Roll for initiative!
6 months ago – Tue, Oct 24, 2023 at 03:52:46 PM

Greetings Adventurers!

David here! With some exciting updates! After a string of Wil Wheaton level bad rolls, we are finally seeing the other sides of the dice!

But first, I just really wanted to say thank you to all of you for your support. The last update was very vulnerable and anxious for us. Shining a light on your shortcomings is a scary endeavor. However, the positive outpouring from this, the greatest community, was a huge boost to our morale. So thank you, truly, for your grace and understanding. Now, without further adieu, I present... your updates.

While tagging along with my wife's adventuring group, aka 'the Frill Society' (a local Lolita Fashion Community), through a nearby antique store, I happened across an air compressor with all the right stats for our machine that was within our budget! Which was a double blessing as not only are we not dependent on a rental moving forward, but the cost of renting one long enough to fill all the sachets would have ended up costing us more than what we had paid for this air compressor. Praise the sun!

With this final piece, the machine is active, and it has fought us like a hellhound unwilling to give up its favorite chew toy. Every moving part on the mechanical beast finds some unique way to add new combat mechanics to overcome, but overcome we shall! With a great deal of finesse and no small amount of vicious mockery, we are expecting to conquer one of each of our 13 teas every day followed by a few days of packaging them into their respective box sets. All-in-all, that puts us somewhere in the ballpark of two weeks before all the sachets are finished. The end of this adventure is well in sight.

We also picked up the last of the tea needed to fill the sachets just today. Sam is wheeling it in as I type this out. That means there shouldn't be any foreseeable delays caused by supply chain.

The other good news, as many of you may have already become aware of due to notification emails, is that we are moving forward with shipping some international orders. We found a service that essentially does what we were intending to do. They have hubs set up in 55 nations around the realm allowing them to work with local postal services to provide reasonable rates for we, their grateful customers. Thank you Pirate Ship and your Simple Export Rates! A boon to small business merchants everywhere. The catch is that there is a four pound limit on these shipments so it won't likely cover all int'l shipments, but it does take down a pretty significant chunk of what remains.

That should be all for now. Until next time adventurers, happy hunting!

~David

The Book of Truth (Business updates, shipping problems, and BBEGs)
7 months ago – Tue, Oct 10, 2023 at 11:51:42 PM

Hello backers! 

Thank you so much for your support and patience. My name is David. Some of you have interacted with me in the direct messages, but I’d like to introduce myself to those of you who have not. I joined D&Tea because I am passionate about both Tea and TTRPGs, and learning that it was based out of my home city, I weaseled my into the party. My main goal in joining D&Tea was to connect with the nerd community and I’m looking forward to getting to know all of you more. I’ve very recently stepped into the role of Chief Operating Officer at D&Tea in lieu of recent events. However, this will be my first time doing an update on behalf of D&Tea, so please bare with me. You’ve asked for honesty, so I am going to try to be as straightforward as possible. Fair warning, this update is a long journey. Bring rations.

We at D&Tea have done our best to shield our backers from the drama and struggles that the company is currently plagued with. It was never our intent to be dishonest. We just didn’t want you all to worry about not receiving the loot you paid for, because while we are struggling, it’s a debuff, not a death save. We are still determined to finish this encounter out, take a long rest and move forward leveled up from our hard earned experience. The boss's final form was just a bit of a surprise.

Sachet Machine Boss update:

When we purchased the machine, we were not aware that it wouldn’t be as easy as just plugging it in and playing around until we got it operable. The new machine is quite a different monster from the machines we’re used to battling. This has proven a time consuming and expensive oversight.

Transformers, problems solutions in disguise!

The new transformer was received, and after some careful research, communications with the manufacturer in China, and discussions with an artificer friend (mechanical engineer, thank you Gib! <3), we managed to get it attuned to the machine. Unfortunately this part couldn’t just be plugged in. We had to do some rewiring, which those of us with boots on the ground at the shop had no skill ranks in and so we needed to Take 20 to make sure it was done safely and correctly. Having power to the machine allowed us to finally work our way through the puzzles that were the various functioning parts. That is, all the parts except the pneumatic parts (not hydraulic as previously thought) and one of the sensors.

