Hey everyone! This is an update that really sucks to write. Those of you who are following the Kickstarter already know where this is going, but for those of you who aren't, strap in. I'm going to go into some detail here because I am pissed and want you to be pissed with me, so read on.
As of this week, DHL, along with basically every other postal service from Europe and other nations, was forced to halt shipping to the United States. The reason is a sudden executive order issued by the US president ending the de minimis rule.
De minimis is a common policy that exempts from duties and customs packages under a certain value: those where the duties collected would not make up for the cost of processing the shipments. Here is the problem: Millions of additional packages daily will now have to be processed by US customs. The infrastructure and manpower required for this obviously doesn't simply plop into existence. As a result, CBP told the USPS to tell international carriers to simply... stop sending shit.
I got the news from my DHL rep, who called me after they had an emergency conference call. He said, currently there's no solution in sight, no idea how a solution will look like, no concept on how to even transmit data for all these packages, what standards to build software APIs to to transmit any data, not even a concept of a plan.
Now, for the Kickstarter, this happened a week after I launched it. After a week of frantic calls, I was able to salvage it by finding a 3rd party fulfillment partner in the US. The issue though: Fulfilling that way is a lot more expensive than me doing everything in one go right from my studio. As a result, US backers of the Kickstarter will end up having to pay between €12 and €30 in extra shipping cost.
For this Patreon though, that's not really a solution. For a package that costs $18, another $15 for pick & pack and shipping is just dumb. I also have no way to separate US patrons from those from the rest of the world. So, I will be forced to stop shipping to EVERYONE. I'm going to have to wait until shipping resumes, which could be days, could be months.
So uh - that's where we are right now. Instead of drawing a token for you guys this month and getting back into the flow, I was busy doing zoom calls and spreadsheets to save the Kickstarter. For this Patreon, right now, I'm not seeing a solution except to halt everything. Once DHL tells me there's progress, I will keep you updated.
In the meantime, I'm going to find the best way to use the forced downtime productively. Maybe that means doing more Magic cards, maybe more tokens to have them for later, but I've also been thinking it might be a good moment to really start working on that cardboard collection. Also, I also get asked why I don't have an online shop to order past tokens - maybe I'll start working on that.
So yeah. Not great. I'll be here if you guys have questions though :) I really appreciate all your support and since we survived Covid together (remember when they halted shipping then?) I think we'll survive this one as well.
Best,
Johannes