Debunking the Myths: Using USPCC & Kickstarter

[BMPokerworld]

Now that I have creating a deck and used Kickstarter to fund it, I wanted to dispel some of the myths that have been floating around when using those 2 companies to produce a deck.

First, I want everyone to know that while I did receive special pricing from USPCC on UC deck, I received no special treatment in the production of it. That means they did not move me to the front of the line and give me preferential treatment in anyway.

1) Funding: According to Kickstarter's TOS, it can take 7-14 days to receive all your funds. While that is true, we received 98.4% of the money pledged within 5 minutes of the campaign ending. The reaming 1.5% (Approximately $110), trickled in over the next 10 days. Stop and think for a moment. How does Kickstarter & Amazon get paid? Amazon gets paid by processing and collecting the pledges and Kickstarter gets paid once the money is collected, right? Why is this important? Because I have seen too many posts on this forum where people are using this as a crutch as to why they can't get the process going, at the very latest, as soon as the campaign ends. Remember USPCC only requires a 50% deposit to get the project started, so if your project gets funded, you will have considerably more than the 50% within a few minutes after the campaign has ended.

In addition, we only had 1 pledge where payment did not eventually go through. I point this out because it has been thrown out there numerous times, as an excuse as to why a campaign is dragging on despite being funding months ago. I do understand that all campaigns are different and some campaigns may have a higher percentage of pledges not funded, but in no way should this delay the production of the deck.

2) Production time: USPCC tells you that production time will be between 4-6 weeks after a contract is signed and the artwork approved. This is my third custom deck and I can tell you that each and every time, USPCC has delivered the deck within those time frames. The delays are almost exclusively (I said almost and not entirely) the deck creators fault. They either don't have the artwork finished and are still working on it after the campaign is complete, spent the money and no longer have enough left to produce the deck or are simply procrastinating.

If the artwork is completed prior to launching a Kickstarter campaign, as I believe it should be, the artwork should be submitted to USPCC as soon as the deck is funded. There really is no reason to wait until the campaign has ended, especially when you blow pass your goal. This way all the artwork can be approved and changed, if necessary, PRIOR to the campaign ending. Once the campaign ends and the money has been deposited in your account (This can take up to 4 business days), you can sign the contract, send USPCC the 50% deposit and let them begin working on the deck.

I can tell you that we had a very expensive and complicated tuck box. We had foil inside and out, a foil color that was not readily available and embossing which was on 4 sides of the tuck box. In addition, the embossing was very small and could not be carried to the edges of the tuck box. So after submitting the artwork, we had to adjust the embossing by submitting new templates, find and approve a foil color and make a few other minor adjustments. Plus we still had to get the artwork approved by their legal department. The whole process took about 2- 2 1/2 weeks. But since we got the ball rolling as soon as we hit our goal, we were able to adsorb almost all of that time while the campaign was still running. That is the main reason we were able to start shipping the decks out 5 weeks after the campaign ended. I was very proactive to make sure the whole process from start to finish, was as short as possible.

3) Shipping: At the end of the day it comes down to only 2 reasons why a project does not ship out in a timely fashion: Money and procrastination. There are NO other reasons period. We shipped out approximately 300 orders in about 8 hours. That is based on 2 people doing the work. If one person did it, it would be about 16 hours. There is no magic wand or potion I have, that gives me an advantage. Shipping is simply sitting in front of a computer and getting it done. Big orders take a little longer and smaller orders go a little quicker. On average, we ship about 23 orders per hour per person. So when someone has 600 orders and they take 6 months or more to delivery them, there is no excuse except to say that they just aren't putting in the time necessary to facilitate the last phase of the campaign. Think about it, if they spend just 1 hour a day for 1 month, they would have shipped approximately 600 packages!!!!

So ask yourself this next time a deck creator is giving you some story about why shipping is taking so long: "Why can a deck creator spend a zillion hours a week designing and promoting a deck when they are trying to get it funded, but can't spend the same amount of time to ship the decks out once they have them?" If I shipped 300 orders in 8 hours with the help of one other person, there is no reason why everyone can't do the same or at least come very close.

I know some of you may be saying, that there are other items included in some campaigns beside the deck. While this is true, all of them should be able to be delivered within the same time frame that the decks can. If they can't, then maybe they shouldn't be offered as an add-on. The one exception might be the deck in the bottle. The bottle cannot be created until the decks are produced and sent to the bottle creator. Those orders should take an extra 3 to 4 weeks after the deck has been received by the deck creator.

4) Pricing: This is a thorny issue and one I debated about disclosing. I normally don't like sharing the cost of an item because once you do, the person you share that with ends up determining if you are charging too much or too little. Most of the time they think you are charging too much because they really have no idea of the expenses you have when you run a business. But it this case, the cost of a deck has been so greatly exaggerated by some of the deck creators and being that the cost to have a deck produced by USPCC is available to anyone who asks, I decided to share it with the forum.

To produce 2,500 standard Bicycle Branded decks with a standard custom tuck box (By that I mean no embossing, foil or cutouts), cost $6800 + between $600 -$930 for the artwork charge that USPCC charges to make the plates and set up the printing press for your run. That's it. So all of the inflated costs that some deck creators throw out there are simply not true. Adding metallic ink, or upgrade to magic finish or Bee casino stock, are all nominal charges and have very little impact on the total cost of the deck. The most expensive part of the upgrade process is the tuck box. The tuck box for the UC deck cost $2.26. That is just for the tuck box and does not include the price of the actual cards themselves. We did not receive special pricing on the tuck box. Only on the cost of the cards.

Clearly, the cost of designing the deck is not included in the above numbers and I am sure that is where some of the less scrupulous designers will run and hide. But if you end up spending more then a $1.00 in design work, which is at the very top end of the scale for a 2,500 deck run, you are spending way too much or valuing your time for a production run of this size way too high. The product can just about support that number, let alone anymore.

In closing, I just want to say this post is in no way directed at any deck creator in particular, nor is designed to incite, inflame or otherwise cause negative responses. It is simply giving our forum members a better understanding of the inner workings for creating a deck using USPCC & Kickstarter, to help make the deck a reality. This post is a direct apples to apples comparison with every other deck that has been produced using USPCC & Kickstarter.

