OK, so it took a lot longer than we were hoping for, but we are finally ready to start selling the extra SENRAN KAGURA ESTIVAL VERSUS “pin-up cards” that are left over from the assembly of our “Endless Summer” Limited Edition for $5 per pack from our online store. I’m sure you guys have a lot of questions, so perhaps it would be better for me to explain what I can in advance in a Q&A format below:
Q: How many of each of the 6 sets do you have to sell?
A: While we can’t give away exact quantities, here’s a general guideline of what we have available:
– Crimson Pack – None
– Hanzo Pack – None
– Gessen Pack – Very few
– Hebijo Pack – A few
– Special Pack – A ton
– Overseers Pack – Enough to support a roaring fire to heat our office through the next 3 winters
Q: How do you have none of some and so many of the others?
A: While making a few less of the Special and Overseers packs was intentional since we thought most people would prefer one of the four main schools that they are likely already familiar with (so each of 4 main schools was allocated 20% of production quantities, with Special and Overseers each 10%), how many were left at our warehouse after assembly was completely out of our control. Since we don’t know how our print vendor delivered the various packs, they may have delivered each one in full before deliveries of another pack started and our assembly house used them all up in the order that they arrived, or perhaps our assembly house stacked all the boxes in a way where the Special and Overseers packs were placed in the back and were the last ones to be pulled for assembly.
Q: Why do you have so many cards left over in the first place? Did the LE not sell well?
A: Manufacturers, printers in particular, get what’s called an “allowance” to be able to deliver a certain % of units above or below what we order since they can’t quite stop their huge printing presses on a dime to finish exactly at a certain quantity. The allowance varies by vendor, but can often be +10%/-5%, meaning that for an order for 10,000 units, they may deliver as many as 11,000 or as few as 9,500. Imagine 3 or 4 different components each having this kind of variance, and it’s easy to see how we can have way too many of one component and not enough of another.
Q: $5 seems a bit expensive for a pack of cards.
A: We would give them away to the fans that have purchased and supported the SK series if we could, but since there’s no way to magically get them into people’s hands for free, we need to at least cover our shipping costs (hence the $20 minimum purchase requirement on our online store, since shipping is included in our prices). Anyone that’s purchased something from our online store can probably tell you that they received an extra bonus in their shipment, so if anyone is placing a new order with our store meeting the $20 requirement then just tell us which card pack you want in the “Note to Seller” section and we’ll be more than happy to add it to your order at no extra charge (assuming the pack is available).
Q: But your online store only ships to US addresses, so what if I’m international?
A: Unfortunately, we still haven’t figured out how to ship internationally in a quick and cost-effective manner, so afraid we have to stick to only US shipments for now. We run our online store ourselves out of our offices, so we aren’t quite the model of efficiency when it comes to our online store being a lean, mean, profit-making machine (as people that have received a $20 order from us while noticing we actually spent over $12 in postage can attest to).
Hopefully that helps explain some of the logistical nightmares behind the magic of manufacturing, and we will do our best to continue running the most inefficient and unprofitable store around for as long as we can.
Ken
XSEED Team Leader