Wondrous Item - Uncommon - Tank of Endless Air (aka the air compressor)

The pneumatic parts on this monster serve small but necessary steps in the process. We were kind of hoping that we could bypass them for the time being to speed up fulfillment, but our tinker rolls were too low. Thus began the next step in our adventure: allocating skill ranks into knowledge(air compressors). Once we got the stat block from the manufacturer on what we needed from the air compressor (and then promptly converting those figures to American metrics), we began looking into what our options are. Unfortunately, despite being rather small parts, these pneumatic components require a much bigger air compressor than what one would think, and none of us can cast Enlarge. Would that even work on a machine? If anybody has ever purchased an air compressor before, you are probably aware that even these smaller magic items can be quite expensive, and that price scales exponentially as you go up in item level. We are a small adventuring guild, and while the transformer was a fairly small hit to our budget for the new machine, the air compressor is going to deal critical damage. After banging our heads against the proverbial wall (been doing this a lot lately), we have decided that our best option is to rent an air compressor just to get the machine going and produce the tea sachets we need for orders, plus a little extra to serve as a buffer for any oops that may occur. So the good news, the sachet orders quest will be completed in the nearish future (waiting on a shipment of tea). The bad news, we won’t be able to craft further tea sachets until we can budget for a permanent fixture.

The Unseeing Eye (the broken sensor)

This part is intended to control the alignment of the foils, those sealed outer bags that hold the tea bags and keep them fresh and clean. We aren’t sure why it isn’t doing its job, but this is a side quest that we can put off for now. We will try to manually adjust the alignment but, should the machine prove to be chaotic evil about it, then the batch of tea sachets we send out may have some wonky printing on the foil. At this point, we don’t want to battle with it and keep delaying our fulfillment. So apologies in advance if the words on the packaging are off. The foils will still do their job keeping your tea yummy.

International orders:

Our initial plan was to process the international orders all at once, then ship them as bulk shipments to a few hubs across the realms. From those hubs, they could then be distributed to their final destinations. This method is a significant cost saver, allowing us to service our international customers without charging hefty shipping costs. In order to do this, we would need to complete all the international orders with sachet samplers at the same time as the rest of the orders. Of course, this ended up being a major pit trap as the machine was held up by Customs goblins, then arrived without all the necessary fixings, and, as explained in the tea bag machine update, we are now being held at bay by high unexpected costs. Realizing the very big delay this was putting on our quest for fulfillment, we started considering alternatives that would allow us to fulfill the non-sachet orders. Canada, as our neighboring realm, was to be our testing ground. Well, that roll didn’t go well… We’ve learned several things.

One of which is don’t ship int’l via UPS. Many of you in Canada were hit with huge brokerage fees despite the fact that tea is not charged duties or taxes. Sorry, we were not aware these would occur. Had we known, we would have done things differently. Those of you who wish to ask for a reimbursement on those charges, you are welcome to request so via email. Please understand that these refunds will be coming from our own coin purses, not UPS, as UPS was unwilling to work with us on refunding or even decreasing the fees.

The other thing our passive perception picked up on is that individual shipments overseas do not scale favorably at all, especially at the price points we’ve given, and we are going to have to be even more concerned about unexpected brokerage traps. So we are back to square one, using hubs and waiting until we can complete all the orders in one go. Sorry, it’s really the only option we can afford.

If you’ve received an email with a tracking number and it shows that the shipment was either canceled or there’s been no progress, this does not necessarily mean that your order is lost or was canceled. Since there was an entire legion of you who backed us, for which we are very grateful, we have been processing orders in large batches through our shipping program. In our initial batches, we realized that some sachet orders were ending up amongst those being processed. Because the system is automated, these orders were receiving tracking and emails were being sent out, even though we were not actually ready to ship them yet. So, for all the batches since, we had done our best to manually filter out these orders. Well, in the recent batch of orders, we were so focused on getting orders out, that we frankly crit-failed on remembering to check for these orders. So there was a recent batch that had sachet orders and that’s why some of you erroneously received emails with tracking numbers. We’re sorry for the confusion.

Other Time Traps:

-Day to day business: While we are doing our best to battle the kickstarter, we still have a business that requires our attention. There are currently only two party members working at our brick and mortar packaging teas, fulfilling orders and supporting our convention booths. Limited hands and a lot to do.

