That's a Wrap
about 1 year ago – Fri, Apr 07, 2023 at 09:43:07 AM

TL;DR

• Fulfillment is complete
• We ❤️ you

Fulfillment Status

All backers, worldwide, who’ve filled out their pledge managers should now have received their rewards. (With one exception, where a single add-on product was lost during shipment to a fulfillment hub. We’ve been in touch with that backer, and a replacement add-on is in transit.)

If you’ve filled out your pledge manager at BackerKit but do not have your rewards, something has gone wrong. Please reach out by email ([email protected]) or Kickstarter message.

Staying in Touch

Today, we’ll add to our newsletter mailing list all of the backers who opted in to that list. (We asked for opt-in permission in BackerKit. We never want to email people who don’t want to get emails)

Did you opt in but change your mind? Unsubscribing is easy. Just click the link at the bottom of the newsletter that lands in your inbox tomorrow.

Didn’t opt out but want to hear from us after all? Subscribe here. We give away a game every month to both a new subscriber and an existing subscriber.

Social media is increasingly a harmful dumpster fire of acrimony and garbage. Direct emails are more and more the best way for us to keep in touch with folks who like what we make. We carefully craft each of our newsletters, write them with the explicit agenda of delighting you, and deliver them to your inbox respectfully. (For example: We don’t use beacons to track whether you open our messages, we focus on material we think will be interesting to you as opposed to just commercially useful to us, we don’t send messages more than once a week, and so on.)

We’d love to stay in touch with you now that this campaign is over, and we think our email newsletter is the best way.

Tell Your Friends, Tell The World

Left Justified Studio is very small. When folks spread the word about our successes — like Broken and Beautiful — it’s huge for us.

The very best thing you can do to help snowball Broken and Beautiful’s success is play it with your friends! Tabletop games are uniquely viral — the act of using them spreads the word as part of the fun.

Past that, ratings and reviews at BoardGameGeek, Amazon, and literally any other online outlet where games are rated and reviewed is good for our effort. If you’re willing to spend 90 seconds to add your voice, we’d be grateful.

A Thousand Thanks 

We’re extremely grateful that you joined us for this campaign, and we can’t think you enough!

~

Questions? Comments? Concerns? You can always reach us by email ([email protected]) or Kickstarter message. Never hesitate to reach out if there’s anything we can do for you.

Freight Arrives, Fulfillment Begins!
about 1 year ago – Sun, Jan 29, 2023 at 10:24:20 AM

TL;DR

• Freight shipments arrived in North America and Europe
• Fulfillment shipments have begun, and will probably take about two weeks

Freight Arrivals

Our US shipment arrived in Minneapolis last week, on Tuesday. From this shipment, we’ll supply our Canada fulfillment hub. We’re in the process of arranging this shipment. There’s no reason to think it won’t leave for Ontario by mid-week.

Our Europe (and rest-of-world) shipment arrived in the UK last Wednesday.

Administration and Fulfillment.

Since our freight arrivals, we’ve been processing spreadsheets and invoices, and ordering boxes and envelopes. A small number of backer shipments went out last Friday, and we expect that larger batches will start going out on Monday. Local pick-up backers also received invitations to drop by late last week.

As things look today, we expect that 95% of backer shipments will be made within the next two weeks, and we can’t see any barrier to the remaining 5% going out before the end of the month.

The exception is backers who have not yet filled out their pledge managers. These backers will be dealt with on a case-by-case basis, but will certainly find themselves at the back of the line with respect to other backers and pre-order customers.

Thanks for backing, everyone!

~

Questions? Comments? Concerns? You can always reach us by email ([email protected]) or Kickstarter message. Never hesitate to reach out if there’s anything we can do for you.

Freight Arrival Imminent, Backer Shipments in February
about 1 year ago – Mon, Jan 23, 2023 at 03:29:22 PM

TL;DR

• North American freight should arrive at hubs this week or next
• European and rest-of-world freight should arrive at hubs this week
• Backer shipments should all be en route before the end of February
• Bobby at HMRC is a hero
• We’ll be at Con of the North, SaltCON, and Dice Tower West

US & Canada Freight Update

Against all odds and historical experience, our North American freight shipment made relatively speedy time by rail from Long Beach to Minnesota. Our games are currently at the receiving facility in Minneapolis, and all predictions are that they will be hauled from there to our facility this week or (at the very latest) next week.

Estimates about freight timelines are always best taken skeptically, but we are getting to the point where only so many things remain to go wrong.

Shipments to Canadian backers will need an additional leg from Minneapolis to Ontario, but this will be a courier shipment rather than a freight shipment, so should not take long at all.

Europe and Rest-of-World Shipments

Given the headaches with VAT registry, we redoubled our efforts to work with Spiral Galaxy — our fulfillment partner in the UK — to figure out a way to import games to Europe prior to receiving that paperwork. They suggested a method that we’ve carried out. It will require a bit of additional administration, but the investment of time seems more than worth it in order to get these games moving.

