SHOP UPDATES + Secret Shop Closed this month + Membership Card Discontinues July 2021

Hey all! Just wanted to give everyone an update with regards to what's been going on this month as well as some really important updates to the shop and the membership cards in the future! Please give this post a thorough read as it will contain important information that everyone needs to know about for later, thank you ahead in advanced! 💙

PATREON SECRET SHOP will NOT be opening this month so no passwords will be sent out! I've been falling behind on work and I've wanted to figure out a new way on how to organize patreon so that it'll make things easier and more productive for me to send out rewards efficiently within these next few months, but at least for this month for sure there will be no access given to the secret shop! 

I originally had the secret shop available to ship out additional past rewards combined with your incoming month's rewards but unfortunately, it takes me a long time to get through them when everyone doesn't leave notes in their orders and results in people who order through the secret shop receiving their rewards last with the amount of work I have to go through to sort them out (and even then I'll miss people sometimes 💦). In the future, I'll most likely look into having the secret shop open full time and having secret shop orders shipped out separately from everyone else's rewards--this will ensure that everyone's rewards will get out a ton faster and I won't have to worry about any complications! 

The workload was managable before with a smaller amount of patrons, but as the fish fry family grows (thank you so much!!), it's a ton of work to manage over 500+ patreon rewards on top of trying to combine secret shop and membership cards. I hope everyone will understand!

MEMBERSHIP CARD DISCONTINUES JULY:

After mulling over it for a while, I've decided (offishially) that the membership cards with the stickers will be discontinued in July 2021 (exactly one year from when I first started my patreon) :((( It's been a super fun run but as the patreon community grows, I'm having a hard time keeping up with new cards for new members and sticking little membership stickers on the back of each monthly reward takes a super long time and results in delays in general with the patreon rewards. 

Part of me feels a bit upset because the membership card I felt originally was a really cool and unique way to get people to join and show how long they've been a member, but it's just gotten increasingly difficult to do wiht more than 500 patrons and only me packing them every month;; in June's reward, everyone will be receiving 3 stamps with their patreon reward, and as long as you've filled out any card completely (pin card, sticker card, etc,) you'll qualify for the free t-shirt reward I initially wanted to plan to give out to folks who complete their one year card!

If you've filled out one card completely (subbed for 3 months not including the next month), you'll qualify for a free patreon exclusive t-shirt! I'll be making different/special varients depending on how many cards you've filled out and have split them into the following:

Fish Fry T-Shirt 3 months subscribed (not including June)/one fully filled out membership card

Exclusive variant Fish Fry T-Shirt 6 months subscribed (not including June)/ANY two fully filled out membership cards (ie, one pin club card & one membership card & etc.)

Exclusive variant Fish Fry T-Shirt for 12 months subscribed (in July)/two or more filled out membership cards (ie, the basic level 1 sticker club card AND level 2 sticker club card, and etc.)

If you don't have the cards but you've collected the little stickers and just have them lying around, I will count those towards these free t-shirts as well!

I'm a little sad to discontinue the whole membership card thing, but I'm hoping that as patreon grows, it'll be less stressful for me to handle while also being able to go back to getting out everyone's rewards within the first or second week of every month as I did before ^__TT/

As the one year anniversary of Umvvelt's Patreon approaches, I can't thank you all enough for the incredible support with EVERYTHING. It's incredible to have such a supportive community and I'll definitely be hosting something special in July for our patreon anniversary!

SHOP UPDATES:

Crybaby plushes are arriving NEXT WEEK and the Rainylune x Umvvelt collab pajamas & blankets are expected to arrive sometime in the following weeks as well! So all preorders will start going out, if you need any address changes please be sure to EMAIL me so that I can keep track, as patreon DMs commonly get bumped down and lost easily! After all preorders are sent out, I'll have a confirmed date with regards to the summer shop feeding frenzy and a catalog of all the new things to be released soon!

In addition to that, I'm also super happy to announce that Umvvelt will be partnering with the fulfillment center, White Squirrel from now on to fulfill all shop orders by the end of 2021! This was a really difficult decision for me, as I really had a difficult time letting go of my shop as I really enjoyed being personally invested in packing orders. But most of you all know, Umvvelt is just run by me, and I just don't have enough hands to handle everything by myself (and I cannot expect my mom to help me all the time as well when she works a full time job) and with so many orders coming in, I'm having a hard time fulfilling them as fast as I would like to.

After talking to White Squirrel, I am confident that they know what it means to be an independent artist and pack orders with the love and care as any small shop owner should have--and hope that by partnering up with them my shop orders will ship out more efficiently and I will have more time to personally focus on larger scale projects for yall instead of being spread so thinly across multiple tasks!

I hope this all makes sense and I know this was a long update, but I truly appreciate you reading this and for staying! Please don't hesitate to reach out if you have any updates, and all the best!

Kir