Tasty Humans has landed in LA & We're Locking Addresses on 12/12
over 4 years ago – Fri, Dec 06, 2019 at 10:22:22 PM

I'll keep it short and sweet today, folks. Tasty Humans landed just south of Los Angeles this morning! You can even see where our shipping vessel, OOCL MIAMI, landed in Long Beach this morning on the map below.

So now what?

There's not much left to do. According to our freight forwarder, Freightos, the following tasks will have to be completed.

• Clear goods through customs.
• Pay customs and tariffs.
• Deconsolidate goods at the container freight station (CFS).
• Arrange the final delivery leg to Fulfillrite in New Jersey. (The most observant readers will notice that stock landed in California instead of Virginia as originally expected. This is OK and shouldn't affect the timetable much - instead of shipping through the Panama Canal, Tasty Humans will likely be crossing the US by rail.)

The estimated date of delivery to the warehouse, according to Freightos: Dec 16, 2019-Dec 21, 2019.

If the goods arrive in the warehouse by that time, you will probably see your game by the end of the year. Add a week if you're outside of the US. In short, we're right on time.

We're locking addresses on December 12

One last thing: we're locking addresses on December 12. We want everything to be nice and smooth for when fulfillment begins. Make sure your address is up-to-date in BackerKit!

That's all I've got for now - I'll keep you posted on new updates as we have them!

Take care,

Brandon

We're charging cards on Dec 2 & Tasty Humans enters the USA on Dec 4
over 4 years ago – Wed, Nov 27, 2019 at 12:16:17 AM

We have exciting news in this update, but we're going to lead with the really important update...

We will charge your credit card on December 2 for shipping.

As you are likely well aware, we've been using BackerKit to collect shipping fees. In order to ship your reward, you will need to make sure that the shipping fee is paid in BackerKit!

Okay, money talk is over now! Let's get to the fun stuff...

Somewhere sailing upon the choppy open waters of the Pacific Ocean, there sails an ocean liner carrying, among other things, 1,300 kilograms of the board game which you had purchased a few months ago. Somewhere between Tokyo and Honolulu, ten thousand pastel monsters adorn cardboard which has been carefully shrink-wrapped to pallets to allow for their safe passage across the world to the United States of America.

Tasty Humans is scheduled to enter the USA on December 4.

Now that we've shared the exciting news, we want to make sure a few things are crystal clear. Once the games come ashore, there are three things that have to happen before you receive your game.

• The games need to clear customs. Some of you who have backed a lot of board games know that customs, should they decide to closely inspect the cargo, can cause delays. Hopefully, this won't happen, but it could because inspections are essentially random.
• The games have to be shipped to the warehouse. Even after clearing customs, the board game still have to be shipped from the port of entry in Norfolk, VA to Fulfillrite's warehouse in Lakewood, NJ. We have already arranged this transportation. Freightos estimates this will happen by December 16. Frankly, this seems a bit optimistic to me.
• The games have to be received and then fulfilled. After the games arrive at Fulfillrite's warehouse, they still have to package each individual game and send it to you. That said, they have an impressive track record and have in some cases even shipped out Kickstarters the day they come in.

As of now, we're on track to ship these games by the end of December. Who knows - if the stars align, some of you may yet have time to wrap these games up and put them under the tree for Christmas!

And now, like you, we wait. If all goes according to plan, it won't be much longer until you have your game!

Talk to you in a couple of weeks!

Brandon

Freight is booked and we're locking orders on Friday
over 4 years ago – Mon, Nov 11, 2019 at 07:47:32 PM

Wire transfers of several thousand dollars. Five hundred kilogram pallets. And one massive thirteen thousand kilometer journey.

Tasty Humans is coming to a port of entry near you.

Freight shipping has been booked.

Shipping by freight is a lot easier than it used to be. Fulfillrite turned me onto a tool called Freightos, which is basically Expedia for freight shipping. It's pretty great.

We secured fast door-to-door freight shipping from Hong Kong to the USA for $2,200. Well, fast by sea freight terms - it's still a 37 to 44-day process!

