Something Wicked This Way Comes Part 3: "CardLauncher"!

[Sher]

In regards to PayPal... I know IndieGoGo uses PayPal and sometimes creators' accounts get frozen because they're receiving what seems to be an unusual amount of money. I think PayPal changed its policies to allow some leeway for crowd funding, but you might want to look into it.

[montecarlojoe]

I can't speak for Mike, but I imagine he'd be trying to work with Paypal to avoit that kind of thing - making sure there is leeway for transactions involving CL/CW for example (as all payments should - from backers to CL to be held in Escrow then CL to creators or direct to agreed suppliers)

[Paul Middleton]

Escrow is a great idea, but doesn't play well with folk outside of the US when using Paypal (to the best of my knowledge).

https://www.escrow.com/support/faqs/faq ... ic=Payment" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[montecarlojoe]

I think the main thing with international Paypal payments is that they essentially charge for currency exchange by massaging the prevailling rates in thier favour. (i.e. what any cash exchage / bureau de change does to make money)

[Paul Middleton]

I think the main thing with international Paypal payments is that they essentially charge for currency exchange by massaging the prevailling rates in thier favour. (i.e. what any cash exchage / bureau de change does to make money)

They do indeed do that, which you can understand. But my concern would be they (Escrow) don't seem to allow people outside of the US to pay with Paypal and use their service...

Both Buyer and Seller must be located in the United States, online trackable shipping must be used, and the transaction amount must be less than $5000 USD in order to use the PayPal option. The transation must also be in US Dollars.

[montecarlojoe]

I guess that depends on teh Escrow company? I don't know if Paypal offer that kind of service or whether they'd simply be the payment conduit...

[Mike Ratledge]

Escrow is a great idea, but doesn't play well with folk outside of the US when using Paypal (to the best of my knowledge).

https://www.escrow.com/support/faqs/faq ... ic=Payment" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Can you explain more, Paul? I don't think I understand. The thing is that all projects ("clients") will be signing up for that when they run decks on CardLauncher, and the escrow is for the amount to cover production and fulfillment only, the rest is their when the deck funds + 14 days, as before.

I personally don't understand why anyone would object to escrow of funds unless they are/were planning on being fraudulent in the first place or pulling a bone-head like Circle City Cards did - three times. I don't think Russell not Adam intended to take peoples money, but that's what happened. They're certainly not the only ones in that boat, "Alice of Wonderland" comes to mind first off because it's currently a topic of conversation, and Core, Vortex (I believe) and many others fall into that same category.

Nobody's money gets put in escrow except the clients (artist/designer/manger) of each project's campaign. That amount is calculated from the number of items ordered and cost for production plus the computed shipping costs - again, depending on weight and location in three tiers, US (5-digit ZIP code), Canada + Mexico (North America) and "RoW" (Rest of World) which is of course more expensive. I'd love to see it broken down into the more fair but almost impossible to do 17 zones worldwide so we didn't have to 'homogenize" the RoW rates, but I don't see any way around that.

...now - drum-roll please: (next message)

[Mike Ratledge]

As of earlier this afternoon, "Bicycle" brand cards and their parent company, the United States Playing Card Company are on board as production partners for the CardLauncher website project, and I have already received this in writing as of about 10 minutes ago, and caused their logos to be included in the 'branding' of the website portal by the software vendor we have chosen.

That being said, I am still waiting on other partners' reactions and response, because this is the first time I have publicly announced the partnership. In fact, the realized just how big this could easily become, and have assigned me (us) a dedicated Custom Decks representative for all of our needs, including quotes, production and delivery to one of our three primary US-based fulfillment centers, at which point the shipment to the overseas fulfillment center in Taiwan will take place, to accommodate the delivery to anyone that lives in the Asia/Pacific/Oceania areas, and perhaps more. That depends on their ability to handle the volume and properly do the required touchy process of delivery to other parts of the world.

I haven't announced the name of that partner, but it is "Quantium", which also has other offices in Singapore and similar places around the Pacific rim region. We're still working out the details of the agreement, but I expect to have the final document in place within a week to ten days.

[Maddest Hammer]

Congratulations, Mike! The hard work and long nights is paying off. I am really looking forward to the "launch"!

[ecNate]

That's awesome! Congrats! This is looking even better, can't wait to launch day and see what great decks and options we'll have.

[rjtomlinson1977]

Great news!!

[Mike Ratledge]

Just a note, and reality check from Bill Kalush today, we're going to 'stand down' on the Chromografix decks for a couple of months, and prove the production first, as it is we're still not able to be absolutely certain that we can produce them efficiently enough to sell them on the first day of launch.