-Conventions: For the most part we had been able to pass our saves for balancing kickstarter fulfillment and conventions, but on the fourth weekend in September we had not one, but two convention bosses on the same weekend, forcing us to split the party. The weeks leading up to this big convention weekend had us in con crunch. So the time we would have liked to dedicate to defeating the new machine mid-boss had to be shifted over to getting our booths ready. Also, as mentioned earlier, there are only two of us on the ground here in Bellingham, WA, and we were required to take watches at Rose City Comicon. Conventions are an integral part of our business. Without them we cannot support our party.

-Restructuring: Some of you may be aware of the incident with one of the previous leaders that resulted in their exodus from the guild. This hit the company pretty hard in many ways. Emotionally, structurally, financially. For one, they were the spearhead of the kickstarter, so in their absence we have had to adapt and overcome puzzles and traps we weren’t equipt to handle. And when you are a small guild, the loss of one person, especially in a pivotal role, is a very sudden burden on those of us who remain as we juggle new responsibilities and learn our new multiclasses.

-Finances: In relation to the events mentioned above, we were told by ReedPop that due to the actions of this one member, the whole party would not be allowed to attend any of their conventions in 2023, despite the fact that the individual is no longer associated with the D&Team. ReedPop manages the largest cons in the realm, with some of our largest streams of revenue. We also lost several customers and backers during this time for the same reason. We are not excusing the behavior nor do we fault Reedpop and our customers for their reactions, but the reality is that it has made running our business more difficult. The timing could not have been worse either. While the kickstarter was initially a critical success, it has turned into another burden because of these costly issues with the new sachet machine, int’l shipping being far more expensive than expected, and admittedly, several nat 1s made by those of us scrambling to pick up the dropped pieces in the wake of the scandal arc. These additional financial encumbrances mean we have to spend more frugally, which means purchasing smaller batches of goods, which means more wait times to juggle.

-Schedules: Life happens. Gideon, who has been burning the candle at both ends, is only a part time adventurer. He does have another full time job that requires his attention. Unfortunately, with the previous leader’s exit from the party, Gideon is the only party member who knows our kickstarter systems well enough to manage the orders. He’s also been the one handling updates. He’s been doing his best to manage time, but it was not initially planned for him to have to handle this burden at all. For the past couple weeks, Gideon has been abroad, visiting family and attending a wedding. These were plans established well before he had to suddenly step in and take the reins. Even then, he’s been plugging away when he can find the time between family activities. He’s already sacrificing a lot of his personal time to manage this, which I am sure drives his wife crazy, and I wouldn’t ask him to sacrifice his family time, especially as his family lives ‘across the pond’. Yes, this means he missed the promised two week update. I know when he posted that, he had every intent to follow through, but the fates had other plans. That’s why you all are now getting an update from me instead.

Now, I’m sure that there are going to be lots of questions that are completely fair and legitimate, but with the limited party members available, taking time out of the day to answer every question and follow up on updates can and has taken away time and focus from the other quests we need to complete to fulfill your orders. By the Nine Hells, I’ve spent hours this weekend just trying to formulate this update alone. There’s a proverbial trash bin overflowing with abandoned drafts. So we will try to answer what we can when we can, prioritizing on importance, but our limited staff are currently wearing many hats and juggling many daggers.

So when will we be shipping out the rest of the orders? I feel like it would be unfair to try pinpointing the amount of time it will take when we are not completely certain ourselves. We’ve given you updates in the past with promised times and we’ve failed to hit those. When we have nailed down the hub situation. When we’ve worked out customs. When we receive the last tea shipment we need to fill tea bags. When we procure the air compressor. When these quests are complete, we will have a solid answer and we will tell you. That is the best I can offer while guaranteeing that I’m being honest with you.

With all my appreciation,

David@D&Tea

Update incoming tomorrow
7 months ago – Mon, Oct 09, 2023 at 02:13:31 PM

Thank you all so much for your support and apologies for the delays. We see you. We hear you. I have been working on an update over the weekend. The D&Team is going to discuss it tomorrow to ensure we haven't missed anything, that the information is accurate, and that we're on the same page.

