COVID-19 custom dog card printing and shipping update
almost 4 years ago – Thu, Apr 30, 2020 at 03:45:00 PM

Hello hoomans,

We wanted to write with a quick update about our printer’s progress on custom dog cards during COVID-19. We’ve been in touch with them weekly, and despite their best efforts, they’re currently behind on their original printing estimates. Here is our latest update from them:

"We are trying to find a way to move it up a bit, but at the moment it is scheduled for next Monday night. My apologies for the delay, we have had some essential food service jobs come through that we have prioritized to help support our community."

While we’re eager to get the remaining custom dog cards out the door, we know that healthcare and food service come first, and can't begrudge our printer for taking the time they need to support their community and get the job done safely. 

Our printer's previous shipments have taken about a week to arrive with us once they completed the job. While we wait, we just wanted to get a quick update out communicating this important information to all. Thank you again for your patience and support!

Stay safe, stay healthy,

Brian, Hannah, and Evan

All custom dogs have gone to press!
about 4 years ago – Tue, Mar 31, 2020 at 11:46:50 PM

Hello hoomans,

We’re writing to let you know that as of last week every single dog that we were able to send to press has gone to our printer. That’s:

•  1,289 single custom dog cards
•  319 4 custom dogs + 12 hooman packs

For a total of:

2,565 individual custom dog cards and 3,828 individual hoomans. That’s a lot of doggos!

Important Timelines

We’ve been regularly in contact with our printer as news changes daily about COVID-19. Right now, they’re still working to print all of your cards! They’ve updated us this week to let us know that they’re working at less staff capacity to keep their employees healthy and to maintain social distancing and safe facilities. We totally support that!

We don’t know exactly how or if this changes their timeline. Right now, their estimate for turn around is two weeks. We’re going to be checking in with them every few days but we won’t rush them during this time. We want their health and safety first, and we’ll let you know when all cards have arrived to us.

Final Shipping Wave

When we have all cards in hand, we’ll begin packing the last wave of cards! Unlike the first wave, we won’t be shipping these out in small batches, with trips to the post office every day. We will likely package all cards at once so we can arrange a pickup with our post office. This means less time spent making trips to the post office as well as safer arrangements for us during this time. We’ll send another update when cards have arrived and when packing for the final wave has begun.

Withheld Cards

Of the 2,565 custom dog cards we’ve created, around 70 cards had to be withheld from the final print wave. These are cards where, despite our best efforts, we weren’t able to work with the provided photos. This number is down from around 150 images that we originally deemed unusable, but were able to send to press through the magic of Photoshop or working with backers one on one.

We’ll be reaching out to the 70 backers whose cards were withheld from this final print wave to work with you on finding a better photo or getting your approval to use the original photo without our special editing pass.

This was a huge project, and there’s obviously much more we have to say! That comes later, after more of you have your cards in hand. For now, stay healthy and safe, and keep an eye out for another update when the final big wave of cards has arrived. And of course, we are so appreciative of you, our wonderful backers, for making this project possible. You are good hoomans!

Best,

Hannah, Evan, & Brian

Custom dog cards: final wave off to press!
about 4 years ago – Fri, Mar 13, 2020 at 05:58:15 PM

Hello hoomans,

Big news! Today we’re letting our printer know that next week we’ll be sending them the final batch of custom doggo cards.

When will my custom pup(s) arrive?

For many of you, they have arrived already. For everyone else, we’ll post another backer update in a few weeks when every last card has arrived back from the printer. You may receive your card(s) before then. If you don’t though, please be patient. If your card hasn’t arrived yet, it’s either at the printer now, headed back to us, or one of the final batch of tricky pups that needed special care. In any case, every last dog will be in our hands in the next few weeks, after which we’ll update you again with a very final shipping timeline for the custom doggos!

I’ve got a question - how should I contact you?

If your question is about when your card will arrive, we won’t have that exact answer until all the cards are back from press.

We’ve reached the point of the project where we’re starting to work with many folks one on one to do things like find shipped packages that went rogue, communicate about final address changes, etc. These are great communications because they represent the true wrap-up of a long journey, but they also take many hours of the day to complete! We want to reassure you that your custom pups will arrive and communicate with folks one-one-one whenever possible, and we also need our full team present to push these final dogs to press.

Because we’re a three person team and because these final parts of the project have to be handled by us personally, we’d like to ask your patience and trust over the next few weeks as dogs arrive back from the printer. We’re all hands on deck right now editing the final round of particularly challenging photos and communicating with our printer about how to safely print and ship the remaining custom rewards.

Every print job includes a margin of error. Usually this means a few damaged games that can’t be shipped. In this case though, any errors, miscuts, or cards that arrive damaged mean we need to reprint those cards. They can’t be swapped in for another card—these cards are uniquely yours. That means we’re really trying to work with our printer to minimize further card miscuts or shipping damage. Again, important communications—but it’s all hands on deck work!

For all other questions, please email us: [email protected].

Wave 1 reprints and token stands

The majority of wave 1 reprint cards have arrived back to us. We’ve finished shipping half of these, and the other half will go out next week. If you do not receive your reprint card in the next few weeks, don’t worry! Some reprint cards, including international cards, are getting reprinted in our final card batch.

Remaining token stands will be shipped as we complete shipping on wave 1 reprints next week.

COVID-19

In light of COVID-19, we want to send out our wishes for the health and safety of our backer community, local and global. We’re monitoring updates closely and following the recommendations of the WHO. We will let you know if we think the final wave of printing or shipping is going to be impacted in any way. In the meantime, please take care of yourselves and each other!

