For the last few backers still waiting for their items to be shipped

As most of you are well aware, we have had big issues with our chosen distribution company, and last week we decided to finally terminate the partnership.
It has been an extremely frustrating process filled with delays, unkept promises and violated deadlines from their side.
We have learned a lot from this experience, and will make sure to not make the same mistakes again. Our biggest mistake was, that we wanted to secure you the cheapest possible shipping options, thus choosing our distribution partner on the basis of cost, instead of ability to execute and in the end deliver SilverTech to you guys within an acceptable time frame.

Today all of our stock is being sent from Hong Kong to Denmark, where we personally will pack and ship the items during next week.
All items will be sent with tracking numbers directly to your e-mail. We expect shipping times of no more than 14 days.

Unfortunately we still have unfinished business with the Hong Kong distribution center, as they are still investigating some orders that was not delivered or severely delayed.

Most of these orders are on their way back to Hong Kong, and will be re-shipped as soon as the order has been double-checked for correct address.

You have all been extremely understanding and patient in regard to the issues we have encountered with the distribution, and for that I am extremely grateful.

Your patience will be rewarded now, as all remaining orders should be sent out within next week.

Best, Mads 

A Marathon, not a sprint

Doing a Kickstarter campaign is not a sprint, it's a marathon, and things that can go wrong most likely will go wrong. In this campaign, we learned that the hard way.

Before we launched this campaign, we felt very secure that we had everything under control, we had some great samples from our trusted supplier, we had a great partnership with Backerkit and we were recommended to work with a supposedly experienced fulfillment company responsible for handling and sending out all of our orders to meet our backers expectations. 

95% is not enough

It's now been almost a year since we launched the campaign and even though 95% of our backers has happily received their pledge, which is good, we have also disappointed 5% of our backers that trusted us with their money and positive energy. It never feels good to let people down, especially not when those are your backers, who trusted you and helped make this campaign a success.

Honest Communication

One thing is that the time frame was pushed and delays happened throughout the campaign, but where we really made our biggest mistake was not answering and informing you accordingly. When communication breaks down eventually the trust and the positive energy will too. 

Even though it's never nice to give bad news, it's always better than giving no news, and the last two months, we have not been good enough in communicating clearly what was going on to the rest of our backers. 

Shipping Challenges

Shipping has been by far our biggest challenge and working with our fulfillment partner Floship, has created even more challenges. Challenges that we hoped we could handle internally with Floship, but in the end, it has resulted in major delays for our backers. We recently got a letter from Floship that we want to share with you: https://organicbasics.com/floship.jpg to give you insight in the process we have been through. 

Moving Forward

We are still 100% committed to fulfilling our promises and delivering to each and every one of our backers. Things are still moving forward with Floship and even though orders are a long time under their way, each day backer will get his order. There are some packages that have gone missing underway, and these are now being shipped out from our Danish distribution partner instead. The process is simply too long when using Floship. As some of you have suggested, "why don't you just ship out all the packages from your Danish carrier" as much as we would like to, we are still a small company, and as we already paid Floship to do the job and they are still working on fulfilling their part and have a lot of orders on the way to you guys, we simply don't have the resources to pay a second time for both product, packaging, shipping and handling.

In it for the long run

We created Organic Basics 2 years ago and we have been building the brand ever since with a lot of help from the awesome Kickstarter community. We take our backers and customers very serious and we read and listen to everything you say, when you say something positive and energizing it very much reflects on me personally as well as the whole team. The same goes for when you get frustrated let us know, it honestly keeps me up at night not being able to live up to our trusted Kickstarter backers. We are not some giant corporate company that can just look away, we are young people who are building our future career, trying to create jobs for other young people and ultimately create innovative and desirable solutions for our customers.

We are grateful for when you tell us what we do good, but we also very much value when you give us input on how to make the backer experience better. 

We will be answering all of your emails this week and find a suitable solution for each and every one of you that are still missing your order. 

Humble and grateful regards,

Co-founder, Christoffer Immanuel

First of all a big thank you is in order. Your backing and support has financed a vision to create a superior line of basic clothing, that helps pushing towards higher standards when it comes to sustainable production and consumption in the textile industry.

Your feedback, both on the product side and on the execution of the crowdfunding campaign is so helpful to us. It has been overwhelming to experience such genuine interest, understanding and helpfulness. Such actions from your side, is completely crucial for us on our journey towards creating the world’s best underwear and to our future presence on Kickstarter.

