Breaking the Silence: State of the Game in 2023
over 1 year ago – Sat, Jan 07, 2023 at 01:21:56 AM

Greetings, Backers of Prosperitea

I don't know how to start this update, so I'm just going to be clumsy about it: I know I have been absent from this space for some time. (I have been doing my best to stay active on twitter/instagram during the holiday season, though.) I do not feel good about it, and I have mixed news to deliver that is all directly related to why I've been silent and avoidant. I will do my best to be brief.

1. Luminary Boxes: This part of the project has been an unexpectedly, herculean ordeal. After I lost the original vendor, we failed to find another that could complete this part of the project in a timely manner or for a price point that was close to my original quote. In November, we decided to buy and build our own laser and I set to work completing all of the work on my own. I completed about 25 Luminary Boxes before the winter holidays hit.

I wish I had a definitive timeline for when these will be shipped out, but the only answer I can offer is "I will send off a new batch as soon as they are cut." Our laser is much smaller than the industrial laser systems typically used for a job like this. It's also an open air cutter, so the crafting process is on hold until the weather clears up here in SoCal. (Laser cutting in the rain is NOT a good idea)

The boxes are getting done. Just much more slowly than I would like. They do look great and I am proud of the work. But I am not proud of how long it's taken to get here.

2. Customer Service Backlog: I have a large backlog of e-mails. I don't know when I will be able to plow through it. I have been trying to keep my head down to focus on solving the Luminary box problem, which now has a solution. A lot of this backlog is hampered by me being the only one who can answer the questions and my lack of time and mental fortitude to answer them in a timely manner. I am juggling too much on my own, and I don't have the resources to hire help.

This ties directly into the last thing to update:

3. The Game is Doing Well, But I am Not: To say it has been a busy winter would be an understatement. Without getting into details that are too personal: Even though the game itself is being well received and getting a healthy start at FLGS, I feel a great deal of shame and guilt for not having finished all of the work that needs to be done on the Kickstarter project.

I have never faced such a catastrophic level of failure on anything I have previously worked on. Outside of the primary manufacturing run (which went fantastically!), everything that could possibly have gone wrong has, in fact, gone wrong. It has taken an immense amount of time and resources to solve everything. And it is always too slow because I am being pulled in too many directions.

 I am trying to deal with everything as best as I can. But it always takes too long. And it always generates ill will. And it has more than taken a toll on me. My goal for this project was to spread my joy for tea, games, and community. And these massive delays have caused anything but that primary goal.

I have learned a lot of hard lessons during the year since the manufactured goods landed. And if there is enough goodwill left for me when this is done, I will apply them to the next project. But that is a post for another time.

4. Going Forward: For now, the only thing I can say is that I haven't disappeared. The project will continue to move forward. Everything will get done. But at a slow pace. Everything Luminary Box related is on hold until the rainstorms clear here in Los Angeles, then I will rebuild the laser cutting station and get back to work.

I will do my best to chew through the customer service backlog and update the FAQ section. But that may take a couple of weeks in my current state. I am currently working full time to keep the bills paid, so I can't get to anything until after 6:00PM Pacific Time.

For those who have continued to show faith and patience: Thank you. So much. Words of kindness are what is keeping me going. And knowing our work has brought joy into many households already at least gives me some relief.

For those who are upset: I hear you. I understand. And I don't blame you. I am doing my best, and unfortunately that came up short on this project. I know it may feel difficult to believe, but everything will get done because I now control every point of the crafting process for the remaining orders. Unfortunately, that means it will take longer. But it will get done. Because now I am the only one responsible for finishing the work. I was tired of seeing things fail, so I decided to do it myself.

Thank you all for taking a leap on this project. And I hope you have all had an otherwise wonderful holiday season filled with family, friends, and good times.

-Aven

State of the Game: Bespoke and Luminary Updates, Next Steps for Fulfillment
over 1 year ago – Sat, Oct 08, 2022 at 08:35:32 PM

Greetings, Teariffic Hoomins!