Thanks!

[MagikFingerz]

Mike, I thank you from the bottom of my heart for maybe the most clear cut and informative post we've had so far on this subject (and we have had some pretty good ones in the past). If it was up to me, this would be pasted on every current and future playing card kickstarter project.

It almost makes me sad that we don't have a rep system. Almost

[billysac]

I agree, many thanks for providing such detailed information!
Not that I plan on having a deck printed any time soon, but as someone who has backed ~50 kickstarter projects it's definitely food for thought.

[Twix]

Thanks so much for posting this very detailed information Mike. It was to say the least a real eyeopener on what's really going on behind the scenes. It's sad that lately well managed projects like yours have become rarer than the gong shows that seem to be increasing lately.

[Magic_Orthodoxy]

Great write up!

Mike, can you add another 5) and talk about the cost of shipping? At one time the word on the street was you could do a USPCC campaign for about 10K total - do you still think that's true? Sounds like the deck costs about 8K (average) just curious

[TheDirkPitt]

Could we make this a sticky thread for a little while for future designers to see easily.

[BMPokerworld]

Great write up!

Mike, can you add another 5) and talk about the cost of shipping? At one time the word on the street was you could do a USPCC campaign for about 10K total - do you still think that's true? Sounds like the deck costs about 8K (average) just curious

I was the one who made that post and the break even point, to have a deck completely paid for through Kickstarter would be between $10,000- $11,000. That price is based on a standard deck, including kickstarter/amazon fees, postage and shipping supplies. That total does not include costs for the design work. Also the creator would have decks left over to sell after the campaign was finished.

Thanks!

[BMPokerworld]

Could we make this a sticky thread for a little while for future designers to see easily.

Possibly, but not sure it will matter. The people who want to believe whatever someone is telling them, will always believe no matter what you do.

Thanks!

[davegk]

Hey Mike,

Congrats on getting your project funded and fulfilled so efficiently! I hope this thread will be helpful to future project creators.

I want to point out that the project you ran was relatively much more straightforward than the ones that I've created (and also many of the other past and current successful projects). You had only 160 backers through kickstarter and offered no additional accessories beyond decks and uncut sheets.

I also want to address a few of the points you've made and offer insight based on my personal experience with funding a deck through kickstarter. Replies are below.

-David

Now that I have creating a deck and used Kickstarter to fund it, I wanted to dispel some of the myths that have been floating around when using those 2 companies to produce a deck.
(...)
1) Funding: According to Kickstarter's TOS, it can take 7-14 days to receive all your funds. While that is true, we received 98.4% of the money pledged within 5 minutes of the campaign ending. The reaming 1.5% (Approximately $110), trickled in over the next 10 days. Stop and think for a moment. How does Kickstarter & Amazon get paid? Amazon gets paid by processing and collecting the pledges and Kickstarter gets paid once the money is collected, right? Why is this important? Because I have seen too many posts on this forum where people are using this as a crutch as to why they can't get the process going, at the very latest, as soon as the campaign ends. Remember USPCC only requires a 50% deposit to get the project started, so if your project gets funded, you will have considerably more than the 50% within a few minutes after the campaign has ended.

It's true that a large portion of the money is processed very quickly after the project ends. However, the more backers you have, the more issues there will be with collection. Your project had 160 backers, which is a very small number compared to most playing card projects. By comparison, the first Vanda project had 742 backers and the Polaris project had 918. I've been watching Name of the Wind, which today passed 10,000 backers and is looking at a far more complicated process for fulfillment. It's true that in the end most payments finally went through but many of them took repeated attempts (especially with international backer funding issues). In my case, I had to wait the full two weeks to make sure all payments were completed before I could get an accurate count for all the accessories I had to order separately from USPC.

2) Production time: USPCC tells you that production time will be between 4-6 weeks after a contract is signed and the artwork approved. This is my third custom deck and I can tell you that each and every time, USPCC has delivered the deck within those time frames. The delays are almost exclusively (I said almost and not entirely) the deck creators fault. They either don't have the artwork finished and are still working on it after the campaign is complete, spent the money and no longer have enough left to produce the deck or are simply procrastinating.

If the artwork is completed prior to launching a Kickstarter campaign, as I believe it should be, the artwork should be submitted to USPCC as soon as the deck is funded. There really is no reason to wait until the campaign has ended, especially when you blow pass your goal. This way all the artwork can be approved and changed, if necessary, PRIOR to the campaign ending. Once the campaign ends and the money has been deposited in your account (This can take up to 4 business days), you can sign the contract, send USPCC the 50% deposit and let them begin working on the deck.

I agree that if possible it saves considerable time to get the artwork submitted and approved before the kickstarter project launches. However, in my case (and others that I've seen), while most of the artwork is completed in advance, I encourage backers to be involved in the process of designing some of the artwork for a few cards. So, I haven't been able to submit final artwork to USPC until after kickstarter ended. In the case of Polaris, I offered a stretch goal upgrade to Bee stock for the Eclipse deck which added on considerable production time and is the primary reason why fulfillment is running as late as it is.

3) Shipping: At the end of the day it comes down to only 2 reasons why a project does not ship out in a timely fashion: Money and procrastination. There are NO other reasons period. We shipped out approximately 300 orders in about 8 hours. That is based on 2 people doing the work. If one person did it, it would be about 16 hours. There is no magic wand or potion I have, that gives me an advantage. Shipping is simply sitting in front of a computer and getting it done. Big orders take a little longer and smaller orders go a little quicker. On average, we ship about 23 orders per hour per person. So when someone has 600 orders and they take 6 months or more to delivery them, there is no excuse except to say that they just aren't putting in the time necessary to facilitate the last phase of the campaign. Think about it, if they spend just 1 hour a day for 1 month, they would have shipped approximately 600 packages!!!!

So ask yourself this next time a deck creator is giving you some story about why shipping is taking so long: "Why can a deck creator spend a zillion hours a week designing and promoting a deck when they are trying to get it funded, but can't spend the same amount of time to ship the decks out once they have them?" If I shipped 300 orders in 8 hours with the help of one other person, there is no reason why everyone can't do the same or at least come very close.

