Snarklepony

De/Merit Badges Updates



What's happening to the Stinkin' Badges?

Update 07.06.21

I had a flurry of orders over the past month after a few strategic posts to various FB groups.  As of yesterday all orders are out the door and I'm wholly caught up.

A note about USA shipping: It turns out that USPS *used* to be okay with me sending patches via snailmail, but as of June they've changed their policies and will actually RTS any envelope that even smells like something other than lettermail.

As a result, I've had to remove snailmail options for USPS which means a uniform $9 or so to deliver to the USA rather than the $2 I was able to offer.

 

Update 12.01.21

Finally caught up to getting orders picked and packed!  If you've ordered patches as of tonight, they're either sitting in a frigid mailbox or hanging out on my kitchen table waiting for their turn to sit in a frigid mailbox tomorrow.

Snail Mail folks may need to wait a day for me to get to a post office that allows folks to walk in so I can get the right weight and postage done for them, but those will also be out tomorrow.

Update 17.12.20

Just got my first confirmation that the first batch of US packages have arrived to their destinations, so I feel I can be reasonably sure I'm doing the postage / tariff thing correctly.

On average packages are taking about 9 days to make it as far as California in the middle of the most busy postal season, so that's actually good news.

I'll be working fulfilling all other outstanding orders this weekend.

Update 08.12.20

I've had over 80 orders, and have packed and shipped just over half.  I'll get to the rest once I get confirmation that my US orders are meeting their destinations. I'm concerned I've messed up the tariff codes or paperwork for cross border sales so I just am being cautious before sending the rest.

Everyone who's had their product shipped should have gotten a notice from me.  

The/Studio is sending the missing "Forgot Water" patches as well-- they gave me a bit of a hassle, but ended up owning their error and have made it right.

Update 26.11.20

Badges received, although weirdly I only received 75 / 300 of my "Forgot Water" badges. The/Studio is working on replacing those.

Also, a label printer to print shipping labels and some packaging is also coming.

Up Next: Assembly. This bit might take a hot minute.  I'm going to get some photos up rather than the line art as well and then I'll start promoting this on larger Burner groups.


Update: 19.11.20

And like that, they're shipped!  The ETA: Around the first week of December-- something which I'm a bit skeptical about but okay. 


Update: 17.11.20

The/Studio is doing some janky things with its run for me here-- usually they issue a proof of every patch they do like this guy:

But in this case we're looking at the only proof they've done for me, which I guess is fine. I've done years of runs with them and they've never messed up a single batch of patches, so I'll take a risk and hope things are going to work.

Patches are finishing their runs now and will ship to me likely in about a week.



Update: 06.11.20

So, I'm working with The/Studio to do the the run. Some of the colours aren't going to quite match what my spec was-- in particular the yellow of the Catherding and the Rebar Bite badge is going to go for a bit more of a muted colour:

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This kind of colour shifting is pretty common since they're only going to have so many different twill backing colours to weave these badges on. As they get their mockups done, I'll likely see some more colour shifting.

The other change: I was able to get them to produce these as 2 inch wide patches.  This is, in fact a quarter inch smaller than I'd mentioned previously, but that was the weaver's choice and not mine-- 2 inches is the size of a Scouting merit badge, so getting them closest to that formfactor is ideal.

Bigger isn't always better, no matter what my ex will tell you *aaaayooooo* *Golfswing*

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