Policy clarifications:
Shipping times run anywhere from 10 days to 4 weeks. Please be patient, and do not email me about your order unless it has been marked as shipped and you have not received it within 7 days of it's shipment, or your order processing time has gone past four weeks. You can check these by logging into the store as your order status will change from "processing" to "complete" when it ships, and also in the "Now shipping" section of the store forum where your tracking number will be posted.
Shipping costs are clearly stated. If you do not want to pay that amount, then please do not order. Complaints about shipping costs will be completely disregarded once your order is made and paid for.
If you have a question about any item, or have a special need in terms of arrival date then please contact me at support@brokenarrowtoys.com . I will do my best to accommodate you as long as you contact me BEFORE you order about your concern.
The contact email for the store is: support@brokenarrowtoys.com . This is also forwarded to my personal email addy, so rest assured that I will see any communication that you make. I will not respond to any store related emails send to any other address or through PM, IM or any other communication. This is not because I want to be a dick, but so that all the eggs are in one basket and I can keep track of them all. Please, use this email for store related issues or questions.
That's the end of the policy clarifications.The following is a rant. Reading is not mandatory or necessarily encouraged.
I want to take a minute to put some things down here that have been on my mind for a while, and even more so recently. I'm not sure if it's a misconception that is the issue, or if it's unreal expectations or just plain a lack of knowledge on the part of some customers but this is an effort to alleviate that, and clear the air about some things that are bothering me.
The thing that most personally effects me on a day to day basis is not money, or the pressure to get this job done, but rather the repeated negative fallout from some individuals who have either had a bad transaction in their opinion or have decided that this kind of business is the "evil of the modern world" and they are the lone crusaders for all that is right and good (making them both heroes and martyrs at the same time in their minds). There is nothing I hate more (nor is more potentially damaging to an internet only business) that some self-righteous individual who decides that airing his problems in the court of public opinion is his preferred method of handling his perceived problem. This can range from legitimate (lost package, damaged items, longer shipping time than what they feel they are entitled to) to the totally ludicrous (cast items are bad and take money out of legitimate toys companies pockets [seriously, someone did try to make that argument recently]). Add to that the perceived anonymity of the internet and the fact that potential customers not knowing whether this person complaining is a legitimate customer or not, and you have a situation that very quickly can cause irreparable damage. Also, the perception is you try to tell your side of the deal and hopefully resolve the situation (for legitimate complaints) is that your being argumentative or aggressive and generally a dick. It's not a winnable situation.
Evidently, my attempts to communicate to our customer base have not been effective enough as to the approximate timeliness of order processing and shipping practices. This was the single biggest issue last year in regards to customer complaints, and I thought that taking the steps that I had addressed the issue for the most part. Order times have been cut down drastically (as many of our long term customers can attest) by being able to hire someone to come in part time and pull/pack/ship orders. There is still the occasional order that runs up against the 4 week quote, but those are very much the exception rather than the rule these days.
My point is this: I'm doing everything that is feasible for me to do to get these items out as fast as I possibly can. I know that most of you guys don't have any real frame of reference as to how long it takes to pull/pack/ship from an inventory that is this large. If the parts were bigger, and more easily identifiable from one another it could go faster, but the scale works against me in that way. Don't get me wrong, I have all the items sorted out, but that in itself is also a serious time-eater. On a standard day, it can easily take 6 to 8 hours to sort, add to the store inventory, and then put away in physical inventory the parts that were made over the previous 3 days or so.
Another time-killer is the processing of the orders. Again, you can easily lose another day and a half to pull/sort/bag/pack/label and then ship as few as 25 orders. Again, I'm not complaining about it because it's just part of the deal, but I don't think that a lot of customers have taken any of this into account before writing to complain that "it's taken 2 weeks already" and "where's my order?".
Something else that seems to be a sticking point is "what I want is never in stock!". Believe me, I don't limit these numbers because I don't want to sell the parts. God knows I can use the income. Rather, it's directly related to the sheer number of parts in inventory and the physical time that it takes to make them all.
At most, I can pour and cure about 80 grams of plastic per batch (and that's really pushing it) which translates into 50 to 60 heads or normal size and shape. The time it takes to do this is deceptively long as well, since I have to sort through and pull out the molds from my library (anywhere from 30 minutes to a couple of hours depending), make sure they are all in good shape (sometimes up to another half's), the spray mold release on each one (letting that have time to dry, another 15 to 30 minutes), then mix the colors and plastics (depending on color match, this can take about 10 minutes per color or more if your dealing with 5 or 6 colors at the same time), then inject the molds (no more than 22 minutes, because after that the plastic starts to cure on it's own and the parts won't turn out), and finally put those molds in a pressure pot and air it up and put it on the heat (10 minutes with the small compressor I own). Add to that the cooking time of anywhere from and hour to 6 hours depending on the materials (plus the electricity to run the hot plates because several of these plastics won't cure fully without heat) and suddenly your investment in time and expenditures is not as small as you might think. Since I usually only have one or at most two molds made of a head at any given time, this means that I can usually only get two or three batches a day done on a good day.
