Welcome to our financial transparency page!
Kacchako Forever is a P4P, or "pay for production", project. This means that we do not plan to profit off of this project! All money made will be put in the following places:
♛ Ordering books and merch to fulfill orders
♛ Giving every contributor and mod a copy of the bundle
♛ Packaging and shipping supplies, as well as the actual shipping cost itself
Any excess funds from orders will be used on upgrading our packaging (more protection, more decorative packaging, etc.) or our items (increasing size or complexity of products, upgrading to better quality materials). Our only goal for this project is to make sure that everyone who helped make this happen gets a bundle for their hard work!
Contributor Compensation
Unlock some other P4P projects, our financial model aims to compensate every member of the project with a bundle. We believe that there is no reason in having contributors who worked several months on perfecting their piece, on top of years being passionate creators for this ship, to not be allowed to be compensated a free bundle. Our team has 47 members and our goal is to "breakeven" around 300 orders to compensate everyone a bundle.
Stretch Goals
To help with making sure our funds are going to where we want them to go, we have decided to implement stretch goals in this project. In short, a stretch goal means once a number of orders have been placed, we will "unlock" (add an item) or "upgrade" (change an item from one merch type to another) an item in a bundle. The upgrade or unlocking of an item comes from the money we save by hitting certain quantities ordered (if we order 100 books, the price per book is much higher than if we order 200 books, and so on).
Free Shipping vs Not-Free Shipping Bundles
Some of our bundles are free shipping and some are not! This is because the non-free shipping bundles are relatively easy to calculate - they feature a hardcover book we estimate to be around 2-2.5 lbs and several merchandise that should not be too heavy, as well as the packaging we expect to use and a limited assortment of stretch goals.
However, our full and limited bundle feature some pretty hefty merch items that add up in terms of protective packaging and weight very quickly (large standee, deskmat, windbreaker, bag). This, on top of the book being 3-5x heavier than the average zine, makes the shipping much more variable. Not to mention that we plan on pulling out all the stops for our stretch goals, and that can add a lot of weight as well. From our research, international shipping ranges from $50-80 for our current quotes, but what if some of our items end up heavier than expected?
Because of the uncertaincy that we can offer an accurate shipping number and not wanting to end in the red (and thus having to cancel), we have decided to make a more general approach to these two bundles. Any excess funds from shipping will be used on beter quality shipping supplies, decorative packaging, etc.
Group Orders
This project will be accepting group orders. If you are interested in hosting a GO, please contact us on our twitter and we will speak with you about this process!
If you are a member of a GO, contact your GO manager for instructions.
Payment
If you've ever ordered a fanbook or zine before, you're probably familiar with bigcartel and paypal! These two are the most commonly used store and payment platforms for fan-merchandise due to their low fees and ease of use (as well as being available internationally). Some competitors such as gumroad, etsy, etc. which also take in payment have higher fees which would affect our pricing due to this project's P4P nature.
We'd like to address that some zines have had issues with Paypal "locking" funds. This refers to a scenario where (often, new) accounts that receive a sudden influx of money is flagged as suspicious activity and said money is then locked to be taken out. For this reason, our book is using a pre-existing Business Paypal account that has held money for other books with sales ~300 bundles (similar to our quote). Our team has history with using Paypal for several zines within the 200-350 sales bracket, and a few cases of 600+ sales without any issues. By using a pre-existing account with fulfillment history of 3+ years, we have reduced the risk of Paypal locking our funds as much as possible.
In regards of contingency, our finance mod has successfully completed 25+ zines with Paypal. However, in case of emergency, we have setup a shared finance sheet with all members of the mod team and a way to transfer funds should an emergency occur and the finance mod becomes unresponsive. A backup mod is ready to step in should something happen to them to carry out the project if need be.
As of the moment, Stripe is not being offered as an option but we are looking into adding it. Due to potential difference in payment fees, we may consider adjusting prices or not adopting it due to our P4P model. Thank you for your patience!
Quota Details
We have reached out to suppliers for quotas assuming that we hit 300 orders. This number was calculated based off the follower count on our twitter, the number of subscribers on our newsletter, click rate of said newsletter, as well as comparing to similar zines based on the mod team's experience.
Our bundles are priced accordingly to our 300 order quota as well as a margin of about $5-12. This is for three reasons: the first is that, in the case we do not hit our projected qty, we do not have to cancel the project with this buffer. The second is so some amount of that money can go towards compensating our contributors with a bundle. The third is for our international buyers: typically, international buyers have always had to pay exorbiant prices when buying fanbooks shipped by US-based shipping mods. We believe that kacchako enthusiasts should not have to pay up to $80 shipping to get their bundle, and have instead decided to distribute the price partially in our bundle margin to help with costs.
Our quotas also take into account the cost of samples. For example, our bag sample is projected to cost around $250-300, and based off the mod team's experience, we will likely need to make 2-3 samples to ensure the quality and design are delivered to the best of our manufacturer's ability. The same applies to our wind breaker, and we would like, assuming we have the funds, to get a sample of our other items as well to check quality.
Quality Upgrades
In the case our project overperforms estimates, we plan on making quality upgrades to our scheduled merch products. These may include:
♛ Special Finishings (such as a holo effect on acrylics)
♛ Bigger size (making our standee larger for example)
♛Higher quality base material (upgrading our paper weight, bag and windbreaker fabrics)
We hope to make this passion project the highest quality it can be. From the hearts of our team to you, thank you so much for your support!