This update comes in the middle of A LOT of personal chaos that has hit me and my loved ones in the last half of September. This has not left me a lot of time for creating updates and performing outreach, but we have been pushing the proverbial ball forward, albeit quietly. That being said, updates and some photos will follow:

Bespoke Blend Updates

 Last week we had the tasting and approval day for all of the Bespoke Backers that completed their interview with us! I sat down with Justin at St Bastian's Tea Co go give the final notes and suggest the finishing touches for these highly customized blends of tea.

Because some of our backers want to be surprised, I won't post ALL of the images just yet, nor will i mention who these teas are for. But I did want to showcase some of the work we've been doing on the hand crafted items front. These orders will be shipped out next week when I plan to start shipping out Luminary Boxes!

Luminary Boxes

Last week the first Luminary Boxes went to their new homes! status of the Luminary boxes has some bad news, then some good news. The bad news is that they, once again, have hit delays. Unfortunately the new vendor misprinted all of their work, so I could not use any of the parts that had been cut. This week they have fixed the error and I expect to have boxes to stain and build by Wednesday, October 12.

I did prep all of the dye, varnish, and gold filler needed for the project. Once I have boxes to stain I should be able to get through them fairly quickly. On the upside, I was able to build and stain the small batch from my previous vendor and those boxes have gone to their new homes. I wish I had a better update, but unfortunately the fastest way forward is to let my current vendor continue the project. This brings me to the last chunk of this update:

Fulfillment Next Steps

There have been a lot of questions for fulfillment after my last update and many of them were similar. So I will do my best to breakdown the current state of things more clearly:

ORDERS THAT HAVE BEEN FULFILLED:

1. ALL "Basic Blend" backers. (Backers that had Basic Blend orders with no Add-Ons)

2. ALL US DOMESTIC Orders WITHOUT a Luminary Box. (If you did NOT Order a Luminary Box and live in the United States, you should have your order.)

ORDERS STILL WAITING:

1. INTERNATIONAL orders with ADD-ONs. (I will start working on these on Monday, Oct 10. If you DO NOT have a Luminary Box, your order should be mailed out soon)

2. ALL LUMINARY ORDERS. If you ordered a Luminary Box, I cannot ship your order until I have boxes to fill them. Most of the comments I have seen about needing their game fall into this category. I did mention this in my last update, but it was not clearly delineated.

3. WILL CALL ORDERS. We have found a location!

It will be in Burbank, CA, be a casual pickup day, and be held on a Monday or Tuesday afternoon/evening. I am going to confirm dates and availability on Monday. I am going to aim for Oct 17 or 18th to give everyone time to plan.

NEXT STEPS:

1. Start packing and filling remaining International Orders: Oct 10, 2022.

2. Start building and shipping Luminary Boxes: Oct 13, 2022.

3. Will Call Event (Approx Oct 17-18, 2022)

If there are any General questions, feel free to comment and I will address them as best as I can.

If you have specific questions about your order, Please message me using the Kickstarter Message system. Comments do not help for personal customer service issues as they are difficult to track in an orderly fashion.

Kickstarter Messages operate like e-mail, so it is better for both us. I can keep a clear line of communication with you and your info stays private if I have to discuss things like contact info, tracking, or other sensitive topics.

As always, thank you for your support so far. There has been an absurd amount of chaos in September for various reasons, and I do feel bad for not being more vocal. But the end, is indeed, in sight. And I am going to do my best to get there as quickly as possible given the latest setbacks.

Thank you all and I hope you have a fun October,

Aven

Alpha Hoomin of Mentha Designs

State of the Game: Fulfillment Updates, Roadmap Forward
over 1 year ago – Sun, Sep 25, 2022 at 10:45:04 PM

Greetings, Teariffic Hoomins!

This week's update brings a lot of text, but no pictures so I will try to keep things brief. This update mostly concerns the current state of fulfillment:

Current Status

As of last week, All BASIC BLEND orders (US / International) and All DOMESTIC orders without a Luminary Box have been shipped!