In any case, the freight bill is paid in full. The only charges remaining are customs/tariffs and fulfillment.

We're locking orders on Friday, November 15.

All of our inventory is sitting on three wooden pallets on the opposite side of the world. For this reason, we're going to lock BackerKit orders on November 15. Once orders are locked, it will be like you've made a regular purchase online - you won't be able to easily change what you've ordered.

You can still update your address.

We won't charge your cards until Monday, December 2.

Our current delivery timetable.

With freight finally arranged, we can stop talking about weeks and months and start talking about dates!

Tomorrow, November 12, CaroTrans (the freight carrier) will be picking up 1,250 copies of Tasty Humans from BangWee's warehouse in the Guangdong Province of China.

On November 19, the vessel will depart from the port and travel to our chosen US port of entry in Norfolk, VA.

We do not yet know when the games will arrive in the US nor when they will arrive in the warehouse. We do know that the entire process is expected to take 37-44 days and has already begun. Once we have estimates from CaroTrans, we will let you know.

All this means goods should arrive in the Fulfillrite warehouse around mid-December. They are very fast and, depending on when the freight shipment arrives, may even be able to send out games the day the goods are received. 

We're still on track for December fulfillment right now.

That's all the news I've got for you this week! Things are chugging along right at the pace we expected when this campaign first launched. Now we depend upon the oceans for a speedy delivery.

Hopefully, there are no sea monsters!

See you in a couple of weeks,

Brandon

The Tasty Humans printing process completed weeks earlier than we expected!
over 4 years ago – Wed, Oct 30, 2019 at 09:22:13 PM

So imagine this, dear backer. After a lengthy back-and-forth with the manufacturer to make sure the materials are high quality, we fall a few weeks behind schedule. "It's worth it," I say, "because the Pangea logo is not going to be printed on low-quality materials." By that logic, shipping in January instead of December would be just fine.

Then I see these photos in my email at 6:02 this morning. Not even out of bed yet.

So you, of course, being an avid reader of email subject lines, know what this means. The printing is done early. Almost a month early, even.

On what planet does that ever happen to a Kickstarter?

But I digress...

There are three remaining steps that must be completed between now and you receiving the game:

• Quality check: I've already seen a physical prototype of the game, but made a couple of materials/file edits. They're going to send me photos of the boards and punch boards, which I'll use to verify that the changes didn't cause any unexpected issues. (We both verified the files before signing off on the print run, but hey, I'd rather check before we send these by sea to Fulfillrite's warehouse in New Jersey and incur customs fees along the way).
• Freight shipping: BangWee initially estimated that it would take 45-50 days to ship these games by sea to the warehouse. I might be able to have that done in 35-40, but no promises. In either case, we need to add 5-7 days to each estimate to plan for the coordination of the freight process.
• Fulfillment: We're going with Fulfillrite for fulfillment. They're really fast. So fast that they can deliver most US packages within a week of receiving, and most international ones within two weeks.

So long story short, provided everything goes okay with the quality check, we're back on track for December fulfillment.

Alright, I guess it's time for me to get back to work! Thank you for backing, and I'll catch up with you again in a couple of weeks.

Brandon

Tasty Humans is ready for mass production!
over 4 years ago – Mon, Oct 14, 2019 at 03:21:43 AM

I'll keep short and sweet this evening - Tasty Humans is ready for mass production!

Just this weekend, after receiving different board material, we feel confident moving forward with mass production. That means we're ready to start printing over a thousand copies of the game.

BangWee Games estimates that this process will take between 5 and 6 weeks. After that, my estimate for time to ship freight is 7 to 8 weeks. Taken at face value, that would mean games would be ready for fulfillment in January.

Quite frankly, the unplanned last-minute swap out of board material cost us 3-4 weeks, but it was necessary. We want you to have a great quality board game!

All this said, I'm going to see if we can find faster sea freight shipping. I've got a lot of contacts in the supply chain industry these days. No promises, but we may just be able to make up a bit of time!

Thanks again for backing - see you in a couple of weeks!

Brandon