I know some of you may be saying, that there are other items included in some campaigns beside the deck. While this is true, all of them should be able to be delivered within the same time frame that the decks can. If they can't, then maybe they shouldn't be offered as an add-on. The one exception might be the deck in the bottle. The bottle cannot be created until the decks are produced and sent to the bottle creator. Those orders should take an extra 3 to 4 weeks after the deck has been received by the deck creator.

For a project that only involves sending out decks and possibly uncut sheets, I would agree that fulfillment shouldn't take much time at all. I was able to pack and ship most of my 1-4 deck orders very quickly. However, once you start adding on extra items (t-shirts, posters, poker chips, etc...), each package now becomes a customized order and takes WAY more time to pack, weigh, print postage, and label. Also, international orders take much longer to label due to customs forms that need to be completed for each order. The more different accessories you offer that are being produced by different vendors, the more likely you are to run into some delays from one or more of those vendors. I've learned that the hard way and will definitely make sure I'm allowing enough fulfillment time for those kind of delays for future projects.

4) Pricing: This is a thorny issue and one I debated about disclosing. I normally don't like sharing the cost of an item because once you do, the person you share that with ends up determining if you are charging too much or too little. Most of the time they think you are charging too much because they really have no idea of the expenses you have when you run a business. But it this case, the cost of a deck has been so greatly exaggerated by some of the deck creators and being that the cost to have a deck produced by USPCC is available to anyone who asks, I decided to share it with the forum.

To produce 2,500 standard Bicycle Branded decks with a standard custom tuck box (By that I mean no embossing, foil or cutouts), cost $6800 + between $600 -$930 for the artwork charge that USPCC charges to make the plates and set up the printing press for your run. That's it. So all of the inflated costs that some deck creators throw out there are simply not true. Adding metallic ink, or upgrade to magic finish or Bee casino stock, are all nominal charges and have very little impact on the total cost of the deck. The most expensive part of the upgrade process is the tuck box. The tuck box for the UC deck cost $2.26. That is just for the tuck box and does not include the price of the actual cards themselves. We did not receive special pricing on the tuck box. Only on the cost of the cards.

Upgrading to Bee stock also requires increasing your minimum order amount to 5,000 decks, which doubles your overall production cost to USPC. The per-deck cost doesn't change much but the total amount invested in the actual printing goes up so there is more money fronted to USPC and more decks created in the end that must be sold post-kickstarter.

Clearly, the cost of designing the deck is not included in the above numbers and I am sure that is where some of the less scrupulous designers will run and hide. But if you end up spending more then a $1.00 in design work, which is at the very top end of the scale for a 2,500 deck run, you are spending way too much or valuing your time for a production run of this size way too high. The product can just about support that number, let alone anymore.

I'm not sure how you came up with this number. The time spent on designing a deck varies greatly depending on the deck. Each of the decks I've designed took more than 300 of my own personal hours designing/refining/redesigning the artwork. That doesn't even include the time spent setting up the project, creating promo graphics, answering inquiries, and personally fulfilling each order. As a professional graphic designer I normally charge $75/hour for my work. Value of time spent on designing one deck project = $22,500. This is time that I could have spent working on other design projects for clients doing creative work that is not my own, but instead I chose to invest that time creating a product design that is entirely my own. When the dust settled, the first Vanda kickstarter project essentially broke even. All the funds received through kickstarter went into the cost of producing the decks and accessories, shipping supplies, postage, marketing fees, amazon fees, and kickstarter fees, which means I donated those 300 hours out of devotion to my own artistic pursuits and the hope of building a potentially successful playing card company in the future. I can't imagine being paid less than $10k to design a fully custom deck (at least not one that I'd be entirely satisfied with the results of).

I would also like to point out that you didn't mention anything about costs related to packing supplies or postage costs. For the first Vanda project, I spent over $6,000 on postage and $1,500+ on shipping supplies (bubble envelopes, bubble pouches, tape, printer labels, printer ink, mailing tubes, kraft paper, and bubble wrap).

Another point related to backer organization...for the Polaris project, there were so many extra accessories and just organizing the backer data became very complicated which is why I opted to use backerkit to help keep track of everything. It has made a huge difference in terms of organization but has also increased the amount of time necessary to collect all the backer add-on data and finalize numbers for each accessory item.

Obviously, different creators will be able to offer varying stories of their own experiences with kickstarter. I would be curious to see some feedback from other folks who have offered extensive accessories and had complicated fulfillment processes.

-David

[CBJ]

I'm sorry....


"I normally charge $75/hour for my work. Value of time spent on designing one deck project = $22,500."


HAHAHAHAHAHAH


I've talked to artist that have done VERY successful decks about getting a deck done, and it's nowhere near this number. You are living in fantasy land

CBJ

[BMPokerworld]

Hey Mike,

Congrats on getting your project funded and fulfilled so efficiently! I hope this thread will be helpful to future project creators.

I want to point out that the project you ran was relatively much more straightforward than the ones that I've created (and also many of the other past and current successful projects). You had only 160 backers through kickstarter and offered no additional accessories beyond decks and uncut sheets.

I also want to address a few of the points you've made and offer insight based on my personal experience with funding a deck through kickstarter. Replies are below.

-David

Now that I have creating a deck and used Kickstarter to fund it, I wanted to dispel some of the myths that have been floating around when using those 2 companies to produce a deck.
(...)
1) Funding: According to Kickstarter's TOS, it can take 7-14 days to receive all your funds. While that is true, we received 98.4% of the money pledged within 5 minutes of the campaign ending. The reaming 1.5% (Approximately $110), trickled in over the next 10 days. Stop and think for a moment. How does Kickstarter & Amazon get paid? Amazon gets paid by processing and collecting the pledges and Kickstarter gets paid once the money is collected, right? Why is this important? Because I have seen too many posts on this forum where people are using this as a crutch as to why they can't get the process going, at the very latest, as soon as the campaign ends. Remember USPCC only requires a 50% deposit to get the project started, so if your project gets funded, you will have considerably more than the 50% within a few minutes after the campaign has ended.

