Jonathan Bayme from T11 writes...
"Hey guys,
A situation arose this afternoon with the upcoming Monarch Playing Cards, and I wanted to take the time to explain EXACTLY what happened, what decisions we made, and what steps we took to fix the problem. I saw a few posts on Facebook tonight that accused theory11 of impropriety. A conspiracy! Nothing could be further from the truth. In reality, today represented our finest hour. Please allow me the opportunity to explain.
Earlier this past week, we allowed a limited pre-release of Monarchs. The pre-release decks were intended to be exactly the same as the primary edition. The only difference was they were to be received 2 weeks before the release. A sneak peek! They sold out in 90 seconds on Monday morning - limited to 111 decks. On Monday afternoon, the team at USPCC worked quickly to package 144 decks into a box. They even had to glue some of the tuck cases by hand with a hot glue gun. But they made it happen, and we are very thankful for their help.
Our team worked quickly to ship out those pre-release decks - the lucky 111. Late Wednesday evening, I was made aware that the metallic ink on the back of the Monarchs didn't print exactly the way we wanted it to. Metallic inks are VERY difficult to print consistently on a press as robust as USPCC. The inks contain little bits of REAL metal in them, so they are difficult to print and have strange properties. We've had issues with it many times before (Smoke and Mirrors v5, Bicycle Titanium Edition, Bee Titaniums, etc).
I woke up at 6:00am this morning and spoke with USPCC after demolishing a Starbucks Doubleshot. Thousands of decks were already printed, so it was a difficult situation to resolve. What do we do? Option A is to release decks that we KNOW aren't exactly what we wanted. Option B involved re-printing a lot of decks. A LOT of decks. We opted to re-print the decks. The entire run. And ALL of the original decks, minus those 144 handmade samples, will be destroyed. Yes, that's incredibly expensive. And yes, I might be crazy. But it was the only logical decision to make once we knew that those decks were not perfect, and it was a decision I made without much hesitation. We take quality very seriously - nothing matters more to us.
As a side effect, those lucky 111 got a deck that will never be seen or produced again. That was NOT our intention, and at no time was theory11 any less than 100% honest, transparent, forthright, and sincere. Yes, we originally told you that the pre-release decks would be the same - but that was our intention and never did we anticipate any last minute production issues. Luckily, with swift action and bold moves, we were able to resolve those concerns before 11/11.
Simply put, when dealing with a large production run, things can happen outside of our control. What matters most is what we do in response. What we do to fix it. In this case, the easiest fix would have been to just let it slide - but we refused to settle for anything less than perfect. So we made the decision to tweak the design and reprint the ENTIRE run.
What you will see on 11/11 will be perfect. And well worth the wait. In seven days, you'll see for yourself. They're incredible. "
