Hey Everyone,
We just wanted to post an update and let you know that all copies of the limited print of the Special Edition Box Set of IGTM have been signed, assembled, packed & sent to the shipper!
SHIPPING: We just got word that all of our Special Edition orders are official in the post (yay!). An initial wave of Special Edition box sets had been sent out earlier, and was followed very shortly by the second & final wave. Suprisingly, some people in the U.S. have already received their copy - which is great. Though most others should be receiving their copy in about 2-6 weeks, depending where in the world you live.
LIMITED QUANTITIES: Just a quick note: These box sets are a limited edition. There are some sets still remaining. As of this posting, we still have some Blu-Ray Box Sets and DVD Box Sets in stock. If you are interested in picking one up, you can do so here.
LOOKIN' GOOD: Though they are not in your hands just yet, we are happy to report that the boxes themselves look great! The outside embossing turned out fantastic, giving off a rather nice stately vibe.
Removing the sleeve reveal’s Edmund’s joyous, wonderfully busy interpretation of 260+ individual indie game characters. The six panel inside package plays out like a indie game Where’s Waldo.
We really love it and hope you do, too.
WAREHOUSE/LIVING ROOM: As promised, all 6,000 copies have been personally signed, and actually packed by us, Lisanne and James. For those of you that have been following our blog and our story on self-distribution, we thought it might be helpful to share how much time this can take and what you might be able to expect if doing something similar.
The Process:
Each S.E. box set consisted of five distinct items that needed to be assembled into one:
• A 6 panel/3 disc case (The discs were already inserted)
• An embossed outercase - signed and numbered by us.
• A folded double sided poster.
• A laptop sticker
• A notebook
To get a S.E. Box Set ready to ship eight individual steps needed to be performed in the following order
- Each sleeve was sequentially numbered (1 to 3,000 - twice)
- Each sleeve was signed by both James & Lisanne
- A poster was placed within the internal DVD case.
- The sleeve was placed over the internal DVD case.
- Each notebook had a laptop sticker placed within it
- A notebook was then slipped within the sleeve.
- The entire package (sleeved DVD case, poster, sticker) was then placed in a bubble mailer.
- Bubble mailers were packed in boxes and taken to the shipper.
Time Requirements:
A lot of time went into the design, production, sourcing and management of the Special Edition Limited Edition Box Set, and we may go into that in a future post. But in terms of the amount of time with actual hands-on-product, getting it ready to ship, here’s the breakdown of performing those eight tasks above for 6,000 packages.
Signing: 36 man-hours. Two people writing 12,000 signatures and writing 6,000 four digit numbers.
Assembly & Packaging: 192 man-hours. This was us (James & Lisanne) and a motley revolving collection of friends, cousins, sibling and the odd parent pitching in over the course of a week or so.
Total amount of time required: 228 hours.
Looking back, that’s a good amount of sweat equity. We knew that the process would take a lot of time. But even with our napkin-based forecasts, we were still a bit surprised at how long it took to tackle the mountain of micro-tasks.
Did You Need to Do This Yourself? For obvious reasons, the signing-time was unavoidable. We did look into having the assembly done by a company. And it’s something that we likely would have done. Unfortunately, the company could not promise the work would be done in an acceptable time-frame.
So, we had no choice but to hunker down and do it ourselves. Plus, we thought: ‘how bad could it be? We’ll make a party out of it’. Friends, music, monotonous tasks, sounds kind of fun. And indeed it was...for the first 2-3 days :)
It did get a bit taxing as the days went by. Though, ultimately, you can’t really complain about it too much. We were prepping sets for a very supportive, excited bunch of people. It’s a pretty fortunate burden, and well worth the effort and hand cramps. Especially when you start seeing tweets like this, this and this.
VIDEO FUN: We did a timelapse that shows a fraction of the activity. We wish we captured more, but you’d be surprised at how quickly the camera takes a back seat once you get past package number 1,000 :)