In any case, we will be offering CMYK + 1 spot color or 5 spot (PMS) color faces and backs to begin with, and then the ultra high quality decks will follow in a couple of months. The first decks will all be 5-color and still much higher resolution than the 600dpi standard used today, effectively 1000dpi although all graphics will be in vector format, which means that you can scale infinitely to any size without having to change the files used to produce the artwork. We'll like go to either 1200dpi equivalent or 1600dpi equivalent shortly thereafter, but unfortunately what we've found is that most artists/designers aren't ready to handle the added work of creating these Chromografix decks - yet, but we'll be working on that in parallel to our proving of the technology and production capacity.

Today, as well as adding U S Playing Card Co and their "Bicycle" brand to our production partners, I also added Quantium of Taiwan as well to perform fulfillment and delivery of products to the Asia/Pacific/Oceania area and beyond, perhaps as far away as Europe, depending on the cost and capacity of that company, which is in fact a very large company owner by Singapore Post, and has branches throughout the Asia-Pacific area.

I hope to have one more announcement of a new financial investor here tomorrow, but that is pending the paperwork execution. Let's just say "it's somebody you know", and he's run a KS campaign before, amongst other things.

[chach]

This is some great news indeed.

[Yashi]

So will shipping to Asia be cheaper with Quantium? Is it also possible that shipping to international destinations would take longer to arrive since it passes through two parties?

[Mike Ratledge]

So will shipping to Asia be cheaper with Quantium? Is it also possible that shipping to international destinations would take longer to arrive since it passes through two parties?

Expert PCC decks won't ever have to make the 4-week 'float' to New York City or Oakland CA, so they'll actually have to be held for a couple of weeks, or they'll get there earlier.

The idea is to have them shipped from Taiwan, and perhaps stagger them so that decks going to Europe go out first, etc - we're still working out the details.

The USPCC decks will of course have to be sent to whoever is doing fulfillment first, and then a portion of them to the Taiwanese fulfillment center. It appears the we'll be able to utilize "Express" shipping from there and still beat the price from the US.

[Cbkimble]

wouldn't it be easier to just coordinate fulfillment centers to start shipping at a specific date/time or wait till they all have the decks than to stagger shipping to alternate countries? Just a thought

[Mike Ratledge]

I agree, we're considering all possibilities. I agree that won't work for some people, but we want to figure out something where everyone around the world gets their items at about the same time. Doing fulfillment from Taiwan and possibly Singapore (the Quantium company is owned by Singapore Post) would definitely make things more flexible. It's not a universal panacea, I know that - but it is a step forward.

[TGunitedcardists]

I agree that won't work for some people, but we want to figure out something where everyone around the world gets their items at about the same time.

Why would you want to purposely delay shipments so everyone gets their cards around the same time? If the cards are paid for in advance, I'd want the cards shipped as soon as possible. If the only reason to delay shipping is "to be fair for everyone" that is not a good reason. Silly in fact.

If you set the expectation in the beginning that orders will be shipped as fast as possible, that is putting the customer first, and would be appreciated. Sometimes people in North America will get their stuff first, sometimes people outside of America will get their stuff from Taiwan first. In fact, it would be a nice change from the current US centric shipping bias/pricing advantage.

It seems like you are on the right track for shipping and fulfillment for orders outside of America. This is great. But don't delay shipments.

[Mike Ratledge]

I agree that won't work for some people, but we want to figure out something where everyone around the world gets their items at about the same time.

Why would you want to purposely delay shipments so everyone gets their cards around the same time? If the cards are paid for in advance, I'd want the cards shipped as soon as possible. If the only reason to delay shipping is "to be fair for everyone" that is not a good reason. Silly in fact.

If you set the expectation in the beginning that orders will be shipped as fast as possible, that is putting the customer first, and would be appreciated. Sometimes people in North America will get their stuff first, sometimes people outside of America will get their stuff from Taiwan first. In fact, it would be a nice change from the current US centric shipping bias/pricing advantage.

It seems like you are on the right track for shipping and fulfillment for orders outside of America. This is great. But don't delay shipments.

Duly noted, but there are always two sides of the coin: if the decks are available in Singapore 3 weeks before you get them in the US, you'll not be happy to see people "over there" hawking them on eBay long before they even hit the docks, much less by the time the get trucked to the fulfillment center and then shipped to your home. It's a double-edged sword. The idea is to make everything equitable, not to give anyone an unfair advantage, and I would have problems if I saw something on eBay and knew it was still 3 weeks before the "ocean freight" docks. I get your point, but . . .

I guess this goes back to the point made earlier about coordinating shipments from the various fulfillment centers.

Curiously enough, and I don't know why, but Japan isn't considered to be "in Asia", I suppose because they're not a member of the Asian/Pacific union, maybe?

