Maki Games: Kickstarter Update

Maki Games hängen mit der Erfüllung ihres Kickstarters hinter dem Zeitplan und bringen ein Update.

I know there is a rising concern regarding this project and I can only be deeply sorry and personally very sad about it. Losing your trust and encouragement is the last thing we need now. I cannot blame any of you for this but I want to reassure you that you will receive all the rewards. I will address the main issues separately.

About the delay:

We do understand the frustration for the delay in the fulfillment of our products. For that we can only find ways to make reparations and regain your trust in the future, once fulfilling the rewards we promised will be behind us.

UPS for the main orders was far too expensive to handle. The factory told us the packages have been shipped by sea. Since that announcement I have been trying to get a tracking number from them with no success. As I said before, they never sent us a tracking number even when they were shipping by UPS but we have always received our parcels.

Today I had a long phone call with the factory. According to them the packages are on the way with the one to Australia due in about 10 days and the one in Italy in about 20 days. I will try again tomorrow to get a tracking number from them.

About the lack of communication (updates):

The main reason for that is the lack of news. We are waiting for the parcels to be delivered, until then it would be a sterile repetition of the same post about us being waiting. Another reason for the lack of communication (and my long list of messages waiting for my reply) is that I have moved to Asia for my main occupation as a scientist. From here it will be easier to control what happens in the factory, check the production before it is shipped to Europe and ideally find a reliable partner to do that kind of controls once I am back in Europe.

About the lack of communication (private messages):

Making the arrangements to be sure the office in Amsterdam keeps running and to move out of my house was a major effort and I had to prioritize. I personally apologize to all the backers that are still waiting for a personal reply. I will start working on this in the coming days.

About the issues with production:

Injection molding is far more complex than you would expect. As I explained long ago we initially observed an issue in the size of the walls that was supposed to be fixed in February and that we verified with samples we received in March (the ones show at Adepticon).
The same issue reappeared in the samples we sent to Origins thus forcing us to rerun the whole batch. The issue is probably related to the release time of the mold. If it is too fast the parts are tend to dilate a bit. Since the parts have a very fine tolerance (about 0.02 mm) if released too fast they will require some sanding. My choice was then to rerun the defected parts because we wanted a proper fitting without any sanding. I will have to physically go to the factory with our engineer to make sure this problem is solved for all future production batches.

General remarks:

As founder of a company launched via Kickstarter I can say that the number of issue you incur as a small company is not comparable to the ones you can experience when working for a corporation or even a medium-sized company. The reason is that as a well-established company you have already built reliable partnerships that will help to contain the inevitable delays. As a new company company you need to built such solid relations by trial and error and this means to overcome an initial stressful period.

As a personal note I would like to say that I did not take a single day of holiday since the end of the Kickstarter project. We have not spent a single cent of your money to pay for our salaries or for personal expenses. All the money collected will be used to fulfill the project or to make more parts for our terrain. I cannot imagine any way to be more honest and fair to the people who backed this project than what we have been doing.

I would like to close this update with a few images of two of our first products that will be for sale as soon as we fulfill the Kickstarter. The painting was done by Tzardauker (who recently was awarded a silver and bronze medal at the World Expo ’14). You can check his websire here: www.ilnanonefasto.it

Quelle: Maki Games Kickstarter