The following notice is relevant to international Amicus Plush pre-orders purchased in May and June 2023.
We regret to announce that due to an additional in-house quality inspection plan, international Amicus Plush pre-orders from May and June 2023 will be delayed. Although we aimed to ship out these orders in July, we now expect them to be fulfilled by the third or fourth week of August. We sincerely apologize for this delay and are diligently working to complete the process.
For transparency as usual, we'd like to provide more details about this change:
Why the In-house Quality Inspection?
To put it simply, we're hesitant about the quality of this production batch, and we would not want for our customers to receive potentially defective products. Our concerns arise from evidence suggesting that this batch has a higher defect rate than our usual standards, and it would be a serious oversight to ship such items to our customers.
Many may recall the issue with the mirrored capes from our previous Amicus Plush batch. In response, we implemented stricter contracts with the factory to ensure better attention to quality. We also requested that this batch's capes be sent to us for inspection, allowing us to assess their quality while packing them with the accompanying jewelries. Despite these measures, we found that only 85% of the capes met our quality criteria, but thankfully, the jewelries, produced by another factory, are in good quality.
Initially, our plan was to have the factory package the plushies with their accessories and then ship them directly to expedite delivery times. Given the current circumstances, however, we believe in-house inspections should take precedence at the cost of delaying our estimated shipping timeframe.
Why the Last-minute Decision?
The decision came in response to emerging issues - we hadn't anticipated the need for additional inspections until the problems with the latest batch of capes came to light. Financial constraints as well as meeting delivery deadlines have also been pressing challenges. We had considered prioritizing the deadlines as we do have a rather inconsistent track record for our past pre-orders, but we eventually concluded that our products' quality is the most important factor.
Furthermore, our primary quality inspector, who is stationed over a thousand miles away from the factory, was unavailable for a factory visit due to personal reasons, and transporting the plushies to them is both costly and time-consuming, not to mention there is also no room to perform the inspections. However, we have since managed to solve these issues as of this news release, and the plushies are en route to our inspector as we speak.
Will the S.F. issues further delay the shipment?
We still intend to use S.F. for shipping this batch of pre-orders as it's the most viable option for an August dispatch. We anticipate the shipments to be safe as we have fewer concerns with S.F. shipments to Asia, Europe, and Australia compared to the Americas, judging by the customer feedbacks.
However, if you have any privacy concerns, we suggest you to cancel and re-order; orders placed with the batch currently on sale are expected to ship out in October via DHL from the United States.
Why Not Work with a More Reliable Factory?
We'd like to first emphasize that we ceased issuing new orders to this factory in April, and this will be the final batch of our products manufactured there.
Building relationships takes time, and our initial order volume was tiny in the plush industry, making it challenging to find a factory that met our design and production requirements. We've collaborated with our current factory since late 2019, and transitioning to a new one isn't a simple task. Most of our plush projects span 6-12 months from conception to delivery.
Despite some hiccups during the pandemic (including the mirrored cape issue), the factory had been relatively consistent in the past. However, after the Spring Festival this year, we began to notice a significant decline in both management and quality contol among many of our suppliers in China. A key designer who was familiar with our products also recently left the factory, making it even more difficult for us to continue working with them.
Fortunately, we've been proactive - since discovering the mirrored cape issue in March, we've sought to improve our operations. With the support of our community, we've collaborated with a top-tier workshop in Korea, and we currently have four new products ready for production and another ten in active development. We're excited to introduce these once our current challenges are resolved!
In closing, we understand the value of trust, and we're committed to rectifying this situation. Your patience and understanding mean everything to us. We promise to keep you updated every step of the way and are grateful for your continued support. If there's anything we can assist you with, please don't hesitate to contact us at any time.
Sincerely,
Pawprint Press