What a Finish!!!
about 4 years ago – Wed, Feb 16, 2022 at 09:08:17 PM

As usual, our Crokinole backers are amazing! I love working these campaigns as it provides me with the opportunity to interact directly with our amazing customers. (The downside of selling nearly everything online is that you don't get much interaction.)

$367k!!!

We have no complaints about this finish. It didn't beat the record from last time, but SU & SD didn't post a review right before this campaign either. Let's face it! Those guys are a ton of fun to watch and they drive the market much more than we do.

Now is the quiet period. We'll be working on the Pledge Manager and hope to get it out in about 2 weeks. The first wave of boards are sitting at the factory waiting for me to give them directions on which distributors get which products. Hopefully, we can get the majority of the PM responses back quickly so that I have an accurate count and get things on a boat.

Payments

Kickstarter may have already sent you a notification that they have processed the payment on your credit card. This is just for your pledge. Any additional amounts required for shipping as stated in the campaign will be collected through Backerkit, which is running the PM. You will also be able to increase your pledge at that time or add any post-campaign add-ons. I'll discuss these in a later update as we get closer to opening the Pledge Manager.

Thank you again for your support and the trust you place in us. We are working our best to ensure that this is the best campaign we have ever run.

Dave, Seth, and the Mayday Crokinole Crew

Final 48 Hours!
about 4 years ago – Mon, Feb 14, 2022 at 11:06:43 PM

Home Stretch

The campaign is coming into the home stretch and we are so amazed to already be well over $300,000 in funding.  Thanks to all of you for your support and we are so excited for the finish here!  We are confident we will hit $350,000 but can we break our last campaign record and pass $400,000?  We hope so but it will take a bit of work!  

We've sent updates to our email subscribers and are sharing the campaign near and far, if you have a minute to share this campaign that would be great too.  Any extra boards we have will be sold on our website at MSRP of $185 per board and we will not be offering international shipping on those, so this is the last chance for many of your friends/family to secure a board!  

Next Steps

Once the campaign is over we have to wait two weeks for Kickstarter to process payments and verify the final backer list, after that happens we will be immediately launching our project survey where you can add on extras and provide your address/phone and details like that.  Please wait patiently for this process and we will post an update as soon as we are ready to launch the surveys.  

2/3 Through
about 4 years ago – Thu, Feb 10, 2022 at 11:16:31 PM

We are really excited about the progress of the campaign. Even without the huge marketing push that we have made in years past, we expect a very fine result and we are looking forward to shipping from the factory more boards than we ever have in the past.

Based on past experience, 25-30% of orders happen in the last two days of the campaign.

I received an email from the factory today saying that they are finalizing Wave 1 and will have it ready to ship in the next couple of weeks. I anticipate that the Pledge Manager will be the holdup on getting the shipment on the water. We took a huge risk this time around by ordering nearly twice as many boards as we had in the last Wave 1 shipment. Thank you to all of you who have shared this campaign and to all of you who have shared previous seasons of boards with family and friends. Without the word of mouth sharing that you do, this game wouldn't be as popular as it is.

A couple of favors to ask of you all.

1. Please continue sharing this campaign on your social media accounts. This is by far the most effective method for spreading the word.

2. For those that already know the game, go onto BoardGameGeek.com and rate the game of Crokinole. I'm not asking for any false review, just put in what you think of the game 1-10. The games aren't ranked just on the level of fun, but also on the sheer number of reviews. It would be fun to see Crokinole continue moving up in the rankings.

Thank you again for your support and trust as we move through the final week of the campaign.

Stay safe!

Dave and Mayday Crokinole Crew

Now Available: Additional Wave 1 Mahogany + Case Pledges
about 4 years ago – Fri, Feb 04, 2022 at 12:40:40 AM

Wave 2 Is Now Included in Wave 1

The first thing I want to say is that all Wave 2 pledge will now be shipped with Wave 1. If you are already in Wave 2, please do not switch to Wave 1. We want to have those available for backers coming in who don't go back and read every update and who don't read all the nitty gritty of the campaign page. Just know that you will receive your rewards with the first shipments going out. I would change the titles and shipping dates shown in the descriptions but Kickstarter will not allow changes to those fields after pledges are made to the rewards. I will be adding a note about this in the shipping section of the campaign page.

How We Did It

I don't know why we didn't figure this out sooner but we are actually able to make more Wave 1 Mahogany + Case rewards available. I will explain.

In past campaigns, the carrying cases were only available in the US. When backers purchased cases as an add-on, our warehouse workers would open the box and put the board inside the bag before shipping. We liked this as it also provided an added amount of protection for the boards. In this campaign, we thought, "Let's have the factory in China do this for us on half the boards. It will save us time and allow backers outside the US to get the cases." We got a little myopic in our thinking and thought that we only had 750 boards that could receive a case with them.

This evening, we were talking and the light bulb went off. We don't need to limit the boards with cases. Our US warehouse can continue doing what they have done in the past. It's only the boards going to Europe and AU/NZ that need to be in the cases directly from China and we have plenty of those available.

Therefore, I just made changes showing many more Wave 1 Mahogany + Case pledges available as that seems to be the favorite. I'll continue adjusting availability between the pledge levels as they become scarce again.

Please Share

There are just under two weeks remaining in the campaign and we would really appreciate you sharing this on your social media feeds. Based on how quickly the mahogany boards with cases went last time, I do not anticipate these remaining available for long. We are running a big marketing push over the weekend, so if you have friends and family who you think would enjoy the game, let them know. Otherwise, it will be random strangers that pick up these remaining Wave 1 boards.

Thank you all for your continued support! We are really excited and are certain that this year's campaign will eclipse last year's.

Seth, Dave and the Crokinole Crew

1/4 million dollars in a week? Yes please!
about 4 years ago – Wed, Feb 02, 2022 at 11:22:33 PM

$250 k in a Week!

Yes, we have hit $250,000 in funding on this project in just over a week.  With more than 2 weeks to go this is looking like it is going to be our biggest project EVER, beating our 2020 Crokinole Campaign!  You can check out the daily totals of this campaign HERE and the 2020 campaign HERE.  Having done over 45 prior campaigns we know we typically get about 1/3 of our total funding in the first 48 hours, 1/3 during the middle of the project and 1/3 the last couple of days of the project.  If this holds we should finish around $500,000 and our Wave 2 would be just as big as our Wave 1 production run, but we will see how it plays out.

Your Support

We don't have any earth-shattering news to report so will keep this short, we just wanted to thank all of you for your continued support and ask all of you to please consider sharing this project on your social media as that is really what drives our day-to-day pledge levels.  Thanks again to all of you!