STILL PENDING are: Remaining International Orders, Bespoke Blend, and any orders with a Luminary Box, and Will Call Orders.

Game Plan

The plan going forward is to start selling retail copies of Prosperitea via our website and through our network of small FLGS locations on the west coast. I will focus on building the Luminary Boxes and securing our Will Call location. This will help us recover from the inflated shipping so we can continue to send out packages with minimal delay.

I will also be circling back to address any missing components or returned packages. Those packages should be out in the mail in the next few days.

Thank you all for your continued support and I'll be back in a few days with another update!

<3

Aven Gonzalez

Alpha Hoomin of Mentha Designs

State of the Game: Fulfillment Update Sept 13
over 1 year ago – Fri, Sep 16, 2022 at 08:48:17 AM

Greetings, Beauteaful People of Kickstarter!

Another week, another chunk of orders out the door. As of this morning, we have shipped 650 orders according to Backerkit! This puts us in the last stretch of fulfillment, which I will go over below:

Fulfillment Goals

Out current goals is to complete all DOMESTIC orders that do not have a Luminary box by the end of next week (Including orders that we took at KublaCon back in May). This should leave us with only Luminary Box orders and international orders to fulfill.

LOCAL PICKUP

If you selected "Local Pickup" as your shipping option, I will be talking to a few of our vendors in the LA area to set up a date/time to swing by for pickup. There aren't a lot of these backers, so it may be a cozy, casual, "let's have a game night and pick up your game" style event.

Luminary Boxes

My laser cutting vendor has returned and the first batch of Luminary Boxes is cut! I will begin staining, painting, and assembling these this weekend in my workshop. Now that most of the orders are shipped, I will be able to divert more of my focus to this aspect of the project.

Bespoke Backers

Everyone is healthy again and work has already begun on blending the Bespoke Blends we have information for. We still haven't heard from some of you, so I will be sending out another e-mail to schedule some time to go over your Bespoke Blend with St Bastian's Tea Co.

Now that the Luminary Boxes are starting to be cut, this is the perfect time to finalize this so everything can be ready to go!

That's it for this update. In the next update, I will provide some links for things you can do to help us out now that the game is in the wild! Thank you all for your continues patience and I am happy to see so many of you being excited about this little project we put our hearts into. :)

<3

Aven Gonzalez

Alpha Hoomin of Mentha Designs

Smol Update: Duplicate Orders
over 1 year ago – Tue, Aug 30, 2022 at 04:21:04 PM

Greetings, Teariffic Hoomins!

There is a small, but fairly major issue that has been brought to our attention: A significant number of you have already received duplicate packages. And there may be more on the horizon.

Basically, the label printer I have been using (The DYMO LabelWriter 4XL) seems to print duplicates even if they don't exist in the PDF file I am printing from. This machine has been the LARGEST pain point for me in fulfillment, but that is a whole other tangent. The important thing now is I don't know how many of you will have duplicates because it is a bit unreasonable to examine each individual label when we have 500 packages in front of us. What I can guess is there is about 25-30 of you that have extra games because I came up short by 25 packages when we reached the end of the Basic Blend tier. 

What to do About This?

While I appreciate the desire to return our missing product to us, unfortunately the expense of doing that is something we can't manage. And it isn't something we can reasonably ask you, our backers, to shoulder at $6.50-$7 per package. So, I made a form!

FILL OUT OUR DUPLICATE GAME FORM HERE

This is our "duplicate Package" form. If you can take a moment to let us know you have a duplicate, that will help us balance our books and have a better idea of how many games went wandering. The form also has suggestions of what you CAN do with your duplicate game!

While it is unfortunate that this happened to us, the BEST thing you can do is make sure your extra game has a good home. Help us spread a bit of joy by giving it to your local game store, cafe, or loved one.

Thank you all for your support and patience. Another 70-ish games are going to the post today and tomorrow, so be on the lookout for those packages!

<3

Aven Gonzalez

Alpha Hoomin of Mentha Designs