Vance, today.
Everyone should get their shipment this week.
youperguy, I agree. Here's the deal: straight-up talk time. (I'm feeling like responding to this, as I've been just ignoring it and packing packing PACKING straight for the last two weeks, but now I'll take a stand for our actions.)
Shipping them alphabetically was necessary. We had to ship them in some order, certainly, and we made a GIANT pile of shipping invoices (the ones included in your packages), and sent that same information to FedEx in order for them to create and then send us a GIANT pile of shipping labels (the ones on the outsides of your packages). So, our pile of invoices had to line up, 1 to 1, with the shipping labels. Thus, they had to be in SOME order. Alphabetical order made good sense, that way if something got out of order, it would be easier to figure out what went wrong. The part that was bad about it was not the order we did that packing and shipping, but that we did staggered shipping.
What would have been better for all of you and for your peace of mind was if we'd shipped out all of the games in one giant bulk pile. Rather than all the backers getting their games over the course of a week and a half, they would all arrive within a few days of each other. I think we can all agree that such a thing would be much better. However, it was impossible. Let me give you a bit of a tour of the Greater Than Games Headquarters.
Just over a year ago, we moved into this facility. When we moved here (from a tiny 5' by 10' storage locker) we were thrilled with how much space we suddenly had. 1700 square feet?! That's huge! Look at all this space! We built a small office in the front (which is where I live all day every day, to the point that a friend of mine made a "It's A WareHome" sign for my office), and built colossal, pallet-rack shelves in the rest of the space in order to use all fifteen of the vertical feet we have here. And use it we do! The first major shipment we received here was Rook City, which was crazy. So many boxes! It quickly filled up two entire blocks of shelves, going all the way to the ceiling, and took up a few more pallets on the warehouse floor as well. However, then, we started shipping it out at quite the rapid pace, so that was good. We built even more shelves and kept moving.
Last fall, we got the biggest shipment that we had ever received. (Note: every shipment we get is the biggest we've ever received - we're consistently floored by just how much we're growing, but we're still just three guys. More on that later.) Full print runs of Infernal Relics AND Sentinels of the Multiverse: Enhanced Edition. PLUS Unity and Ambuscade! Wow! Our warehouse was FULL. All of the shelves were filled up to the top. We had overflowing pallets of boxes throughout the warehouse, giant stacks of boxes in the office, everywhere. If there was a place for a box, we put three boxes there. It was intense. Yet, somehow, we managed. We got all of that Kickstarter packed up and shipped out, somehow. Fortunately, between Kickstarters, individual orders from our website, and distributor orders, we managed to empty about half of the warehouse before this latest shipment of Shattered Timelines and mini-expansions and such.
The amount of stuff that can be packed into a 40' cargo container is impressive.
I mentioned that we're a three-man operation. That is most certainly true. It has been the case since day one, and it will continue to be that way for quite some time. Eventually, we would like to add more hands, eyes, brains, etc. to Greater Than Games, but first, we have to consolidate the three of us. When this company started, I lived in Kansas City, Paul lived in St. Louis, and Adam lived in Los Angeles. After looking at warehousing and shipping options, we quickly and correctly determined that St. Louis was where we should be. I spent the first year of Greater Than Games's existence driving the four hours to St. Louis on a weekly basis. On top of all of the other game company stuff. It was arduous. January of last year, I finally was able to move here to St. Louis, and that's helped a TON. Far less driving. Far more living in this orange, orange office. (Anyone who has seen the Greater Than Games headquarters can tell you: my office is VERY orange. Sentinels orange.) Paul has a full-time job. Adam had a full-time job. I'm the only one who works here full-time, and I put in about 70 hours in the office on a normal week. During the last three weeks, I've been here no less than 140 hours a week. Sometimes more. No, I don't get enough sleep. But I do get the job done. Paul comes and works at least a few hours each evening, which makes a HUGE difference, but ultimately, this is in my hands.