Most of you have already received your SilverTech. We want to thank all of you who has posted pictures on social media, sent pictures of you wearing the clothing and shared the project with your friends and family. I cannot start to explain how motivating it is for us, to hear the stories of how SilverTech has made things like smelly feet a thing of the past, and solved a previously difficult problem. Keep them coming!

I also want to take the opportunity to address the current status of our distribution.
 First of all, I want to apologise for the lack of transparency from our side. We’ve been working so hard to fulfil all orders, and have been too hesitant to update you guys, when we haven’t had good news to report. I regret not disclosing all of our considerations and difficulties we have had in this process, to make sure that our expectations were aligned. This is not the spirit of Kickstarter, and for that I am sorry.

We created this company with a vision to promote a more sustainable production and consumption of clothing. 
We are charged with emotions, when we see that our lack of transparency has led to you guys questioning our motives and the way we manufacture our products. Our satisfaction guarantee is our pledge to you, that we will do everything in our power to make sure that no customer is left unsatisfied. Therefore we really appreciate the patience you are showing us. I want to explain our thoughts behind the chosen distribution plan: We wanted the SilverTech to be available for customers on a global scale, and therefore our goal was to find a distribution partner that could provide us with an effective shipping network allowing our customers to pay the lowest possible shipping price to receive our products. 
In our opinion, shipping costs do not add value to products, and therefore we made it our goal to find the best (read: cheapest) solution for our customers. We contacted many different official BackerKit distribution partners, all with proven track-records, and ended on a partner who could then allow us to only charge a $7 EU shipping fees and $5 US shipping fee. 
If we sent the items directly from Denmark to the States, we were looking at shipping fees of $30 for the smallest shipments. The same goes for multiple European and Asian countries.
We felt that this would be a big obstacle for us to actually promote our vision on a global scale, and therefore we did not see any way out of partnering up with a distribution center outside of Europe.

In our eagerness to provide you with the cheapest possible shipping options, we have had several unexpected distribution costs, which we had not accounted for in the initial budget. It has been an expensive lesson for us, but it is obviously a cost that we will bear. However it has led to some backers receiving taxations for their orders in the area of $15. This was not part of the plan, and we’re currently looking into the issue with our distribution partner, and are looking into the options of covering these costs with their collaboration. 
There are many things we want to improve and better for future campaigns. 
In our previous Kickstarter campaign we delivered everything two months after finishing the campaign, and we definitely underestimated the complexity of this campaign. Both from a manufacturing side, but also due to the big popularity SilverTech gained.

It's a pleasure to announce that we have currently fulfilled 95% of all SilverTech orders, and by the 4th of January the rest of the orders are shipped out and we will have tracking numbers available.
After the 4th of January we will address all the last backers who did not state their address and chose sizing through the BackerKit survey before the deadline. We're expecting these to be shipped out by the 15th of January.
We're using Aftership as a tracking partner, and Aftership sends out direct updates to you guys when an update occurs with your order. Therefore you will receive your first e-mail when your orders goes from In-Transit until it has been delivered to your local postal service.

We love Kickstarter and we love the community. It has created the entire foundation for our company. 
Therefore we are so sorry for this lack of transparency and our arrogance in regard to our ability to fulfil all orders just as easily as we did with a 200 backer-campaign.

My pledge to you is complete transparency for the rest of the campaign.

Happy New Years everyone,

Mads, Organic Basics

We’re closing in!

All Danish, German and Belgian customers should have received their SilverTech by now. Thank you so much for all the positive feedback and the pictures you have shared - it means the world to us.

Should any Danish, German or Belgian customers not have received their SilverTech yet, please send and e-mail to crowdfunding@organicbasics.com and we will help you out within 48 hours!

We’re working on full speed to fullfill all the orders for our international backers, and have just gotten confirmation that our international fulfilment center has started to ship out all the packages we personally pre-packed for you here in Denmark. Within the coming week all tracking numbers should be in your inbox.

If you have any other inquires or questions, please shoot us on e-mail at crowdfunding@organicbasics.com in order for you to get the quickest reply.

We can’t wait for all of you to try out the SilverTech.

The warmest regards,

Team Organic Basics

First part of the fulfilment is done!

We’re happy to announce that all orders to Denmark, Germany and Belgium has been shipped today. You will receive tracking numbers within 24 hours.

The remaining orders have all been shipped to our international fulfilment center, and we expect everything to be sent out with tracking numbers before the end of November.

We know it has been a long wait, but we can assure you that it has been worth the wait. We’re so excited for you to try out SilverTech and look forward to hear your feedback!

Have a great night,

- Mads from Organic Basics.