Pasted over from my first kickstarter…

Overview

Would you like to own a lovely little red airship enamel pin badge? I know I would, that’s why I’m running this…

Rob Turpin and I met working together on The Illustrated World of Mortal Engines and I’ve loved his art from first sight. The design we’re manufacturing is original art commissioned specifically for this pin, of a little red airship. This will be the fourth pin design I’ve had manufactured, the second I’m producing commercially, and the first I’ve Kickstarted.

The Design

The design I’d like to make will be 25mm hard enamel with black nickel backing. Hard enamel means that it’ll have a smooth, flat finish (as opposed to soft enamel – there’s a good explanation here), which costs more to make but gives a lovely high quality feel. Black nickel means that the metal of the underlying pin will be a glossy black (rather than the more common gold or silver) which I think really suits Rob’s clear, detailed linework.

Timelines

May 2020: Kickstarter will run, and hopefully reach its target.

June 2020 – Design and Ordering: I expect the process of finalising and ordering the design(s) will only take a week or so but am allowing a month. If I reach the higher stretch goals I’ll also use June to poll backers about what colour/designs they’d like.

July-August 2020 – Manufacture: Based on previous experience, it takes 4-6 weeks for the pins to be manufactured and to get to me. I’m allowing two months to be generous – I suspect nobody will mind if their pins come earlier. You can read more about the precise manufacturing timescales here.

September 2020 – Shipping: The pins come to me, and I post the pins to you. I use Royal Mail first class delivery in the UK and International Standard for the rest of the world, which rarely takes more than a week to get anywhere.

October 2020: Hopefully, everyone will have their pins by then!

 Relevant experience

This will be the fourth design I’ve manufactured and the second I’ve shipped commercially after one I sell on Etsy (you can read my reviews there!). The latter took quite a while to get around to making a profit, and I’ve commissioned the art professionally, so I’ve decided to run a Kickstarter so as not to end up out of pocket.

I’ve had all my previous designs produced by The Enamel Pin Factory, and they’ve been very good at communicating promptly and producing high-quality products with no quality issues or “seconds.”

Budget and Postage

My initial goal is £500 which will support a minimum run of a hundred pins. Around half the goal money will go to manufacturing the pin and the rest towards paying the remainder of Rob’s artist fees. Pins are quite cheap to ship, but the price varies for me based on where you are in the world.I use Royal Mail first class delivery in the UK and International Standard for the rest of the world for orders of up to ten pins, and Royal Mail Tracked for larger orders. I’ll ship all pins in small recyclable jiffy-bags.

Stretch Goals

The initial goal is just to produce the pin itself, but I’ve had some ideas for what happens if I hit higher goal targets…

£600 – Stamped Backing Cards. I’ll get a custom rubber stamp made of the airship design, and put the pins into hand-stamped cards, as a slightly labour-intensive but cost-effective form of backing card. (I already do this with my Gloomy Frog pin.)

£700 – Printed Backing Cards. At this point I’ll be able to afford to have proper backing cards made up by the manufacturer. Rob is happy to produce art for this – I’ll post concepts as and when it looks like we’re getting to the target.

£800 – New Colour. Is red not your favourite colour? At this point I’ll be able to do a palette swap for the same design – I will poll to see what the most popular colour is, and backers will get a choice of the colour they want.

£1000 – New Design. Rob produced any number of lovely designs, some of which are below. At this point, I’ll look into commissioning him to finalising another. Again, backers will be able to vote for the design they like best.