It's true that a large portion of the money is processed very quickly after the project ends. However, the more backers you have, the more issues there will be with collection. Your project had 160 backers, which is a very small number compared to most playing card projects. By comparison, the first Vanda project had 742 backers and the Polaris project had 918. I've been watching Name of the Wind, which today passed 10,000 backers and is looking at a far more complicated process for fulfillment. It's true that in the end most payments finally went through but many of them took repeated attempts (especially with international backer funding issues). In my case, I had to wait the full two weeks to make sure all payments were completed before I could get an accurate count for all the accessories I had to order separately from USPC.

2) Production time: USPCC tells you that production time will be between 4-6 weeks after a contract is signed and the artwork approved. This is my third custom deck and I can tell you that each and every time, USPCC has delivered the deck within those time frames. The delays are almost exclusively (I said almost and not entirely) the deck creators fault. They either don't have the artwork finished and are still working on it after the campaign is complete, spent the money and no longer have enough left to produce the deck or are simply procrastinating.

If the artwork is completed prior to launching a Kickstarter campaign, as I believe it should be, the artwork should be submitted to USPCC as soon as the deck is funded. There really is no reason to wait until the campaign has ended, especially when you blow pass your goal. This way all the artwork can be approved and changed, if necessary, PRIOR to the campaign ending. Once the campaign ends and the money has been deposited in your account (This can take up to 4 business days), you can sign the contract, send USPCC the 50% deposit and let them begin working on the deck.

I agree that if possible it saves considerable time to get the artwork submitted and approved before the kickstarter project launches. However, in my case (and others that I've seen), while most of the artwork is completed in advance, I encourage backers to be involved in the process of designing some of the artwork for a few cards. So, I haven't been able to submit final artwork to USPC until after kickstarter ended. In the case of Polaris, I offered a stretch goal upgrade to Bee stock for the Eclipse deck which added on considerable production time and is the primary reason why fulfillment is running as late as it is.

3) Shipping: At the end of the day it comes down to only 2 reasons why a project does not ship out in a timely fashion: Money and procrastination. There are NO other reasons period. We shipped out approximately 300 orders in about 8 hours. That is based on 2 people doing the work. If one person did it, it would be about 16 hours. There is no magic wand or potion I have, that gives me an advantage. Shipping is simply sitting in front of a computer and getting it done. Big orders take a little longer and smaller orders go a little quicker. On average, we ship about 23 orders per hour per person. So when someone has 600 orders and they take 6 months or more to delivery them, there is no excuse except to say that they just aren't putting in the time necessary to facilitate the last phase of the campaign. Think about it, if they spend just 1 hour a day for 1 month, they would have shipped approximately 600 packages!!!!

So ask yourself this next time a deck creator is giving you some story about why shipping is taking so long: "Why can a deck creator spend a zillion hours a week designing and promoting a deck when they are trying to get it funded, but can't spend the same amount of time to ship the decks out once they have them?" If I shipped 300 orders in 8 hours with the help of one other person, there is no reason why everyone can't do the same or at least come very close.

I know some of you may be saying, that there are other items included in some campaigns beside the deck. While this is true, all of them should be able to be delivered within the same time frame that the decks can. If they can't, then maybe they shouldn't be offered as an add-on. The one exception might be the deck in the bottle. The bottle cannot be created until the decks are produced and sent to the bottle creator. Those orders should take an extra 3 to 4 weeks after the deck has been received by the deck creator.

For a project that only involves sending out decks and possibly uncut sheets, I would agree that fulfillment shouldn't take much time at all. I was able to pack and ship most of my 1-4 deck orders very quickly. However, once you start adding on extra items (t-shirts, posters, poker chips, etc...), each package now becomes a customized order and takes WAY more time to pack, weigh, print postage, and label. Also, international orders take much longer to label due to customs forms that need to be completed for each order. The more different accessories you offer that are being produced by different vendors, the more likely you are to run into some delays from one or more of those vendors. I've learned that the hard way and will definitely make sure I'm allowing enough fulfillment time for those kind of delays for future projects.

4) Pricing: This is a thorny issue and one I debated about disclosing. I normally don't like sharing the cost of an item because once you do, the person you share that with ends up determining if you are charging too much or too little. Most of the time they think you are charging too much because they really have no idea of the expenses you have when you run a business. But it this case, the cost of a deck has been so greatly exaggerated by some of the deck creators and being that the cost to have a deck produced by USPCC is available to anyone who asks, I decided to share it with the forum.

To produce 2,500 standard Bicycle Branded decks with a standard custom tuck box (By that I mean no embossing, foil or cutouts), cost $6800 + between $600 -$930 for the artwork charge that USPCC charges to make the plates and set up the printing press for your run. That's it. So all of the inflated costs that some deck creators throw out there are simply not true. Adding metallic ink, or upgrade to magic finish or Bee casino stock, are all nominal charges and have very little impact on the total cost of the deck. The most expensive part of the upgrade process is the tuck box. The tuck box for the UC deck cost $2.26. That is just for the tuck box and does not include the price of the actual cards themselves. We did not receive special pricing on the tuck box. Only on the cost of the cards.

Upgrading to Bee stock also requires increasing your minimum order amount to 5,000 decks, which doubles your overall production cost to USPC. The per-deck cost doesn't change much but the total amount invested in the actual printing goes up so there is more money fronted to USPC and more decks created in the end that must be sold post-kickstarter.

Clearly, the cost of designing the deck is not included in the above numbers and I am sure that is where some of the less scrupulous designers will run and hide. But if you end up spending more then a $1.00 in design work, which is at the very top end of the scale for a 2,500 deck run, you are spending way too much or valuing your time for a production run of this size way too high. The product can just about support that number, let alone anymore.

I'm not sure how you came up with this number. The time spent on designing a deck varies greatly depending on the deck. Each of the decks I've designed took more than 300 of my own personal hours designing/refining/redesigning the artwork. That doesn't even include the time spent setting up the project, creating promo graphics, answering inquiries, and personally fulfilling each order. As a professional graphic designer I normally charge $75/hour for my work. Value of time spent on designing one deck project = $22,500. This is time that I could have spent working on other design projects for clients doing creative work that is not my own, but instead I chose to invest that time creating a product design that is entirely my own. When the dust settled, the first Vanda kickstarter project essentially broke even. All the funds received through kickstarter went into the cost of producing the decks and accessories, shipping supplies, postage, marketing fees, amazon fees, and kickstarter fees, which means I donated those 300 hours out of devotion to my own artistic pursuits and the hope of building a potentially successful playing card company in the future. I can't imagine being paid less than $10k to design a fully custom deck (at least not one that I'd be entirely satisfied with the results of).