Europe and rest-of-world shipments are currently en route by air courier from China to the UK, and are expected to arrive late this week.

Backer Shipment Processing Time

At each fulfillment hub, it will take a bit of time to turn an incoming freight shipment around and get backer shipments out the door. We’ll make all haste, but it will not be spontaneous.

I expect that shipments will begin going out around February 1. It’s hard for me to imagine that any shipments will remain to be sent out at the end of February, although I suppose it’s possible that a few odd laggards could be delayed for weird reasons.

VAT Application Update

Bobby (last name omitted to avoid getting him into trouble) at HMRC in the United Kingdom is a true hero. Through a series of administrative kindnesses he managed to wrest — over a period of days — a Left Justified LLC VAT number from the bowels of a series of government computer systems.

I don’t know what that VAT number actually is yet, of course, because the only way to learn it is for them to scribe it on a piece of paper and pay someone to carry it across the ocean. But I’m told that it exists, and that it’s on its way, and frankly, I’m shocked that this ordeal might ultimately have a happy ending. Skepticism always, etc., etc., but it appears that a momentous bridge was crossed on this front since the last backer update.

Upcoming Conventions

If you’ll be at Con of the North (Minneapolis), SaltCON (Salt Lake City), or Dice Tower West (Las Vegas) in the coming month and a half, come say hello! There is no possibly of convention pick-ups for games, sadly, but we’d love to meet you and play a game.

Pledge Manager Status

If you have not yet completed the pledge manger, please do it today. We’ll be sending shipping addresses to our partners any day now, and if your address is not in our hands at that time, you shipment will absolutely be delayed.

http://broken-and-beautiful.backerkit.com/

Thanks for backing, everyone!

~

Questions? Comments? Concerns? You can always reach us by email ([email protected]) or Kickstarter message. Never hesitate to reach out if there’s anything we can do for you.

Credit Cards, Ocean Freight, and VAT Registry
over 1 year ago – Fri, Dec 23, 2022 at 05:58:35 AM

TL;DR

• Credit cards will be charged the week of January 2nd
• The US shipment has just arrived in Long Beach
• There’s been progress on VAT registry, but it’s not complete
• If you still haven’t, please complete the pledge manager

Credit Card Charges

I had been planning to run credit card charges for the pledge manager in mid-December. However, it occurred to me that this would produce a substantial chunk of “income” that would not be offset by the corresponding shipping expenses until 2023, with the potential to pointlessly create a tax obligation. The obvious solution was to hold off charging cards until the new year.

Credit cards will be charged for shipping and other pledge manager expenses sometime the week of January 2nd.

If you’d like me to run your charge in advance because you’ve set aside money now, would like greater predictability, or for literally any other reason, just send an email of DM and I will run your transaction manually on any date that works best for you.

US & Canada Freight Update

I got an email notice about 30 minutes ago that the US-bound shipment of games, which will also supply Canadian backers, has arrived at the port of Long Beach.

It’s too early to celebrate, of course. An additional logistical hurdle — navigating the US rail system from Long Beach to Minneapolis — remains ahead. At the time of booking, the freight forwarder estimated that this step might take until as late as January 13th. However, my experience with the last shipment I received by this route, as well as everything that anyone who works in freight forwarding has told me in the last six months, is that this estimate is not just somewhat optimistic, but rather totally delusional.

If the shipment arrives in Minneapolis in mid-January, we’ll celebrate and  fulfillment will commence right away. If it doesn’t, we’ll play the waiting game.

EU Shipments & VAT Application Fun

As was the case at the last update, our shipment for Europe and rest-of-world backers is ready to go. However, to ship those goods from China to the United Kingdom Left Justified LLC must have a VAT number, so it can get an EORI number, because that is what bureaucracy demands.

Left Justified’s VAT application was mailed in late September. HM Revenue & Customs will not talk to you until eight weeks have passed since submission, so I was not able to make fruitful follow-ups until early December. Since then I have managed to get escalated to the department that actually processes VAT applications. In a series of calls with this office — one of which I got up at 3:15 AM to make in order to talk to their office at the very beginning of the London-time workday in order to avoid falling into the “receipting queue,” which would have begun an additional month-or-longer delay — I re-submitted a second application document and eventually received the magic receipt number needed to further track the process. (Tracking the application prior to getting a receipt number was extremely difficult for them, because apparently they look up applications based on UK postal codes, which obviously my US-originating application did not have.) During my fifth-or-so call with them last Friday, they literally keyed in this second, eight-page application form while I was on hold. (Count of calls does not include calls attempted at times when their system was not even accepting new people to the call-hold queue because so many people were already on hold.)