Thank you again to everyone who has posted photos of your cards. We’re eternally grateful that you’ve continued to stand by us while we finish work on a monolithic number of custom rewards. :)

We’re already excited for the day we can announce that our project is 100% complete. Until then, we’ve got more dogs to ship!

Best,

Hannah, Evan, & Brian

Final dog days and PAX East (Feb 27 - March 1)
about 4 years ago – Mon, Feb 24, 2020 at 10:02:58 PM

Hello hoomans,

Thank you to everyone who has shared photos of your custom cards as they’ve arrived! As this long journey begins to wind down, it’s great to see pups arriving for many of you safely around the world.

Now, we’re just continuing the process of receiving and shipping out cards. Custom dog cards are arriving back from the press in waves, and we’re shipping them out in big batches as they arrive. If you’re a backer receiving fewer than four custom dog cards, you may have already received your pups. We’ve also been in communication with a group of backers whose cards were impacted by a printing error, which we fortunately caught before those cards went out the door!

There’s never a dull moment when it comes to custom rewards, and despite all the weird and wonderful challenges of printing upwards of 2,000 custom cards headed to over 1,000 backers, the journey’s end is in sight.

We are extremely grateful to our printer for taking on such an immense custom project and they've been quick to correct these errors. Our printer for the custom cards is in Canada, so it does take some time for cards to arrive back to us! Thank you for your patience as we wrap up the final pieces of these custom rewards.

Card stands

If you’re just waiting on extra stands (no custom cards) we’ll be shipping those out in the next few weeks, after we return from PAX. The surprise printing error waiting at the bottom of the box of custom cards threw us all for a loop, and now that we’ve resolved that with our printer, we’re back to the regular to-do list.

When will my custom card(s) arrive?

As we’ve mentioned above, cards are getting sent to and arriving back from the printer in waves. Our first batches of cards included finished cards that didn’t need any additional editing work. At this point, the majority of cards are either at press, ready to go to press, or already in your hands!

Here’s the type of work we’re doing on the trickier cards:

A big thanks to Evan for putting a huge amount of work (around 7 hours a day!) in this final stage of the project into image repair. We’re getting there, and we’re so happy to know that for those of you who already have cards in hand, the wait has been worth it.

PAX East

We will be at PAX East in Boston next week (Thurs Feb 27 - Sun March 1)! We’ll be in the main expo hall at booth 8010 so you may have to stroll a bit from the tabletop section to find us.

We’ll have Good Dog, Bad Zombie, the GDBZ expansions, as well as all of our roleplaying games. We hope to see some of you there!

Best,

MBT

Custom Dogs: First shipping wave has begun! (Read for details!)
about 4 years ago – Fri, Jan 24, 2020 at 11:22:09 PM

Hello hoomans,

We’re very happy to let you know that our first wave of custom dog card shipping has begun! We are individually removing each custom dog from their press sheet and packaging them up with their associated shipping label. It’s a time intensive process, so we wanted to send out an update before we are knee deep! (Paw deep?)

But before anyone goes chasing their tails, please keep reading. We want to make sure everyone has a clear idea about what to expect, as some custom dog cards are still arriving back from our printer!

Who is in Wave 1:

Wave 1 includes folks who ordered fewer than four dogs. As we’ve said in previous updates, around a quarter to a third of all doggos needed some type of extra special attention, whether that was due to lighting, photo resolution, or a photo where too much or not enough of the doggo was visible. With those averages, the majority of four or more doggo orders had at least one dog in them that needed an extra design pass.

So if you had less than four dogs and we have not contacted you about any special corrections to your custom card, you are likely in this first shipping wave!

Who is in Wave 2:

Wave 2 will consist of people getting 4 or more doggo cards. We’re still waiting on the majority of these cards from our printer, so hold tight! You’ve been waiting patiently for so long, and we’re putting our all into this work, so we hope you can wait just a little longer as we do final proof passes. Because every one of these rewards is customized, we want to get them right the first time if we can!

Short video of dog cards laid out ready for packaging (15s)

Wave 1 and Wave 2 shipping timelines:

Wave 1 (getting 1, 2, or 3 doggos) timeline: You should receive a tracking number by email when your order ships. We’re just beginning this process and the first few orders went out today! We’ll be shipping as many wave 1 orders as we can in the next two weeks while we finish getting the final wave (4+ doggos) back from our printers.

Hang tight until February 10th before checking in about a tracking number if you haven’t gotten one. Please also make sure to email us your inquiry as that is the easiest for us to track: [email protected].

Wave 2 timeline:  Thank you all so much for being so patient while waiting for your cards! We know that you’ve gone above and beyond in your commitment to this project, and we want you to know how seriously we’re taking these more complex dog orders. We want to thank you again for bearing with us while we make final edits to these very good doggos, and we’ll have another update the minute we have an arrival timeline from our printer! Our goal is to transition seamlessly from shipping out the first wave to shipping out the second wave!

 What to do if your custom dog needs a correction:

In the unlikely situation that your custom dog is damaged in shipping, or if we made a mistake on your card, or if there are any parts of your card you'd like to discuss, just send us an email: [email protected]. Please include "Custom Dog Correction - Your Last Name" as the subject header and include a picture of the dog(s) that need fixing. While we love hearing from you on Kickstarter, those messages/comments are harder to track when it comes to customer support issues, so we'd like any correction requests to come in via email.

Thank you so much for your support this past year! We know it’s been a journey and that working with so many custom rewards has brought unexpected challenges. We can’t imagine a better group of backers, and we’re so happy to be crossing this finish line with you.

Best,

MBT