it hasn't been answered, please email [email protected]. Response times may be slow at first if there are a lot of emails to handle.
How to update your shipping address as needed
This project has a quick turn around, so hopefully not too many of you will need to update your shipping information between filling out the survey and when the shirts ship. However you can update your address at any time by using your survey link to login to Backerkit and change your address. So hold onto the survey email if you think your address might change in May /June /July.
You will also get a notification email at least 2 days before your package ships and that email will give you a link to update your address if you need to.
Crunchy details about survey set up
The folks at Backerkit have created a very useful database system for allowing me to handle your pledges, organize shipments, and generally keep track of everything. However every system has quirks.
In order to set up so that you could select shirts to be included in your pledges, I had to create a single item named Schlock shirts. This item had three options for style, color, and size. I type in all of the choices for each of the options and the system auto generates an individual Stock Keeping Unit (SKU) for each possible combination. This SKU is what will show up on the packing sheet. So I can look at the sheet and know you want a Pillage Then Burn, Black, size Large. Having the system auto generate this SKUs saves me from hours of tedious work.
However there are some style/color and color/size combinations that aren't allowed. For example, the Schlock with Plasgun shirt is only available in white. But the system auto-generates options for Schlock with Plasgun in all the other colors too. Fortunately the clever folks at Backerkit have anticipated this problem. There is a step in the process of creating an item where I can check a box next to an SKU to tell the system "Don't allow this one." Then when I've entered all the options and checked all the boxes for the ones that don't work, I click a button. The system then churns and generates only the SKUs that I allowed. It also generates the pledge questions and assigns them to the right pledges.
It is a lovely system. However in my case, I'd created an item with 1200 possible SKUs. I had to go through line by line to carefully select which ones were allowed and which weren't. (That brought the number of SKUS down to around 500.) I missed checking the box next to Schlock with Plasgun, Heather Purple, Small. So the system generated a question that allowed that SKU. I could delete all the items and go through the process again, but odds are good that I would make some other mistake in the long process of checking boxes next to 1200 SKUs.
I decided the best choice was to just alert everyone to watch for the error.
Add on items are treated differently than the items that are included as part of pledges. I had to create a unique add on for each shirt design with options for color and size. This also included the process of checking boxes to disallow certain SKUs. I haven't found errors there, but it is quite possible that there are some. With shirts in place, I had to create add on items for each thing I thought Schlock folks might want to include in their order. To do that I found (or created) images and descriptive text for each item. It is a tedious process, but allows maximum flexibility for backers. It also makes sure that all the orders are collected in a way that makes it easy for me to count how many of each SKU I need to order.
I'm extremely grateful to the BackerKit system for all their work. Without them the task of managing fulfillment on these shirts would completely break my brain.
For anyone who has taken the time to scroll/read all the way down to the end of this update, I give you the cover image that we'll be using for the Schlock book Broken Wind.
Thank you for all your support.
--Sandra Tayler
Funding Complete!
almost 8 years ago
– Tue, Apr 10, 2018 at 09:59:29 PM
Greetings Backers,
Thanks to all of you, we've sold 1953 shirts, and that is only counting the ones that are included in the pledges, not any that people want to add on. We're blown away and very grateful for your enthusiastic support of this project. We weren't expecting this much.
The surveys
We'll send out surveys in about two weeks. (I can't send out surveys until funds collection is complete.) In that survey you will make your size, design, and color selections for your shirts. The survey will also allow you to indicate if you want to combine your order with the Random Access Memorabilia order which will be delivering at around the same time or if you want to add other items from our store to your shirt order and thus save on shipping.
Timeline going forward
Next 2 weeks (until May 2): During this period Kickstarter will be collecting funds from each of you. You should get a payment notification from Kickstarter. If you get a notification about a problem with your payment, we encourage you to login and correct that so you don't miss out. While Kickstarter collects payment, Sandra will be setting up Backerkit surveys.
May 2-3: Surveys will go out. We'll post an update with specific survey-related information a day or two in advance.
May 2- May 15ish: We collect survey responses. This is where you all can speed up delivery of your shirts by responding to your survey promptly. We can't place an order for shirts until we have all the surveys answered because the answers to the surveys tell us what design/size/color combinations to order.
May 15-ish - end of June: I've allocated six weeks to shirt manufacturing. It may go more quickly than this, but with the quantity of shirts we're ordering they may need the full six weeks. We'll keep you posted about expected shirt deliveries. As soon as they arrive, Sandra will start shipping them out.
Once again, thank you. We look forward to getting your shirts into your hands.
--Sandra and Howard
