[Raion]

Dasha is working with me to get European sales going. I need to also get with my Canadian stuff.

My original guy from the UK ended up having to back out due to getting a new job and not being home enough.

[Raion]

Canadian sales are soft-opened. I will continue to work with Dasha. I will ping everyone once EU sales are open.

[Raion]

I am still working on this. Hoping to figure it out this week.

[Raion]

I urgently need to find an alternative person willing to help handle EU shipments. Please contact me immediately if you have any interest.

It will cost a fortune to send these from the United States and I'm not doing that to you guys. I don't think anybody wants to pay 90 bucks for a shipment of a mouse pad and not even have duties guaranteed so I can't unfortunately fulfill EU sales if somebody is not willing to take a direct shipment and batch ship them out. There is a cut of the profits from shipment to Europe in order because I am not taking any profit cut from that and the rest of it is just going back into the site's funds. Inflation in the US is hitting such a point that I cannot guarantee things if I have to ship them from the United States

[Raion]

Unfortunately United Kingdom and European Union sales are not going to happen. I cannot secure a seller in either country despite multiple attempts to reach out to vendors or other groups that might be able to help.

I'm sorry to disappoint everybody but I cannot afford to send these out at a loss and at the same time I do not in good conscience feel that I can charge somebody at minimum 50 to $60 to send something like this out. It's no longer tenable to send anything from the United States to the European Union that has a value of under $100, it's just ridiculous.

As a slight alternative if you're in those countries and wish to purchase more than 10 of them I might be able to talk to our distributor and convince them to do a direct shipment but they don't do small orders at a very cost effective price.

I am very likely going to send out a mask email letting the Canadian users know about this and calling the last call for this at about March 20th. I have barely crested over the break even so I'm willing to do this in the future. I am not going to however continue this design.

[vishnu]

You can do it, it's just a pain in the ass because you have to do it yourself, you just wander down to your local UPS store with the foreign mailing address written down on a piece of paper, and they type it in and they'll even throw it into a bubble-reinforced mailer themselves. Yeah they'll charge you a buck or two for the effort, but once they see you're just mailing a mouse pad the import tax will be trivial, maybe even non-existent.
;

[Raion]

Okay, so mass email will go out over the next few days (sending limits for SendInBlue, sorry!)

As far as some FAQs I feel I need to get outta the way, let's get into it:

1. Why didn't we drop ship?

I'm hesitant to do business with big corporate entities. it's harder to get support/help when shit goes wrong.

2. Why were EU sales delayed in the first place?

I went through six people who offered to help. Nobody could commit, and it led to all sorts of delays.

3. Why can't YOU ship?

Because costs. Inflation has wiped out any buying power I have and I'm not some dumb SOB whose going to ask people to pay more than a product costs for shipping, then pay VAT/duties on top. I'm not gonna ever be okay with putting my name to that.

4. What kinda sales did this end up generating?

about 190 units. Far short of my projections. Hoping the last round of advertising to Reddit and VCF forums will help a bit.

Again, I'm sorry folks it had to be this way.

[Raion]

You can do it, it's just a pain in the ass because you have to do it yourself, you just wander down to your local UPS store with the foreign mailing address written down on a piece of paper, and they type it in and they'll even throw it into a bubble-reinforced mailer themselves. Yeah they'll charge you a buck or two for the effort, but once they see you're just mailing a mouse pad the import tax will be trivial, maybe even non-existent.
;

For dozens of units doing customs forms and declarations every single time is infeasible and way too expensive, and UPS is more expensive than USPS (plus i have no UPS store near me).

It's not gonna work.

[jirka]

Unfortunately United Kingdom and European Union sales are not going to happen. I cannot secure a seller in either country despite multiple attempts to reach out to vendors or other groups that might be able to help.

I fully understand this. Even more after my latest experiene with with shiping from the US (its both slow and unreliable and customs fees  would make the mousepad absurdly expensive) :-(

[opcode]

Sweet, was checking my email and saw this. Those look bad ass. I just bought a large and normal.