I would also like to point out that you didn't mention anything about costs related to packing supplies or postage costs. For the first Vanda project, I spent over $6,000 on postage and $1,500+ on shipping supplies (bubble envelopes, bubble pouches, tape, printer labels, printer ink, mailing tubes, kraft paper, and bubble wrap).

Another point related to backer organization...for the Polaris project, there were so many extra accessories and just organizing the backer data became very complicated which is why I opted to use backerkit to help keep track of everything. It has made a huge difference in terms of organization but has also increased the amount of time necessary to collect all the backer add-on data and finalize numbers for each accessory item.

Obviously, different creators will be able to offer varying stories of their own experiences with kickstarter. I would be curious to see some feedback from other folks who have offered extensive accessories and had complicated fulfillment processes.

-David

David,

I am not surprised that you would comment and try to defend your ridiculous fulfillment times on your first project. You are one of the biggest abusers of backers there are. I guess you must have felt guilty so you felt the need to respond. Remember this quote:

The Polaris deck was even more time-consuming of a process. Yes, I have been working about 40 hours a week designing the decks and related accessories.

How come you can't put that much time and effort into shipping? According to your Kickstarter post, you received the Vanda decks on January 16th, 2013. But you didn't complete shipping everything out (with the exception of the clips, which is understandable given the situation) until April 23, 2013. A full 96 days after receiving them. That averages out to about 7.72 orders per day. Maybe if you didn't spend so much time creating more decks, while the backers of your first deck waited patiently, they would have received their orders much earlier right? I am sure you will have more BS excuses as to how the designing of the other 2 decks didn't interfere with the shipping of the Vanda decks. I know, you spent 8 hours a day shipping Vanda decks, another 8 hours making your second deck, another 8 hours making your third deck, another 8 hours working your regular job and finally another 8 hours sleeping, eating and coming up with more lies. Hmmm, I guess where you are from there are 40 hours in a day.

While we only had 160 backers on Kickstarter, we had an additional 160 bakers off of Kickstarter, which still had to be shipped. Granted it is still half of what you had and we did not have all the extra fluff that you did, but we also got it done in 8 hours and not 96 days. Do I believe that non card items should and would take longer to pack? Absolutely, but not 95 days longer. All people like you want to do is blow smoke up in the air so the dumb ones actually believe what your saying. It is just one lie after another. Remember you chose to have all this extra fluff, no one forced you too do it.

It's true that a large portion of the money is processed very quickly after the project ends. However, the more backers you have, the more issues there will be with collection. Your project had 160 backers, which is a very small number compared to most playing card projects. By comparison, the first Vanda project had 742 backers and the Polaris project had 918. I've been watching Name of the Wind, which today passed 10,000 backers and is looking at a far more complicated process for fulfillment. It's true that in the end most payments finally went through but many of them took repeated attempts (especially with international backer funding issues). In my case, I had to wait the full two weeks to make sure all payments were completed before I could get an accurate count for all the accessories I had to order separately from USPC.

The accessories have nothing to do with the cards do they? You could have gotten the ball rolling with the cards and then once the dust settled with all the money, order the fluff or maybe, how about having less fluff? Just another excuse by someone who can't fulfill orders quickly after he takes your money. Fulfillment is never complicated if you know what you are doing and you make an honest effort, which I don't believe you have.

I agree that if possible it saves considerable time to get the artwork submitted and approved before the kickstarter project launches. However, in my case (and others that I've seen), while most of the artwork is completed in advance, I encourage backers to be involved in the process of designing some of the artwork for a few cards. So, I haven't been able to submit final artwork to USPC until after kickstarter ended. In the case of Polaris, I offered a stretch goal upgrade to Bee stock for the Eclipse deck which added on considerable production time and is the primary reason why fulfillment is running as late as it is.

To start with, I am not exactly sure why anyone would actually need to have a stretch goal for Bee Stock. Bee stock costs a whole NICKEL per deck. So if you want to use Bee stock, just do it and stop making your backers believe it is just sooooo expensive that you have to have it as a stretch goal. I am not a fan of having the artwork done after you collect money from your bakcers because it ends up being just another excuse from designers like you, to delay the project. But here's a thought to move it along next time. Why not run the project for 45 days and ask for input the first 30 days? This way the last 2 weeks you can already have the process moving with USPCC and still get input from your backers. What do you think? I guess that is a no because then you will have one less excuse as to why you can't deliver your campaign in a timely fashion.

For a project that only involves sending out decks and possibly uncut sheets, I would agree that fulfillment shouldn't take much time at all. I was able to pack and ship most of my 1-4 deck orders very quickly. However, once you start adding on extra items (t-shirts, posters, poker chips, etc...), each package now becomes a customized order and takes WAY more time to pack, weigh, print postage, and label. Also, international orders take much longer to label due to customs forms that need to be completed for each order. The more different accessories you offer that are being produced by different vendors, the more likely you are to run into some delays from one or more of those vendors. I've learned that the hard way and will definitely make sure I'm allowing enough fulfillment time for those kind of delays for future projects.

Does any have a violin so I can play it for this guy? Oh yes international labels with many different kinds of items take forever to do right? All it is, is typing one more line in the description box. Your just an out and out liar, who is just desperate to have people believe your lies.

Upgrading to Bee stock also requires increasing your minimum order amount to 5,000 decks, which doubles your overall production cost to USPC. The per-deck cost doesn't change much but the total amount invested in the actual printing goes up so there is more money fronted to USPC and more decks created in the end that must be sold post-kickstarter.[/quote}

And? You are still getting the money about 5 minutes after the deck is funded right? To me your just a slime ball who should crawl back under his rock. Let everyone see your amazon payment statement and they will be able to see when you collected the money. I know my project was the anomaly because I got paid so quickly. Poor people like you, just aren't that lucky.

