Christmas Deck by Natalia Silva & Penguin - Now Shipping

[Reylek]

Hi everyone!  Just wanted to let you know that the beautiful Christmas Deck designed by Natalia Silva and produced by Penguin Magic is available for preorder right now!

http://www.penguinmagic.com/p/6436

We expect to begin shipping the decks by December 15th, so that they'll still arrive in plenty of time for Christmas.

Enjoy!  I love this deck!

Kevin

[Don Boyer]

Hi everyone!  Just wanted to let you know that the beautiful Christmas Deck designed by Natalia Silva and produced by Penguin Magic is available for preorder right now!

http://www.penguinmagic.com/p/6436

We expect to begin shipping the decks by December 15th, so that they'll still arrive in plenty of time for Christmas.

Enjoy!  I love this deck!

Kevin

What - no photos? 

I'll go fetch some.

[10ofclubs]

It's a nice deck. I'm curious why they chose to sell these via preorder. Wouldn't it make more sense to sell and ship them on Black Friday? That way they'd be to customers for the whole of the holiday season and you could get an extra marketing push from customers posting photos and videos online. Also, why was there a preorder anyways? Why not just sell them like Penguin does with most of their products? I didn't see an explanation on their webpage.

[ecNate]

It's a nice deck. I'm curious why they chose to sell these via preorder. Wouldn't it make more sense to sell and ship them on Black Friday? That way they'd be to customers for the whole of the holiday season and you could get an extra marketing push from customers posting photos and videos online. Also, why was there a preorder anyways? Why not just sell them like Penguin does with most of their products? I didn't see an explanation on their webpage.

It comes down to timing and not wanting to wait until 2016.  Natalia was planning on printing these herself using MPC to get out just in time for Christmas, but Penguin came along and bought the rights to them and wanted to go with USPCC.  To get that done they basically put the order in for the deck right away, which meant doing a direct sale AFTER only gives about a week of sales before people quit caring which would leave them with a ton of seasonal merchandise.  Waiting until 2016 I suppose could be an option, but I'm glad they went with USPCC and made available now, even as a pre-order.

I agree they would have been wise to start pre-orders on Black Friday though, not sure why they waited.  Obviously it would have been impossible with the timing to actually sell the decks direct at that time though.

Certainly Reylek can correct me if needed.


ALSO, Natalia has 3 uncuts of this deck available if anybody is interested - http://nataliasilva.net/russian-folk-art-playing-cards/christmas-uncut-sheet

[Don Boyer]

It's a nice deck. I'm curious why they chose to sell these via preorder. Wouldn't it make more sense to sell and ship them on Black Friday? That way they'd be to customers for the whole of the holiday season and you could get an extra marketing push from customers posting photos and videos online. Also, why was there a preorder anyways? Why not just sell them like Penguin does with most of their products? I didn't see an explanation on their webpage.

I offer a simpler answer.  It's entirely possible the cards weren't ready in time.  Preorders are usually done when the item being ordered isn't yet available.  So if the cards weren't printed yet, they couldn't be sold - but they could be pre-sold/ordered.  A lot of card printers are busy up the wazoo this time of year, starting from around Halloween, and USPC doesn't print a damn thing for the last two weeks of the year - the entire factory/office closes for the holidays, and for two weeks mid-year.

[Reylek]

The preorder in this case was all about timing.  When we saw Natalia's art for this deck, we loved it, and thought it deserved a USPCC run.

However, with prepress, proofing, and production we knew we would be able to have the deck done JUST in time for Christmas.  The preorder is so that folks have enough time to order ahead of Christmas, but it also helps logistically.  Our warehouse team can prepare labels and other things from preorders so that decks can start going out to door to customers the same day that the decks hit our warehouse.

If we'd put the deck up for sale when they hit our warehouse, it would've taken that extra day or 2 to get them into customers hands, and we want to do everything we can to put these in your hands before Christmas.

We also didn't want to put them up for preorder too early.  USPCC runs are subject to a plus/minus 10% over or under-run, so we needed to be at the tail end of production to make sure everything went correctly with the run and that there were no major glitches or anything like that.

Hope that makes sense and sheds some light on things.  The decks are in transit to our warehouse as we speak and will be shipping out to everyone soon.

[Reylek]

I'm happy to report that the Christmas decks have arrived at our warehouse a little bit ahead of schedule!

There are only a few hours left in the work day today at the warehouse, but I think there is a chance that any preorders will start being packed today, with some possibly shipping.  Most will begin shipping tomorrow.  If you've preordered, your decks will be on the way and in your hands VERY soon!

If you've been waiting to order until they were in-stock, now's your chance.  Grab them now so that they'll arrive in time for Christmas!