Without further ado, here is the official statement from SFG, already posted this evening.
Big thank you to Jamie Perkins and the Guild Ball team at SFG for working hard on this the last few days and bringing us these news as quickly as possible! <3
Hi folks,
Here’s an update on Guild Ball orders, following a meeting with our printing partners today and follow-up conversations.
The huge volume of orders has been fantastic, but has meant our partners have encountered some manufacturing hiccups, which we’ll cover more specifically below. These issues didn’t come up during our testing phase simply because the testing was done at a much lower volume, but have arisen once production was upscaled and processes adopted to meet the demand. As many will know, there’s a big difference between printing individual miniatures, and printing hundreds of multiples at once.
Going forward, we’re working with our partners on ways to safely scale, including providing projected order numbers so they can meet expected demand.
These issues are the reason why some orders have taken longer than estimated to fulfil. In most cases, orders are being held up by one or two miniatures. To help us be aware of and handle these types of issues more quickly, we’ve introduced an instant comms channel with our partners, and will be getting much more frequent progress updates.
We now have agreed solutions for all the STL’s that are causing repeated print failures and are working on updating the remaining files as we speak. Some of the fixes will involve splitting miniatures into two parts.
We’re expecting a detailed list of all affected orders by tomorrow. Once we have that, we’ll send individual email updates.
Our partners have also agreed to expedite the shipping on orders placed 15 or more working days ago, to minimise any further wait times. To avoid high import charges for EU orders, this expedited shipping will only apply to non-EU orders.
In terms of the general timeline, they estimate all orders currently 10 or more working days old will be dispatched by the middle of next week. We’re also looking into the issue of tracking numbers not being sent on all orders.
We’re aware a very small number of customers have received orders including hollow miniatures. To confirm, none of the Guild Ball miniatures should be hollow, as hollow miniatures weren’t requested. This is unfortunately down to human error on a very small number of orders and will be corrected going forward. Anyone affected should please get in contact via our support form below so a free of charge replacement can be sent. Make sure you include your full name, the email address you placed your order with, photographs of the affected miniature(s), and, if you have it, your order number.
Finally, if anyone’s received an order including a damaged miniature, please submit a support request. Again, make sure you include your full name, the email address you placed your order with, photographs of the affected miniature(s), and, if you have it, your order number.
We’re still blown away by the love for Guild Ball, and optimistic that the majority of orders have been successful, but it’s extremely important to both us and our partners that any issues are corrected.
We’ll continue updating you as and when we have more news to share.
~ Jamie Perkins, SFG product owner for Guild Ball