I'm not sure how you came up with this number. The time spent on designing a deck varies greatly depending on the deck. Each of the decks I've designed took more than 300 of my own personal hours designing/refining/redesigning the artwork. That doesn't even include the time spent setting up the project, creating promo graphics, answering inquiries, and personally fulfilling each order. As a professional graphic designer I normally charge $75/hour for my work. Value of time spent on designing one deck project = $22,500. This is time that I could have spent working on other design projects for clients doing creative work that is not my own, but instead I chose to invest that time creating a product design that is entirely my own. When the dust settled, the first Vanda kickstarter project essentially broke even. All the funds received through kickstarter went into the cost of producing the decks and accessories, shipping supplies, postage, marketing fees, amazon fees, and kickstarter fees, which means I donated those 300 hours out of devotion to my own artistic pursuits and the hope of building a potentially successful playing card company in the future. I can't imagine being paid less than $10k to design a fully custom deck (at least not one that I'd be entirely satisfied with the results of).

I would also like to point out that you didn't mention anything about costs related to packing supplies or postage costs. For the first Vanda project, I spent over $6,000 on postage and $1,500+ on shipping supplies (bubble envelopes, bubble pouches, tape, printer labels, printer ink, mailing tubes, kraft paper, and bubble wrap).

Another point related to backer organization...for the Polaris project, there were so many extra accessories and just organizing the backer data became very complicated which is why I opted to use backerkit to help keep track of everything. It has made a huge difference in terms of organization but has also increased the amount of time necessary to collect all the backer add-on data and finalize numbers for each accessory item.

Obviously, different creators will be able to offer varying stories of their own experiences with kickstarter. I would be curious to see some feedback from other folks who have offered extensive accessories and had complicated fulfillment processes.

You are just an arrogant prick. Do you honestly think anyone believes your statement? So you spent $22,500 to create each deck and that means you lost money on every project right? I guess we should all bow down and say "All hail David, Thank god this scumbag is here to show us the way. If you could actually get paid $75 an hour on a regular basis for desgin work, which I am not sure you can actually get $10 an hour for, why would you design decks and lose money? Oh I forgot, you are a martyr. I am sure the reason you are designing playing cards is because you can't get enough people to pay you to do your work. That's OK, they already know your a liar so they don't believe you.

The shipping supplies have nothing to do with the design work and is irrelevant to the point you are trying to make. The only reason you bring it up is because you are trying to point people away from the real truth, which is you have not fulfilled your campaigns in a timely manner and by most business standards, it would be a fail.

Thanks!

EDIT: Explain this David, I have approximately 320 orders and you had about 740 orders . OK Lets translate it. Your project was about 2 1/2 times bigger then mine in the total number of orders. So take my 8 hours and multiple it by 2.5 and you come up with 2 1/2 days to ship the same number of orders. Oh I guess all the fluff accounts for the other 90+ days right?

[davegk]

Wow, you've completely missed every point that I tried to make and have proven yourself to be an incredibly welcoming ambassador of your own forum. Thanks for reminding me why I haven't wasted my time interacting on this forum.

Name-calling and alienating your members doesn't seem a sound way to moderate a public space. I have never said anything negative to or about you and I have no idea why you're so upset with me, but this isn't worth my time and energy.

I'm out of here. Best of luck to you all.
-David

[BMPokerworld]

Wow, you've completely missed every point that I tried to make and have proven yourself to be an incredibly welcoming ambassador of your own forum. Thanks for reminding me why I haven't wasted my time interacting on this forum.

Name-calling and alienating your members doesn't seem a sound way to moderate a public space. I have never said anything negative to or about you and I have no idea why you're so upset with me, but this isn't worth my time and energy.

I'm out of here. Best of luck to you all.
-David

Don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out!!! We really don't need people like you here.

Thanks!

[MagikFingerz]

[Magic_Orthodoxy]

where's the like icon for Magik's meme?

[BMPokerworld]

For the record, go to Vanda's kickstarter page and see it for yourself. Despite David's statement that he had all this special packing because of the different size of his items, it is simply not true. The wooden chips would fit right inside the bubble pouch with the decks and would add almost zero additional packing time. The clips and wooden box would fit in a small or medium flat rate box for overseas shipments, and a small or regional "A" flat rate box in the US. The posters would fit in a uncut sheet shipping tube, while the art print looks like it could fit in a tube as well. It is possible the print is matted or something and may require a special box, but only a few of these were actually ordered. At the end of the day, the additional time required to ship things in a flat rate box is no where near the time David has taken to ship out his campaign. If I was shipping out the Vanda Campaign, It probably would have taken me about 3 1/2 days and not 97 and counting because some of the clips were damaged and still have to be sent out. Had he shipped everything out in a month, everyone would have been happy. I am sure people would rather have their items that they paid for, instead of David using his free time to start more campaigns.

Thanks!

[walrus]

Mike, you really need to stop beating around the Bush and start saying what you feel. Holding things in as you do will be the end of you.

[Gareth]

For the record, go to Vanda's kickstarter page and see it for yourself. Despite David's statement that he had all this special packing because of the different size of his items, it is simply not true. The wooden chips would fit right inside the bubble pouch with the decks and would add almost zero additional packing time. The clips and wooden box would fit in a small or medium flat rate box for overseas shipments, and a small or regional "A" flat rate box in the US.

I think this is the one area where you, Mike, are significantly ahead of essentially everyone else. Your knowledge of packaging and postage, your process and speed is significantly ahead of myself, and I'd assume pretty much everyone else. I'm sure if I was to pack the ~320 items you mention it would probably take me most of a week. Just organising the right packing materials would take quite a while. I realise there would be groups of like packages which should make things easier despite the large count.

However, that said, doesn't mean I'd take 3 months, or much longer as some of the KS projects have taken.

[BMPokerworld]

For the record, go to Vanda's kickstarter page and see it for yourself. Despite David's statement that he had all this special packing because of the different size of his items, it is simply not true. The wooden chips would fit right inside the bubble pouch with the decks and would add almost zero additional packing time. The clips and wooden box would fit in a small or medium flat rate box for overseas shipments, and a small or regional "A" flat rate box in the US.

I think this is the one area where you, Mike, are significantly ahead of essentially everyone else. Your knowledge of packaging and postage, your process and speed is significantly ahead of myself, and I'd assume pretty much everyone else. I'm sure if I was to pack the ~320 items you mention it would probably take me most of a week. Just organising the right packing materials would take quite a while. I realise there would be groups of like packages which should make things easier despite the large count.

