Shipments are Complete!
over 6 years ago
– Thu, Jun 07, 2018 at 08:18:39 PM
Hello Friends!
It’s been a long bumpy road, but we’re finally there. As of last week, all the remaining shipments for Kickstarter and IndieGoGo rewards have gone out. We can’t thank you enough for your generosity, support, and patience during our campaign. <3
If you haven’t received your shipment yet, and you live in the US, please email [email protected] and we will get everything sorted out. If you live outside the US, your shipment might be on its way right now! You can email [email protected] and we’ll let you know.
Folks, we want to thank you again. You’ve helped us take the AFK Room to many conventions last year and in turn helped hundreds, if not thousands, of people by giving them a quiet, relaxed space to regain their calm.
- Take This Team
Rewards Shipping, Delays, and Explanations
almost 7 years ago
– Mon, Mar 19, 2018 at 08:28:35 PM
Hey friends,
A lot of folks have been asking for updates on reward shipping, or with questions about specific rewards.
First, it was never anyone’s intention that it take almost a year for our rewards to get shipped out. There have been unavoidable delays at every step of the process, from reward manufacturing to putting correct postage on the boxes. None of that is your fault. And yet it has had a cumulative effect that’s led us to now.
Where are we now?
All rewards for our domestic backers of both campaigns (Indiegogo and Kickstarter) have been shipped, and should have been delivered (or will be in the coming days).
OK, but why has it taken so long?
Right. Fair question. And the best answer I can give you is that we’re a charity, not a retailer. We started the campaign at Indiegogo because we needed your help funding our AFK Room program, which provides relief for mental health sufferers at major conventions. We don’t fundraise in the rooms so the program, has traditionally operated at a loss. All of our employees are part time or volunteer, and our ability to mount major fundraising campaigns and do the good work of fighting mental health stigma has been limited. And so, the Indiegogo.
Then Indiegogo shut down our campaign halfway because they decided to switch their non-profit campaigns to a new service. So we re-launched the campaign at Kickstarter within 48 hours between GDC and PAX East (our busiest time of the year).
With your help, we raised enough money across both platforms to fund the program through the end of 2017. Which is awesome. You rock.
Unfortunately, even assuming all would go well with reward fulfillment from that point forward, we now had two completely separate lists from two completely separate campaigns services, organized in two completely different ways. This sounds like the sort of thing that shouldn’t be a problem until you’ve actually had to deal with it.
Additionally, as Take This is a completely digital org, with employees spread around the country, we had one person organizing the data from both campaigns, and then sending that data to another employee across the country where our reward items were arriving. And the items themselves were being made by four different vendors, in four different places, on four different timelines.
Once all of the rewards had finally arrived at our shipping location, it was the end of 2017. The delay from then until now was due solely to the org being incredibly small, and peoples’ time being incredibly expensive.
Reward lots were packed, labelled, postaged, and shipped as possible. And unfortunately because of how Indiegogo organizes its backer data, those rewards took much longer to pack and ship out.
No, but seriously, why did this take so long?
Put simply: Take This is a charity, not a retailer. We were built to do specific things very well, manufacturing and delivering retail goods was not one of them. And we made mistakes.
Should we do this again (and we most likely won’t) we will do it better, or ask someone to do it for us.
(For the record, we originally did ask someone to do it for us, but all of the fulfillment companies we asked were either too busy, or not interested. So, as much as we knew it would hurt, we had to handle it ourselves.)
OK, I get it. But where’s my stuff?
If you live outside of the US, your stuff is awaiting delivery to a post office that handles customs and such. Those will hopefully go out very soon.
If you live in the US, your stuff should be with you! If it’s not, please contact [email protected] and we’ll try to sort you out.
-R
