Studio Talk - April plans, updates, and reworks
Hello everyone!
There are a lot of things I want to address in this update post, such as the next drops, schedule changes, some rework on the cards, and my general plan for the store and my projects.
Before we get into it, I want to thank you all for the interest and support. I’ve been mind blown by the all new waves of people due to the recent events, and in all honesty I was overwhelmed and stressed out from the crazes. After taking some time to rest and calm myself down, I still feel that way hahahaha. I mean, with all the things happening, it’s just impossible to pass it as a regular office day. That said, I can’t just sit around so I decided to rework and update a whole lot of things from how I announce updates, organizing the info, drop system, even some of the merchs itself.
With all the intro has been said, it’s time for the news and updates!
F.A.Qs and General Info
I’m compiling all the general info that I can think of (such as card prices, contents, variants) to the FAQ page. I will periodically update the page if there is a new topic/question being asked often. Please read that page first before jumping in to ask a question that was already answered there.
Drop System and Event Schedule
First off, the drop system. It was so I could organize and manage my store and time better, but since it’s pretty new and I haven’t put a lot of info about how it works, people got confused. To mitigate that, I’ve added a dedicated section to explain how the drop system works here. Because I can’t always open the store at the same date every month, I will put a banner on my homepage so you all can easily see when the exact date and time for the next month’s drop. The schedule will be published by the middle of the month (14-16th).
As for the April drops, I will start on 14th April. I wanted to open the store around the first week, but unfortunately there are a few things that made me decide to postpone the drop for a couple weeks. The first reason is I have to prepare my booth at a local art market event on 12-13th April in Jakarta. There’s also the Eid-Fitr long national holiday. I don’t celebrate it so I will keep working throughout the whole holiday, but almost all vendors and workers take at least a week break. That means I can’t order any merchs or prints (most of them are printed on demand), and I have to prioritize the cards which I’ll explain in the next section. I didn't want to rush the drop and ended up making the situation more hectic than it is now.
This part is for local/Indonesian collectors, so I will use casual Bahasa. You can skip to the next part.
Untuk kalian yang tinggal di Indonesia, untuk sementara aku gak bisa terima pesanan untuk dikirim ekspedisi. Toped emang udah ditutup karena makin ribet ngurusinnya.
Awalnya aku mau bikin formulir PO menjelang event. Sayangnya, karena kerjaan udah terlalu padet, aku gak bakal sempet ngurusin kirim-kiriman dalam 2 bulan kedepan. Kalian masih bisa belanja kalau langsung dateng pas event, atau nitip ke temen yang dateng. Aku saranin dateng langsung kalo bisa, soalnya kemungkinan besar aku ga bakal bikin katalog apa-apa. Aku bakal buka di Kirakira Art Market tanggal 12-13 April (Chillax Jakarta), terus di CF20 tanggal 24-25 Mei (ICE BSD).
Dan iya, diusahakan bawa kartunya cuma karena stoknya udah menipis banget yang siap, ga bakal bawa banyak. Diusahain setelah 2 bulan kedepan udah bisa buka form PO kirim2, sama stok kartunya juga ada buat yang indo. Maapkeun barudak, emang riweuh pisan ieu teh euy.
Pokai Gaku Shipment delays and Schedule Changes
Now onto the cards itself. The biggest thing that I have to share and announce to you all is that there will be a month delay for the shipment of pre-orders and release. The initial plan is to ship the pre-orders by the end of May, and release by the end of June. Unfortunately, I just found out a couple days ago that there are a few cards that have to be reprinted due to production error. I’ve already been working on the solutions and backup plans, but the timing with the long holiday made it almost impossible to follow through the initial time frame. I’m doing the best I could to push the schedule as close to the original plan as possible, however in the end I’m terribly sorry to disappoint you and make you wait longer to get the cards.
Pokai Gaku Purchase Limits
Next one is the purchase limit. Starting from the April drop, the maximum limit you can get is 2 booster boxes. I have to try giving all the new people a chance to get the cards and making a smaller limit might be the best way to do that. The people who pre-ordered from previous waves will get the amount they purchased. To be completely honest, this one is a tough decision for me and I am not happy nor proud to do this. I want to cut the previous pre-orders but I can’t afford to spend time dealing with it knowing I have a much bigger and urgent issue I have to deal with. I can only take the loss this time for the things that have already happened and try to deal with the resale/scalping issue later on, which brings me to the next part.
Card Changes
To be clear, the designs themselves won’t be changed. These changes are meant to help me fight the scalping issue.
The extra promo card and random signed card bonus that were previously included outside the box, will be inserted inside the box. That means, from now on you will get 3 random foil promo cards and 1 random signed card bundled in one envelope inside each booster box. At the very least, this will make it harder for someone to just resell the box and promos separately. I am also considering writing the full name of the buyer on each box.
I won’t send the bulk purchases in the sealed case form, and I won’t release public bulk purchases anymore. The sealed cases were meant for stores to have a reasonable resale price, helping people that can’t get the cards directly from me. However, my decision to make it available to anyone backfired and just created more confusion. If you have pre-ordered a case or more, I will still send you the boxes and the bulk discount is still applied. However, I will write your name/store handle on the boxes. Any proposal to do a bulk purchase/resales will be reviewed much more carefully before I approve the deal.
After the release day, there should be many more cards circulating in the market so the singles should be more stable and affordable. I will keep a close eye on that, and more than willing to start making drops for singles. Granted, they’re most likely going to be B-grades and have errors but I got a hunch that people won’t mind small errors on a couple bucks SR card to complete their collection.
I will keep sending signed cards for each order. I will write the buyer’s name on the card to make it a more personal gift. Also might help me track who has the audacity to scalp a gift.
I’m also exploring the idea to blacklist/ban people from buying the cards. It might be quite difficult but if it needs to be done, it shall be done.
Future Plans
Once again, cards will be reprinted as needed, so please don’t fall into FOMO. That said, I’m going to finish the next set first after I release this one.
While my main priority is finishing the current reprint, there are a few things I want to work on in the future. I’m still exploring options to do auctions, and raffles/lottery systems for something that is much more limited. I also want to streamline the store, so it will be easier for you all to filter the categories. Last but not least, more sets will be coming.
That’s all for now, thank you so much for reading this. I’ll add a new post if I have more things to add/change.
Sincerely,
Sid