However, that said, doesn't mean I'd take 3 months, or much longer as some of the KS projects have taken.

I am sure I am because I do this day in and day out. But I am not sure why people who are running a Kickstarter campaign, would not reach out to someone like me for help. I have helped a few people in the past, but most don't ask and then they complain about how hard it is and don't know what they are doing. It is packing and shipping people, not brain surgery. It is very simple once you work through a few orders and develop a system.

I was very disappointed that this thread has turned ugly. I specifically wrote the last paragraph to avoid all this ugliness. I wasn't calling anyone out, simply pointing out the facts, which are: That it shouldn't take months and months to ship orders out. If the creators simply sit in front of the computer and put the time in, their backers could receive their rewards in a reasonable amount of time, that was all.

As far comment about paying for design fees, I have no doubt designers like, Randy, Paul, 4PM, Russell, Jackson and others, have put enormous amounts of time into creating their decks. I wouldn't be surprised to find that some have even put more time in than David claims he did. I was simply pointing out that you cannot bill for that time, at those rates, for a deck of cards. The product simply can not absorb it at this time. According to David, I would have paid him $22,500 for design fees, which would work out to about $9.00 per deck. That means even if I sold a deck for $15 on Kickstarter, I would be losing money, when printing 2,500 decks.

I guess David had a guilty conscience and that is why he chose to reply. No biggie, he really never added any content to the forum except to promote his decks and I am not sure any forum needs people who are only here to hawk their products and not add valuable content for the community to use and enjoy.

Walrus wrote:

Mike, you really need to stop beating around the Bush and start saying what you feel. Holding things in as you do will be the end of you.

Your right, people tell me that all the time. I am too shy and I don't say exactly what is on my mind. Maybe some day I will have the courage to do so.

Thanks

[davegk]

Mike,

I have been nothing but cordial and civilized and yet you continue to post insulting remarks aimed at me. You have been spewing misinformation and I am only responding because I feel it is important to clarify some things that you've said which misrepresent me and Vanda.

1. Your behavior as not only a moderator but the owner of this forum is absolutely shocking and appalling. The job of a moderator in a public forum is to diffuse arguments and prevent chaos. Instead you instigate it. Your remarks are outlandish, insulting, and based on incomplete or entirely inaccurate information.

2. The only reason I replied to your initial post was because you made a number of gross generalizations about running/fulfilling a kickstarter project that were based on your own personal experience with a single successful project. I have no doubt that the information is an accurate portrayal of your particular project but you cannot make judgements about other projects based entirely on what you've experienced without accurate information. This is false reporting and incredibly misleading.

3. You clearly don't understand the difference between *value* and *cost* and I'm certainly not going to waste my time explaining it to you here. Your inability to recognize Walrus' response as being blatantly sarcastic clearly demonstrates how easily you misread and convolute other people's words.

4. While the information you've posted about your own project may be helpful and insightful, most of what you've said about other projects is entirely speculative and completely false.

-David

[DukeBoy]

Your inability to recognize Walrus' response as being blatantly sarcastic clearly demonstrates how easily you misread and convolute other people's words.


-David

And you too David have the inability to recognize Mike's response as being blatantly sarcastic in responce to Walrus' blatantly sarcastic comment.

[MagikFingerz]

David, while I can agree that Mike may have been overly direct in his statements, you still avoid the issue of your extremely late shipping.

And I'm pretty sure Mike's reply to Walrus was equally sarcastic.

[davegk]

Okay, I stand corrected and withdraw my comment regarding the sarcasm.

As for delayed shipping, I've already explained that numerous times on the kickstarter pages and in forum posts. The majority of orders for the first Vända deck were sent out on time. Most of the delays were related to the issue with the Porper clips, which was beyond my control. The Polaris orders have been delayed due to the upgrade of the Eclipse deck to Bee stock. This was a decision made mid-project, at which point it was too late to modify the expected delivery dates for rewards. I've already apologized and explained this and will be ensuring more time for completion and fulfillment of future projects.

That said, I think the most concerning issue here is still the lack of respect and disturbing mistreatment of forum members by the OWNER of the site.

-David

[badpete69]

[BMPokerworld]

Mike,

I have been nothing but cordial and civilized and yet you continue to post insulting remarks aimed at me. You have been spewing misinformation and I am only responding because I feel it is important to clarify some things that you've said which misrepresent me and Vanda.

1. Your behavior as not only a moderator but the owner of this forum is absolutely shocking and appalling. The job of a moderator in a public forum is to diffuse arguments and prevent chaos. Instead you instigate it. Your remarks are outlandish, insulting, and based on incomplete or entirely inaccurate information.

2. The only reason I replied to your initial post was because you made a number of gross generalizations about running/fulfilling a kickstarter project that were based on your own personal experience with a single successful project. I have no doubt that the information is an accurate portrayal of your particular project but you cannot make judgements about other projects based entirely on what you've experienced without accurate information. This is false reporting and incredibly misleading.

3. You clearly don't understand the difference between *value* and *cost* and I'm certainly not going to waste my time explaining it to you here. Your inability to recognize Walrus' response as being blatantly sarcastic clearly demonstrates how easily you misread and convolute other people's words.

4. While the information you've posted about your own project may be helpful and insightful, most of what you've said about other projects is entirely speculative and completely false.

-David

David,

To be honest, I have absolutely have no respect for you whatsoever. You have completely abused your backers back making them wait over 3 months for their rewards while you were off creating other decks. I have packed plenty of other items besides cards, I sell collectible pens and novelties as well, so I am well aware of how much time it takes to pack odd shaped items. But your so arrogant, you think you are the only one who knows anything. You have been exposed for exactly what you are, a poor business man who can only come up with excuses instead of solutions to a problem. But lets deal with the facts.

You had 742 orders and you have already admitted:

I want to point out that the project you ran was relatively much more straightforward than the ones that I've created (and also many of the other past and current successful projects). You had only 160 backers through kickstarter and offered no additional accessories beyond decks and uncut sheets.