Another misconception is that casting parts is cheap, and that the prices are not justified. The thing that is not readily apparent is the time which is involved in working on these things, as I explained previously. Take the moldmaking process: after spending anywhere from 5 or 6 hours to several days working on a custom figure (sculpting, re-sculpting, trial fit, adjustment and modification) then you really start racking up the hours. You have to clean all the parts in alcohol (about half an hour to scrub each and every part clean of any residue because if you don't it clean lead to parts that have deformations or just plain inhibit your silicone from curing properly), then you have to clean (from their previous usage) and glue on sprues (the tiny sticks which make the injection points, anywhere from 2 to 6 hours because this directly effects the final appearance of your parts due to placement/neatness), then you have to set up mold boxes. This involves cleaning up your wood slats from their previous usage (another half hour), then kneading and shaping your clay that will serve as your reservoir that holds your part in place (again, neatness counts because of how this will effect your mold longevity and cleanliness of the pulled parts), then standing the parts up in the boxes (another 2 to 3 hours) and building the sides using hot glue to joint the slats together (again, this takes a couple of hours because you can't have ANY leaks in any of the seams or corners because your silicone will be under pressure). Once all that's done, your ready to mix and pour silicone. Measuring and mixing takes about 15 minutes (you have to stir the silicone for at least three minutes constantly to insure that it's well mixed and will cure properly all the way through because if you don't it will turn out like snot instead of rubber). After that you can figure about 30 to 45 minutes (again, you can't go past this time, as the silicone will start to gel) for pouring. Silicone is thick, and you have to be careful not to trap any air where is can't work itself out. After that, you put your mold boxes in the pot, and air it up (another 10 minutes of worktime) and then cook it on the hotplate for 8 hours (again, this eats up a lot of electricity, which as you know is not cheap). Suddenly, your one cast figure has cost you an entire work day+ to prepare molds for.
Last but not least in the process is the time it takes to demold parts and clean them up for sale. Each and every part has to have the injection point cut off and made flush, and any flash trim off by hand with and exacto knife. In with this you can include demolding your original parts from the molds you just made. Once the silicone is out of the pot, you have to let it cool so that can remove the slats from around it (this takes usually about 2 hours) and then clean up your clay being careful to remove any residue because if you leave any, it's going to ruin the first parts out of the mold. After that, you need to break off the sprues and set them aside (this is time sensitive because often when removing the box slats air will seep into the molds and surround the part stretching the silicone out, and if it sticks that way it will make all your resulting parts distorted or bloated in appearance). After that you can plan on another hour or so cutting the original parts out of the silicone, and again you can't rush this because the resulting mold lines directly effect the appearance of the final parts and if there are any spots where silicone has stuck to your parts then you run the risk of tearing it out and ruining the mold for good. Finish that off with at least two (and sometimes four) hours back on the hot plate with the molds so they'll post-cure and remove and remaining chemicals from inside the mold which would foul your pulls, and the $$$ is really starting to add up.
Let me give you a price breakdown on materials that I use and associated costs:
Crystal Clear 220 (this is the material that is used for all the hard parts in figures, and practically all weapons or other "tough" parts) $220 gallon (I use approximately a 1.5 per month)
Clear Flex 50 or 95 (material for flex figure parts/helmets/webgear) $33 per kit (I don't use near as much of this because of it's limited apps, 1 per month)
Task 4 (hard material for heads, ivory in color so it's ideal for them because the base already has a tint and you use less dye) $28 per kit (X 2 or 3 per month)
Smooth Cast 327 (lower density clear plastic that is easy to color match, used for transparent parts and some heads) $28 per kit (X 2 or 3 per month)
dyes (these costs $13 per bottle, per color 10 in all) these last anywhere from 2 months (black/flesh/white) to a year
electricity costs to run the compressor/hot plates/ventilation fan (around $100 per month)
packaging, postage, baggies, paper, ink (this averages out to about $2.75 per package for a standard sized order shipping in the US).
Let's not forget the costs associated with Paypal....they charge 3.9% to take every single payment, and believe me....that adds up in a real quick hurry.
employee costs to pack and ship orders (unfortunately this is a second job for her, and it doesn't always happen as often as I'd like resulting in shipping delays)
If you add all that up (disregarding dyes, website costs, and postage) that runs around $775 per month. Average revenue is about twice that so that means that I make about $4 per hour on an average 200 hour working month. Certainly not a grand number and if I didn't live where I do that allows me to work out of my home at a greatly reduced costs it would not be enough to survive on, but what it does mean is that I work for myself (and a fantastic business partner who helps when needed and accepts finished customs in lieu of repayment
) doing something I dearly love to do so it's a lifestyle sacrifice I make in the hopes that someday it will pay off in bigger dividends.
When you factor in the the angst of deals gone bad, or some customers unreal expectations that have been set by the "instant gratification mentality" brought about by the proliferation of the internet then it really starts to tarnish whatever happiness you can get from a homegrown hobby-based one person business. And that brings me to my final point: If you have a legitimate complaint about what I do or a transaction that we've had, then take the time to write me about it and let me respond in kind to you. Don't go bashing me in public until I've had the chance to respond in private and address your need, because most likely I will respond in kind even against my better judgement and to the chagrin on my biz partner. If I don't offer a solution, then feel free to run amok. I know that I have a rep as someone who is not afraid to speak their mind (sometimes harshly), but that is the way I am in real life and I see no need to temper my personality to be subservient just for a buck, so don't take it personal unless you've made it personal. So please, read the store policies and practices, be mindful of the information I've given you above, and remember that this is not (however much I want it to be) a professional factory cranking out thousands of parts a day and the staff that would all entail, but one guy working out of his home who gets some help from time to time who does it because he loves it, not because it's making him rich. Thanks for taking the time to read this rambling pile of nonsense.
BROKEN ARROW TOYS
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