With the growth of the company, we're able to move Adam from LA here, and he will be doing so in April! This is THRILLING news! Many of you know that Adam and I have been friends for about 20 years, and getting to work with him again and not just see him at cons and over the internet will be AWESOME. Also, I'll now have another set of hands and eyes to help regularly with packing and shipping, as he will be working here in the warehouse full time as well. Also! We are moving. As mentioned, we currently have a 1700 square foot facility. It WAS huge. Now, it's inadequate. We're currently looking at three different places, all between 5,000 and 10,000 square feet. They're pretty awesome, and we're keeping an eye out towards what expansion the future will necessitate.
So, now that you know more about who we are, what we do, how we do it, and (rather key here) WHERE we do it, you might see the problem with shipping. We did not have enough space to pack up over 2,000 boxes in our loading dock to all be picked up and shipped out at the same time. Paul and I would pack up as much as we could possibly pack in a day, me working all day, Paul joining me in the evenings, and then I would continue to work overnight. Each day, a FedEx truck would swing by to pick up what we had packed thus far. Had the FedEx trucks ever not done their daily pickups, we would have had to stop due to being out of space! The more we packed up, the more space we had as the pallets of games got broken down into boxes of orders. It was a delightful process to watch. We often wished for a montage, as that would have sped the process along nicely.
Our goal is to be able to ship games out in the "all at once" method in the future, but that depends on a bigger space and more helping hands. However, as I've gone over, we're working towards both of those things and will have them by the time the next big shipment arrives.
Oh, as for the tracking numbers, you say, "Depending on FedEx to send out tracking numbers was also a mistake." Er, unfortunately, there's not a better alternative here. Our plan should have worked. Let me explain: FedEx generates tracking numbers for shipments. We can't do that. Only FedEx can. When we sent all of the Kickstarter backer information to FedEx so they could create the shipping labels we used, that information contained the e-mail addresses to which the tracking numbers should be sent. We just had a talk this morning with our FedEx account representative, as we know the first chunk of shipments DID properly generate and send out tracking numbers, (looking at you, A through H names), but they stopped somewhere in the Js, apparently, and we don't know why. Oddly enough, neither does FedEx. They're looking into it, but that's entirely out of our hands. The only real alternative there would be to not supply tracking numbers at all, which is what a majority of Kickstarters do, but that seems like a worse alternative, honestly. So, certainly, we want everyone to get a tracking number, and are saddened and chagrined that it did not happen. We will be hounding FedEx to make sure it happens correctly next time.
To wrap this RIDICULOUSLY LONG (sorry!) post up, I want to make sure that my tone is correctly interpreted here. I'm pretty disappointed with how this Kickstarter shipping process went. I wanted everyone to get their games faster. I wanted everyone to have tracking numbers. Heck, I wanted to get more than 3 hours of sleep the nights that I actually did get any sleep. But these things did not happen. Not because we should have done better or differently, but because that was the state of how things are. We're still a tiny company, folks. We're growing, and we're getting better at things, but the resource were most tight on at this point is man-power and space. We're getting more of those! Things are looking up! But, and I realize I'm opening myself up to even further criticism here, I don't see how we could have done this better, given what we had to work with this time around.
For the TL:DR crowd, well, first, you've come to the WRONG forum post. But the important take-away is this. We did a semi-ok job here. I mean, sure, it was 2 months early, which is nice, but it could have gone much more smoothly. However, we readily recognize what things can be solved to improve future pack and ship events and have already taken steps to solve said issues. I hope you all can bear with us as we go through these growing pains. We certainly are in this for the long haul.
And, above all: keep on saving the Multiverse! Remember, you heard it here first, folks.
, so I'm still waiting. My guess is that you would get yours shipped next week. If you did two day shipping then you would probably get yours like next Friday. So not weeks and weeks, but sometime next week.
ah well, I guess I'll give him my old ones instead.