[TGunitedcardists]

I agree that won't work for some people, but we want to figure out something where everyone around the world gets their items at about the same time.

Why would you want to purposely delay shipments so everyone gets their cards around the same time? If the cards are paid for in advance, I'd want the cards shipped as soon as possible. If the only reason to delay shipping is "to be fair for everyone" that is not a good reason. Silly in fact.

If you set the expectation in the beginning that orders will be shipped as fast as possible, that is putting the customer first, and would be appreciated. Sometimes people in North America will get their stuff first, sometimes people outside of America will get their stuff from Taiwan first. In fact, it would be a nice change from the current US centric shipping bias/pricing advantage.

It seems like you are on the right track for shipping and fulfillment for orders outside of America. This is great. But don't delay shipments.

Duly noted, but there are always two sides of the coin: if the decks are available in Singapore 3 weeks before you get them in the US, you'll not be happy to see people "over there" hawking them on eBay long before they even hit the docks, much less by the time the get trucked to the fulfillment center and then shipped to your home. It's a double-edged sword. The idea is to make everything equitable, not to give anyone an unfair advantage, and I would have problems if I saw something on eBay and knew it was still 3 weeks before the "ocean freight" docks. I get your point, but . . .

I guess this goes back to the point made earlier about coordinating shipments from the various fulfillment centers.

Curiously enough, and I don't know why, but Japan isn't considered to be "in Asia", I suppose because they're not a member of the Asian/Pacific union, maybe?

I also understand your point, but which is more important, eBayers or customers who prepaid for cards and are waiting. Because someone is selling a deck on eBay doesn't affect me at all.

In your example, if someone is waiting for their decks, and they've been notified that they're coming, what's there to worry about? Seems like a manufactured problem. On the other side, think of the goodwill you will receive when your customers know that they're getting their cards as fast as possible and shipping is reasonably priced. Win-win.

Keep the people who put money down as happy as possible. Just like you can't stop piracy, you can stop people from using eBay. Customer experience should be the 2nd most important thing to focus on, behind great playing cards.

It costs less to keep a customer happy than to gain a new customer. My 2 cents. Carry on!

[Mike Ratledge]

Oh, I agree mostly, but the one thing that I know from listening to people here is that it REALLY ticks them off when they see the decks on eBay before the fulfillment has even started, and I get the point that technically it would have - for people in the Asia/Pacific/Oceania (and maybe wider) area, but for anyone sitting here in the states, it wouldn't even be close and in fact they could be getting their decks a month before it was even possible to ship them from the stateside fulfillment centers. I see both arguments, I just want things to be equitable for everyone, which is why I like the idea that we would coordinate the shipping from various fulfillment centers so they all happen at once.

[Yashi]

Well it doesn't tick me off when I see decks on ebay before I receive mine. I have to wait a month to receive my decks after they are shipped. Maybe Americans are hard to please? I'm good as long as it lowers international shipping costs.

[Sher]

Well it doesn't tick me off when I see decks on ebay before I receive mine. I have to wait a month to receive my decks after they are shipped. Maybe Americans are hard to please? I'm good as long as it lowers international shipping costs.

It doesn't bother me either. My address isn't international, but being on the other side of the world, I still get my decks a week or two after everyone in the mainland gets them. It doesn't bother me at all if people are selling their decks on eBay if they got them earlier, as long as I know mine will eventually get here. I don't mind that some backers get their rewards first, and what they do with them is not my concern. However, what I don't like is the creator himself selling the decks even before KS fulfillment is finished. To me, there is a difference between a backer selling a deck on eBay because they received it earlier, than the creator selling the deck even before fulfillment is finished. For the most part, creators hardly do this.

[volantangel]

Guys let me check in here for a moment, I think what happens will completely boil down to costs, the longer the stocks sit in a warehouse the most costs are chalked up, we will look to see if the printer in Taiwan will waive these costs for us.

That being said, I think the consensus is pretty clear, the seller shouldn't be selling their decks before all rewards are shipped. That being said, I wouldn't want a difference between 4-6 weeks between the different batches of orders, that's not nice either.

[Mike Ratledge]

Guys let me check in here for a moment, I think what happens will completely boil down to costs, the longer the stocks sit in a warehouse the most costs are chalked up, we will look to see if the printer in Taiwan will waive these costs for us.

That being said, I think the consensus is pretty clear, the seller shouldn't be selling their decks before all rewards are shipped. That being said, I wouldn't want a difference between 4-6 weeks between the different batches of orders, that's not nice either.

