Guild of Blades Retail Group

I had a set of 10 decks of 90 cards printed around New Years. I called them, and they were very personable and even fit my run in between two larger jobs they had scheduled (I wanted them quickly).

I was not completely impressed with the quality. I'm a graphic designer, so my files should have been squeaky clean. I did intentionally do a few difficult things to test their product -- printed black out to the edges, gradients, etc. The die they used to cut my cards left white chips along the black edges, it wasn't a clean cut. Also, there were some streaks where the ink was slightly heavier (not related to the image), and some of the faces were misaligned (pretty far to one side) though the backs were all cut uniformly. So, I'm not sure how I'd feel if I ordered a $10-15 card game from an independent designer and got that deck, but for $6.45 each, they have made great gifts.

Yikes. This is very disconcerting. I am planning on submitting my first order at the end of the month. I already have pre-orders for the game and I am going to officially launch at a conference in late May. I was under the impression that the card quality was solid. Any idea if this has been addressed?

Hi Mike,

Sorry I had not replied to you sooner. Yes, we've been swamped lately. We're taking measures to try and rectify that, but they aren't exactly simple measures. Like, for instance, in a forzen credit market, finding a means to upgrade our printer to a much faster model, but where that model costs as much as some houses right now. And we have begun working with a local mechanical engineer to custom build a new die cutter that we have designed, as no machine currently exists that will cut playing cards efficiently and in the manner required for POD cards the way we need it to.. Neither of these are exactly simple fixes, but both are required in order for us to better manage the growing volume of cards being ordered well into the future. If we are lucky, we'll have both resolved before the Gen Con printing rush.

We did recieve your e-mail. I was waiting to reply until after I had had a chance to review your files. We'll be off for Easter sunday, but I hope to do that on Monday.

Thanks,
Ryan S. Johnson
Guild of Blades Retail Group - http://www.guildofblades.com/retailgroup.php
Guild of Blades Publishing Group - http://www.guildofblades.com
1483 Online - http://www.1483online.com

Could you clarify what you meant by the following bit?

Thanks in advance.

Ryan is probably correct here. If I knew how, I would post a pic of some of the cards so you could get a better sense of what I'm talking about. Now that I have gone through the process once, I have a better idea of what Ryan is talking about. Next time I won't go for the full bleed - I thought using the full bleed would GIVE me more wiggle room, but I'm thinking now that may not be the case. In fact, it might be just the opposite.

To get a better idea of what I'm talking about, imagine that the printing process offset the front side of the cards by about .25" in relation to the back side of the card [on the paper sheet]. When it gets to the cutting guy, he flips a mental coin in his head and sets the paper into the cutter with the back side facing up and registers the die cutter accordingly. Thus, the BACK of the cards is cut PERFECTLY, but the FRONTS of the cards appear miscut. That's what I got.

Now - the followup question is this: will I do this again? You bet! I'll make adjustments now that I'm familiar with the limitations of the process, and Ryan's post that he'll be making corrections to the templating process only serve to make me MORE excited about this product.

But let me be PERFECTLY CLEAR. I completely understand what Ryan is talking about. If he takes his equipment to the next [insane cost] level - you can forget about the services he is offering at the prices he is offering them. After going through hell trying to find someplace I could get 100 decks [183 cards per deck] printed up at ANY price, this is hands-down the best value for the money I have found anywhere.

Guild of Blades POD minimum is the best deal available I am aware of and I will shout their praises from the mountaintop every chance I get. Are there limitations? Yup. No surprises there. This is NOT a case of 'buyer beware', rather it is a case 'buyer BE AWARE' that will probably take more than one order to get right between me and them.

At these prices/quantities, I can live with that.

Thanks, Ryan - knowing you are constantly looking to upgrade makes your service even MORE valuable to me.

Hi Traz,

Actually, the opposite is true. If we are able to get both the new die cutter and new printer set up, then we'll be able to hold to the existing prices or thereabouts (paper price fluxuations might make us change, but it hasn't yet).

The problem with the current set up is it is too labor intensive. Simply not labor efficient enough that it makes fiscal sense to hire additional folks to help produce the cards to handle the growing volume of the POD card business. All the profits get eaten up in paying for the labor. This would mean to hire any help to enable us to keep up with production we would need to raise prices in order to stay profitable and not go broke. lol. We're trying to both avoid prices and go broke. Hence the move to invest in more efficient equipment, even if in this case it means having to design and have built a custom machine designed specifically for POD card die cutting. I estimate that if both machine can be put into action that our POD card production can becomes x5 more efficient. If so, we'll be able to hire help, maintain the existing prices and maybe even lower them a bit on large productions and get set up to do randomized printing and packaging for trading card games.

Unfortunately we're simply going to have to muddle through the best we can this summer until the higher capacity can be put into place.

Ryan S. Johnson
Guild of Blades Retail Group - http://www.guildofblades.com/retailgroup.php
Guild of Blades Publishing Group - http://www.guildofblades.com
1483 Online - http://www.1483online.com

P.S. Mike. Reviewed your files and will be shooting you an e-mail today.

:) Just anxious to get my decks.

Just curious if this new machine (which sounds very cool by the way) will position you to offer an Artscow-like service, i.e., one-off decks. Or will it be target at increasing short-run production alone?

Do you have any idea how Artscow is making money of these $5.77 decks with free shipping? Is this something GoB can do to?

I guess a good use of each service is Artscow=prototype and GoB=Short-Run for Sales.

Also, Ryan, thanks so much for your candor in all your discussions. Not only does this transparency in your business model build interest, it also instills confidence that you are sincere and that you know what you are doing.

>>Just curious if this new machine (which sounds very cool by the way) will position you to offer an Artscow-like service, i.e., one-off decks. Or will it be target at increasing short-run production alone?<<

Its largely targeted at increasing short run production efficiency and simplifying the skillset required to do it at all. Both are essential to our ability to scale production upwards to handle larger and more complex jobs more quickly and to process smaller jobs through in a profitable fashion. Simple reality is that once you factor the labor most small jobs for us are done at a loss and its the mid sized jobs that allow for a profit. We've maintain the low entry points this last year as a means to help foster a growing indie card game movement and to make it easier to spread the word about the existance of POD cards. As of yesterday some new minimum order terms went into affect. Basically the minimum order for a "first time" printing with new files, to get the wholesale pricing, is now 25 units. Without changing the files, reprints will be maintaining the 10 unit minimum. But we are also introducing non wholesale pricing with a minimum print run of 2 decks.

>>Do you have any idea how Artscow is making money of these $5.77 decks with free shipping? Is this something GoB can do to?<<

Well, we will be introducing non wholesale pricing at a minimum run of 2 decks. But unfortunately, no, not at that kind of pricing. Given that they are shipping free from Hong Kong, they are either taking a loss on the shipping alone or they are getting government subsidies at this point to cover their loses. As for how they might produce them so cheaply, the fact that we are talking about China here essentially answers that question. Its likely their production facility is outside of downtown Hong Kong proper and possibly over in a nearby Chinese provice like Canton or the like where labor is cheap.

Unless I really am missing something with regards to global shipping options or unless the Chinese government is massively subsidizing those costs, I expect their offer for free shipping won't last.

Ryan S. Johnson
Guild of Blades Retail Group - http://www.guildofblades.com/retailgroup.php
Guild of Blades Publishing Group - http://www.guildofblades.com
1483 Online - http://www.1483online.com