Why are you doing this?

Reputation is everything to a business, but it's also everything to an individual as well. This will be my third Crowdfunding Campaign, with my previous two having been on Kickstarter. Now I've certainly faced a GREAT deal of turmoil, delays, and many painful lessons over the past 8 years I've ran my little business, fulfilling the MANY rewards I've offered for literally thousands of backers, supporters, and customers. However, my biggest weakness has always been my overestimation of how fast and efficient my work could be versus the real world and it's myriad of never-ending, Murphy Law inducing setbacks that have plagued this business since Day 1.

Now I could easily attribute the majority of my grief onto the very faulty and inefficient laser cutter that I had to rely on for the first 6 years. Yet, my own inexperience also cost my business a great deal for I knew very little in the ways of actually running a business, let alone a full fledged manufacturing factory kind of one. Thankfully though, I was blessed to be surrounded by not just extremely patient & supportive backers, but also family members, friends, employees, and a number of business associates over the years whom all could guide and direct the business in the right direction.

Another thing I've strived to do was to always maintain transparency on the entire process. Whether it's simply updating the backers about our daily and weekly gripes of the everyday manufacturing business or updating the charts to show where at in the lineup backers can expect to see their orders, to even answering emails and questions to the best of my ability as quickly as I can. Lately, my updating and communication have been placed on the back burner in part due to my lack of extra hands at work to reduce the many hats I currently wear. That's where this Gamefound campaign comes in. The money and support from this campaign will allow me to hire on a few more laborers to help with the cutting, assembly and shipping of our many unique and beautiful products. As I've promised my previous campaigns, I will never stop working to fulfill every last outstanding order, pledge, or reward until it is done. Your trust in my business and myself is the most valuable thing a prospective customer and supporter can ever give and I truly wish to never tarnish such a thing.

What are the Risks and Challenges you do foresee?

Currently, the biggest challenge to overcome is the completion of the remaining ~400 out of ~2500 rewards that need to be sent out to our remaining backers of our 2nd Kickstarter Campaign. The main reason we have this many rewards still remaining is in part to that faulty laser previously mentioned, something we should've stopped relying on the moment our 2nd Kickstarter was funded. Instead, I made the foolish mistake of thinking I could keep it functional and operational for much longer than it was willing to ever work. About a year into the 2nd Kickstarter campaign, the horrible thing finally gave up the ghost and refused to work for me over the course of 6 months in attempts to both repair it and find a suitable, affordable replacement. With us being down by one laser, we slowly had to let go of the majority of our workforce in part due to outside competitive wages & benefits but also due to lack of products to assemble with only one working laser. Another big oversight on my part was that out of those 1500 backers, about 700 of them ordered two to three of our Codex Silenda puzzle books. This SIGNIFICANTLY affected our original delivery timetables since each Codex Silenda would take on average 3-6 hours a piece to just cut out on the laser alone. Adding in assembly and shipping costs and we slowly came to the realization that our original pricing for these beautiful books was greatly underpriced, costing us dearly in the long run.

Thankfully, experience would finally begin to kick in and the efficiency of book assembly and laser cutting would drastically improve; mostly out of necessity whenever another team member would move on to more greener pastures. However, the lost time proved to be far too overwhelming and we've now reached the point where we require the extra team members to finally push through and complete these remaining orders. This is where this new Puzzle book and this Campaign come in. Having learned a immense amount of painful, albeit useful cost-saving techniques & practices from the first Puzzlebook, I was able to design the 2nd Generation. Not only is it MUCH easier and quicker to assemble than the previous book, but it is also far more customizable, modular, and interchangeable than the Silenda ever was. What would normally take 8 hours to do for a single Codex in terms of assembly, cutting, & engraving, can now be done in 3 hours or less. With this new generation of puzzle book and our 2nd newly acquired Kern Laser, our ability to produce these books on a much faster timeline makes the overall challenge and risk of this Campaign that much more reduced.

What happens if you don't raise the money?

First off, the good news is this product is ready to be made now, not later, so if this campaign does fall through, we will still gladly accept sales through our own webstore at

www.codexsilenda.com. The biggest reason we are using a crowdfunding platform like Gamefound is because it helps us see whether or not there is 1) Demand for our Product and 2) Helps Potential Backers join the cause seeing so many others believing in the same idea and team.

Crowdfunding is only one of the ways we reach out and engage with our puzzling audiences. We like these campaigns for their versatility and overall easy to use interfaces of engaging with so many fans, supporters, and backers. They also provide a trusted middleman ground for both parties to feel safer in the overall interaction and dealing. However, in the event that this campaign fails, we will either attempt to reach out directly to our existing customer base via email, but also seek out purchasers through our own website at www.codexsilenda.com through our social media channels and in person demonstrations.

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