So of the 742 orders, 685 only contain decks, uncut sheets, posters and wooden coins, in some combination. The posters would require no more packing time then an uncut sheet would and the wooden coins could simply slide into the bubble pouch with the decks. Again that would add no significant additional packing time. You only had 57 orders that contained the wooden box, clips and the art print (I am giving you the benefit of the doubt on this because this item may actual be able to be packed just like an uncut sheet).

Since the 685 orders are almost identical to my campaign, those orders should take roughly the same amount of time to pack, right? So based on my years of experience packing these type of items, I could have packed those 685 orders in 15 hours with 2 people or 30 hours with one. The remaining 57 packages, I figure I could pull, print and pack in between 5-7 minutes per order. But I will give you the benefit of the doubt and say you need 12 minutes. I am allowing that amount of time mostly because you have to deal with your big friggin ego. You know the one that makes you think you are god's gift to the playing card community. So I estimate that I could have all those orders ready to ship in about 7 hours. You should be able to get it done in about 12.

All of the items in the US could easily fit in one of the standard size USPS flat rate boxes. The same should go for the international items because flat rate is probably the cheapest. So lets do the math shall we? I estimate that you should have been able to ship the entire campaign in about 42 hours by yourself. That translate to 5 1/4 days. You think that I am off? OK But how much could I be off David? Certainly not 92 days right? Clearly shipping 300 packages in 8 hours which are almost identical to 92% of your campaign, has to count for something right? Then why did it take you so long? Because you had the money, were in no rush and you were too busy designing new decks right? Do you think by making up more stories that people won't be able to see right through them?

Thanks!

[walrus]

Your inability to recognize Walrus' response as being blatantly sarcastic clearly demonstrates how easily you misread and convolute other people's words.


-David

And you too David have the inability to recognize Mike's response as being blatantly sarcastic in responce to Walrus' blatantly sarcastic comment.

Dave, I did not back your projects so I won't comment on all that. I will say some of your decks do look nice. As far as my comment to Mike went it was in jest and he was well aware of that as I have had banter with him in the past.

[BMPokerworld]

Okay, I stand corrected and withdraw my comment regarding the sarcasm.

As for delayed shipping, I've already explained that numerous times on the kickstarter pages and in forum posts. The majority of orders for the first Vända deck were sent out on time. Most of the delays were related to the issue with the Porper clips, which was beyond my control. The Polaris orders have been delayed due to the upgrade of the Eclipse deck to Bee stock. This was a decision made mid-project, at which point it was too late to modify the expected delivery dates for rewards. I've already apologized and explained this and will be ensuring more time for completion and fulfillment of future projects.

That said, I think the most concerning issue here is still the lack of respect and disturbing mistreatment of forum members by the OWNER of the site.

-David

Your such an arrogant ass that you think people aren't even smart enough to read your Kickstarter posts. Here are some of them:

Orders keep shipping + Polaris 2nd chance + LA backer party + Porper clips
Update #13 · Feb 22, 2013 · 6 comments
Orders are shipping

Orders continue to ship out - I'm packing and shipping each one personally so it is a slow process, but your order will be in the mail soon if it isn't already. I dropped off several hundred packages at the nearby post office yesterday...here are a few photos:

So after a month you are still giving excuses about being by yourself, right? But you still managed to find time to work on the other two designs right? Here's another one:

Shipping almost complete + Porper clip news
Update #14 · Mar 22, 2013 · 3 comments
Your order has been mailed, or will be soon!

Well, it's taken a bit longer than I had expected due to a number of factors, including custom packing different combinations of items and just the learning process of packing/shipping orders efficiently. The good news is that almost all of the kickstarter orders have now been shipped - I have a handful of them to still put together, mostly because there are a few more items I have to laser cut, but those orders will be completed and shipped very soon

So despite the fact that your project was funded 5 1/2 months ago, you still haven't found the time to finish the laser cutting, that you are doing personally? Hmmm, I guess that time was spent working on the other decks, huh? Here's another gem:

Shipping complete + clip update + NEW vanda deck!
Update #15 · Apr 23, 2013 · comment
Rewards complete!

I'm happy to report that all rewards have been shipped out (except the Porper clips - see below). There are a few international packages that may still be in transit but should arrive soon. It is possible that a few orders may have fallen between the cracks so if you have not yet received your reward, please send me an email at ace@vandacards.com and I'll look into your order.

So finally, 97 days after you received the decks, everything was delivered except for the damaged clips. The clips were only a small portion of the entire project. The delay was simply your indifference to completing this project in a timely fashion because you already had all of your backers money and you were working on the other 2 deck designs. But keep spewing your lies if you want to because maybe someone besides you will actually believe it right?

Thanks!

[davegk]

You're making a huge deal over a very small percentage of orders that were delayed because of the following reasons:

1. backers failing to promptly complete surveys, even after months of reminders and personal emails
2. customized engraving on many of the laser items, involving back and forth correspondence to obtain artwork or other details
3. international backers who failed to add on funds for international shipping costs and didn't respond to emails (this was an older issue that has since been addressed by kickstarter so that int'l shipping is now automatically added)
4. international backers who didn't supply a shipping address with english characters and didn't respond to emails

-David

[BMPokerworld]

You're making a huge deal over a very small percentage of orders that were delayed because of the following reasons:

1. backers failing to promptly complete surveys, even after months of reminders and personal emails
2. customized engraving on many of the laser items, involving back and forth correspondence to obtain artwork or other details
3. international backers who failed to add on funds for international shipping costs and didn't respond to emails (this was an older issue that has since been addressed by kickstarter so that int'l shipping is now automatically added)
4. international backers who didn't supply a shipping address with english characters and didn't respond to emails

-David

David,

Just go away, you have no credibility. None of what you are expressing now was stated in your kickstarter updates nor was it stated in your first reply to my post. This is a completely new argument, in an attempt I suspect, to see what sticks and maybe, just maybe, someone might actually believe you at this point. Simply more lies to try to cover your lack of commitment to this project. I am not even sure why you would wade into this discussion based on your track record for delivering your rewards for this campaign.

If you actually want to learn how to do a better job for next time, please send me PM and I will help. Not for your sake, for your backers.

Thanks!

[chess]

Great thread! BM is just letting it rain with truth bombs. Thanks for the insight, I've always wondered about some of that stuff. Aside from the UC deck, the only other one I felt was just as good with fulfillment was the lumberjack one.