I've created a monster! (and this genie won't go back in the bottle, either)

I agree that delivery should not be unnecessarily delayed, and I also agree that certain people selling their own decks before they even ship the first backer reward is a PITA (Persian Empire, amongst many others) and wish it just didn't happen, but again - it's just human nature to try to take advantage of that position, hell - I've done it myself only to find that I got my butt kicked for "taking advantage of the situation", which in fact I thought was precisely what I should be doing - setting the bar high for these decks if I was the "first to market" with them. Never-the-less, I think Jackson knows that I wasn't trying to be an ass about it, nor was I trying to be a butt-kisser (ooo - two tails in one sentence).

I consider myself lucky to be in a position to get this done - and the project is moving inexorably towards that goal. In about 4 or 5 weeks it will indeed see the light of day, and those of you that want to beta test it can simply watch this thread. I will announce the when, where and how as soon as I can, and anyone is welcome to help knock the insects out of the weeds for a week to ten days, and then we should be ready to launch.

I've already reset my expectations on one thing: Chromografix decks, and I expect to find that - at least at first - we have to manually figure out the shipping instead of it being calculated. I foresee this simply because I don't know of a single CrowdFunding example where you can pick multiple rewards, be they of the same tier or different, and that's going to be the sticky wicket. I need that before I can assign weights (literally) and compute shipping costs, so it may be that it's either done by users adding it just like they do now for multiple rewards - perhaps using a table that we provide, not certain. I just know that I have already been told that having such a thing ready in three weeks is not likely going to happen. It's not that much of a problem to do programmatically. What IS a problem is - just like KS - you can't select multiple rewards nor can you let the system know that you want "2 of these and 3 of those" for example - yet.

I expect us to be the first to do so, but it's not likely to be in there at launch time. It's a mess of coding the limited tiers and the unlimited tiers to be selected at one time, for example. There's also no way to indicate that you want more than 1 of any item that I know of in any CrowdFunding sytstem - at this time. You can be certain that once we are up and running it will be on the short list of things to get done, but for now I need to concentrate my efforts in other areas of customization. I have limited resources and limited time at this point...

[Sher]

There's also no way to indicate that you want more than 1 of any item that I know of in any CrowdFunding sytstem - at this time. You can be certain that once we are up and running it will be on the short list of things to get done, but for now I need to concentrate my efforts in other areas of customization. I have limited resources and limited time at this point...

I have very limited knowledge of coding, but could it be modeled similar to an online store? You just add the item to your "cart" and then pay?

EDIT: Like BackerKit! You can even change your cart up until the lockdown date.

[TGunitedcardists]

There's also no way to indicate that you want more than 1 of any item that I know of in any CrowdFunding sytstem - at this time. You can be certain that once we are up and running it will be on the short list of things to get done, but for now I need to concentrate my efforts in other areas of customization. I have limited resources and limited time at this point...

I have very limited knowledge of coding, but could it be modeled similar to an online store? You just add the item to your "cart" and then pay?

I would think that's the way to go too. A limited reward would just be purchasing from a item with a set amount of stock available. The hard part would move to how to limit people to a certain number.

[Sher]

There's also no way to indicate that you want more than 1 of any item that I know of in any CrowdFunding sytstem - at this time. You can be certain that once we are up and running it will be on the short list of things to get done, but for now I need to concentrate my efforts in other areas of customization. I have limited resources and limited time at this point...

I have very limited knowledge of coding, but could it be modeled similar to an online store? You just add the item to your "cart" and then pay?

I would think that's the way to go too. A limited reward would just be purchasing from a item with a set amount of stock available. The hard part would move to how to limit people to a certain number.

What do you mean by limiting people to a certain number?

[TGunitedcardists]

There's also no way to indicate that you want more than 1 of any item that I know of in any CrowdFunding sytstem - at this time. You can be certain that once we are up and running it will be on the short list of things to get done, but for now I need to concentrate my efforts in other areas of customization. I have limited resources and limited time at this point...

I have very limited knowledge of coding, but could it be modeled similar to an online store? You just add the item to your "cart" and then pay?

I would think that's the way to go too. A limited reward would just be purchasing from a item with a set amount of stock available. The hard part would move to how to limit people to a certain number.

What do you mean by limiting people to a certain number?

For example, Encarded limited people to 4 Zenith decks because the print run was only 1000. However, I think it was done on the honor system, basically with a warning that if you try and go for more than 4, he'd just cancel the order. I thought it was a good idea to give many people an opportunity to purchase them.

[Sher]

Ohhh, you mean a limit on the number of LE decks you can buy. Maybe on the drop down of how many, only give certain options? If the limit is four, the only option is 1, 2, 3, or 4. Is there some way to prevent people from inputting more than 4?

I was thinking also, bulk discounts. Kinda like when you purchase from D&D and if you put in half a brick, it would automatically place a 10% discount (applicable only to the decks, not anything else in the cart), and if you put in a brick, it would automatically place a 15% discount.