Update! Sampler packs and International Orders
8 months ago – Thu, Sep 07, 2023 at 10:13:30 AM

Hi D&Tea Backers,

Apologies, its been too long since we updated you! We're still here and still working hard :)

In this update:

• Progress update on all shipments shipped
• Our brand new tea bag packing machine was delivered! It was held up at customs for a while and it didn't' fit through our door, but in the end we got it inside and it looks great
• Our brand new tea bag packing machine was missing some crucial parts
• Schedule for all remaining orders to ship

Progress on all shipments shipped

Currently 86% of all shipments are shipped, delivered and confirmed received :) We hope that you are all enjoying your tea and settling in with good stories and delicious brews as fall approaches <3

Those shipments not yet shipped are largely comprised of:

 - International orders from countries with non-standard customs processes (e.g. UK we are struggling to complete the process of shipping to you due to a backlog of customs pre-clearance we are doing our best to ensure your packages are delivered to you without undue excessive tax being added at point of delivery, Singapore is also giving our admin team a run for their money but also should out to our Singapore customers thank you for coming to find us from so far away, we are working really hard to make sure you get your things). For these international orders you should see movement this week and next week as we anticipate hearing back from various customs brokers etc. confirming our shipment paperwork.

- Orders with Sampler packs. Read more below on these!

Our brand new tea bag packing machine was delivered!

We were really excited to finally receive this much delayed piece of equipment, but its a huge deal for our small company and made possible by this Kickstarter alone. We estimated sampler packs would go out in September, and this machine continued to be delayed in reaching us, but about 2 weeks ago it finally did, after delays in customs, some extra shipping charges and some creative solutions to getting it through our door. (The box was too big)

Our brand new tea bag packing machine was missing some crucial parts

As excited as we were, we were super disappointed when we discovered it was missing 

1) The transformer to make it work with our power supply

2) Some hydraulic lines crucial to making the tea bagging bit... do the... bags 

We immediately contacted our manufacturing partner who confirmed the issue but they had to _build_ the transformer and air ship it to us. It is scheduled to arrive today. You can believe the moment it is in our hands we will be building those sampler packs and getting them packed up and shipped out to you guys. We are really sorry this has taken longer than we expected.

As ever, we so appreciate you sticking with us - its been wonderful to see all the pictures of people drinking their tea and kind words from those of you enjoying the new flavors. We've set a reminder in my colander to update you guys again in two weeks! 

All the best

D&Team

Latest Fulfilment Update!
10 months ago – Mon, Jul 10, 2023 at 06:15:38 PM

Hi D&Tea backers!

Work continues enthusiastically on fulfilling all your orders. 

In this update:

• There are no issues with orders and we have all our supplies!
• It's taking us longer than we planned to pack everything! Sorry about that 
• "I've got a tracking number, but haven't had any updates in over a week, what gives?" Read on:)

Going Well

Firstly, just some fairly mundane good news, we continue to have all the tea blended, all the items for everyone's orders (usual exception for orders with sample packs being filled later) in house and we continue to work through every order as fast as we can!

Going a bit slowly

Secondly: our time per package has been a longer than we expected, honestly this is due to the fact that there is so much stuff in our store that it's been a bit hard to organize and work through everything efficiently, but in general we aren't far behind our 200 orders per day target, but its been more like 150. Additionally we gave all our staff the July 4th long weekend off which slowed us down a bit.

Why isn't my tracking number updated?

Thirdly: a bit about how our shipment works and why you might have a tracking number without updates. We identified early on that if we found all the orders nearer a large "hub" city in the US rather than our local store in Bellingham there were several advantages!

1) Environmental footprint reduction: these packages start off in one bundled shipments taking advantage of standby cargo capacity on an already scheduled flight with our shipping partner Alaska Airlines to the hub city, then are delivered the "last mile" by USPS.

2) Costs - fulfilment has cost us a lot more than we expected and we found doing this saved us a bit of money.

3) Time - while it takes us some additional time to bundle everything initially the average time door to door is as fast or in some cases faster compared to the USPS service direct from our door to yours.

What all this means is we have to buy and print the USPS shipping label for all the orders all at once and THATS when you get your email saying "here's your tracking number" it then takes us some time to package the orders, bundle them up and get them to Alaska Air Cargo, during which time you will get NO automated updates, the first time you'll hear anything is when its been collected by USPS from the Hub city handling your order, and by then the package is well on its way to you.

So this does mean that for some of you there's a big gap between that first tracking number and hearing more from us, we are really sorry about that it must be frustrating! And we didn't actually consider how early you'd be notified, but rest assured, nothing is wrong and things are making their way to you.

As we complete orders we will update this Kickstarter so if for any reason you haven't received your packaged when we update to say they've all gone out, THEN there's a chance your package has an issue and we will absolutely want to hear about it to make it right. But until then, please bare with us as we send everything out!

All the best,

D&Team