Today, I wrote most of this update while also on hold (total hold time for this call: just over an hour) to get a status update, having been advised to call them back 72 hours after the last call just to make sure everything was progressing as expected. You have already predicted where this is going: It was not progressing as expected. For reasons they were not able to divine, the system had not processed my application to an end result. So, today, my application was escalated, and I’ve been advised to call back tomorrow. But earlier in the day, because their offices close early going into the Christmas weekend.

I should say: While the system I am working through is as utterly Kafkaesque as anything I have ever experienced, every person I have talked to at HM Revenue & Customs has been polite and helpful, without exception. Some have gone quite above and beyond the call of duty. So at least there’s that.

I also learned today that that once the system approves my application, the only way I can learn the VAT number issued is to wait for a physical piece of paper to be mailed from the UK to Minnesota. Policy prevents them from conveying these numbers on the phone, by email, through a web portal, by fax, or by literally any means other than the physical post.

Anyway, there remains some faint hope that European shipments will still not be too far delayed. Because the shipment form China to Europe is relatively small, I’ve been advised to ship it by courier rather than ocean freight, a method that’s obviously much faster. Thus, it’s even still conceivable that the shipment to the UK will beat the shipment to Minneapolis. We’ll see.

Pledge Manager Status

There are still 7.6% of backers who have yet to complete the pledge manager. If you’re part of this group, please go to the URL below and enter your email address to get the process started.

http://broken-and-beautiful.backerkit.com/

Thanks for backing, everyone!

~

Questions? Comments? Concerns? You can always reach us by email ([email protected]) or Kickstarter message. Never hesitate to reach out if there’s anything we can do for you.

Pledge Manger, Ocean Freight, and VAT Updates
over 1 year ago – Tue, Nov 22, 2022 at 08:54:52 AM

TL;DR

• Nine percent of backers still need to fill out the pledge manager
• Ocean freight is imminent
• The Left Justified Studio VAT application is still outstanding

Pledge Manager Status

Ninety-one percent of backers have completed the pledge manager.  If you’re one of the 9%, it would be helpful if you got us your address and locked in any add-ons today.

http://broken-and-beautiful.backerkit.com/

We made our best guesses about where, in the world, our late 9% are. We've divided our print run among our three fulfillment hubs according to these estimates. As mentioned last month if you missed the deadline,  and we guessed wrong about where you live, and it winds up increasing our cost to ship your rewards, we reserve the right to charge you the additional expense.

Credit Card Charges — Not Yet

Credit cards entered into the pledge manager have not yet been charged, because we don’t need your money until it’s time to ship your rewards.

Production & Shipping Update

Production is complete. Product testing is also complete. (Although I have not seen the EN71 test report yet because when the factory sent it on Friday, they attached the wrong PDF.)

The US ocean shipment — the lion’s share of games, which will fulfill both US and Canadian backers — has been extensively quoted and a freight forwarder selected. This US shipment should depart China shortly.

The forwarder's transit estimate is 38–45 days from Shanghai to Minneapolis. I will be stunned if this optimistic time frame comes true, especially with a rail strike back on the table. We’ll see what happens.

Europe Shipments & VAT Application Delay

As with the US shipment, the shipment for Europe and Rest-of-World backers is ready to go. However, UK Revenue & Customs still has not processed our VAT application. I spent some time chasing this paperwork last week.

The VAT registry website reports that applications mailed on the date I mailed mine (September 30) should have been answered by November 7. Chatting Revenue & Customs employees revealed that such questions can’t be answered by chat. Calling them, I learned from a human that “VAT applications are running behind,” that there is no way to check the status of an individual application, that responses are sent by post, and that an appropriate time frame to check in with them again if I still haven't hard anything is December 1. I have marked my calendar.

(Why is this holding up the shipment? Because a VAT number is necessary to get an EORI number, and an EORI number is necessary to import goods into Europe.)

Channel Release & Street Date

The Friday before last, we solicited Broken and Beautiful Standard Edition to our distributors. These are the companies that make our games available to retail stores who didn’t back the project. (We did not solicit the Deluxe Edition. As advertised, it is only available to backers — including retail backers — and from Left Justified Studio directly.) If you see news items, advertisements, and similar for Broken and Beautiful, that’s why: It’s the four-month time frame distributors need, not evidence that we’re selling the game to non-backers out of turn.

The street date for retail stores who buy from distribution has been set for March 10. This should be comfortably after every backer has received their rewards. If it begins to look like backer shipments won’t go out by then, the street date will be pushed back.

We are extremely committed that backers in a region will receive Broken and Beautiful before non-backers there. It is possible that we’ll release games to distribution in a region while backers in another region are still being fulfilled. We’re not to the point where I think that’s likely, but as with all things, we want to be transparent and forward-looking.

Thanks for backing, everyone!

~

Questions? Comments? Concerns? You can always reach us by email ([email protected]) or Kickstarter message. Never hesitate to reach out if there’s anything we can do for you.