Merch manufacturer adventures pt1: keychains (Patreon)

Hello~

So in this post I've decided to ramble a bit about my manufacturer adventures that I've had while preparing for Dokomi! 

In this post I'll cover my keychain adventures with a UK manufacturer Zap Creatives and a Chinese manufacturer Vograce.

I hope this stuff will be helpful for some people. I will do my best to be unbiast as much as possible...but spoilers, one of these manus really grinds my gears.....

Lesgoooo!

So back in March-April I was working on my keychain designs for Tristamp and CSM, because of my burnout and CSM charms taking much longer to finish due to them being chibi and all designs having different poses, it took me a while to finish them, which ate up the precious prep time. 

So originally I was planning on using Zap, because UK based and I hope it would be faster(lol lmao lol) and not as expensive(LOL LMAO LOL), what a fool I was. 

I'm the one to blame because I've had all my designs done mid May, so on May 16th my Zap SAMPLE order was confirmed. I wanted to be careful and order samples first before I would order bulk, because I've been burned by Zap before  when I did my first small charm bulk order with them back in 2017 or 2018, the colors for one of the charms were not the best even tho I used nearly identical dark colors for other charms.....and Zap love to take their time, from replying to emails to preparing files to forgetting to include all prepared designs before manufacturing begins, which happened here and ate up at least 2 precious days:')(they also took their sweet time working on my friend's samples back in March)

But ok, after I've confirmed the designs on May 24th I receive a confirmation that my order is now in production, I leave for Dokomi on 28th of June, so there's time! Ahaha...

Since I'm a fool and I ordered a couple of designs to be covered with epoxy coat, this made the sample production time much longer....since epoxy has to be cured, otherwise it's toxic. In the mean time I was working on other things and prepping for the con and as time was nearing closer to the con I got worried...because now I knew I won't get the samples early enough to order the bulk orders for Dokomi.

So I decided to order from Vograce, I'll spare you a bunch of stuff as to why I did not go to Vograce in the first place. Since I was super happy with their service back when I made my Voltron and BNHA flower charms I decided to gamble. 

I had nothing to lose tbh, I've made peace that I won't get my orders before Dokomi, so I might as well test the waters and see if Vograce are still as good as they used to be. AND THEY ARE!

Now Vograce has their own website to process orders it was very easy to order(Zap site is very easy to navigate too btw, and easy to order from them!). 

On June 6th I ordered my small bulk order with Vograce(no epoxy, only double acrylic board, learned my lesson, because my old flower charms yellowed where the acrylic dome is:'( 

On June 14th my Zap samples(main pic of this post) were shipped out and after horrible fenagling with the customs( Zap's confirmation email had completely incorrect information and incorrect prices which made the customs clearance longer and I had to write a longer explanation letter, ALSO now that UK is not part of the EU customs apply for all packages and I had to pay to clear the package...) I've received my samples on the 19th of June.

My issue with Zap is that I never have a fully horrible or fully good experience with them, no matter what I order, and I've ordered stickers with them previously. They sent me wrong amounts of stickers ignoring my instructions, upon reordering stickers the borders were different width(more on that in the sticker post) and one of the reordered designs was reprinted darker, even tho I sent the same unedited file...so yeah always a mixed bag with them....

This time was not an exception. I've received 3 samples of each design even tho I ordered one each... but ok, but also for some reason Power was only 2 samples and one of my Yoshida samples had an X drawn with a black marker ?? Why send me this sample then? Just don't include it.

And honestly the printing quality is amazing! The colors are bright and lovely...but there are some things I did not like. I've ordered various types of charms to see how their quality changed and see different materials they have added during all these years. I had clear acrylic keychains, colored acrylic keychains with and without epoxy coat and wooden charms.

Not a fan of their clear acrylic charms tbh, they don't make double acrylic board like Vograce does, so one of the designs stays naked and uncovered, or you can use epoxy coat, which has a possibility of yellowing with time. 

Their instructions about different design charms is confusing as hell and I read it wrong and gave them wrong instructions(in my defense I had my sister and my friend read those instructions too and they were confused as fuck too) so both Vash and Nai had beauty marks under the wrong eye ah. Also not a fan of how much glitter they put, which does not look as nice and makes some charms look dirty esp around the face area.

Colored acrylic keychains with epoxy coat and again a bit too much glitter for my liking, the printing quality is amazing and the colors look very very good.

The wooden charms looked very good too btw, not much to say about them, apart from the thing that I got a couple of small blisters and had to sand down the back of the charms...and the burnt wood smell was a bit strong so I had to air them out a bit.

But today while I was taking a pic to compare the Zap and Vograce keychains I noticed that my Denji and Makima keychains from Zap started to bubble....

I put these two on my keys and they were in my fanny pack away from the sun so idk what happened here and why the artwork started to bubble up.... This is my main issue with Zap....idk if it's my luck or what, but something always goes wrong and they are quite pricey and if you're not from the UK you will have to pay customs fees on top of it. And it's such a shame because I really liked how the colored acrylic keychains turned out, both color wise and the size and the feel of them.

So after this weird day I had the next day(June 20th) I get a notification from Vograce that my bulk order is done and it's shipped out, which MOM HOLY FUCK ?????

The customs did not take that much fenagling with the Vograce order and I received my bulk order on the 26th JUST IN TIME BEFORE THE CON AND BEFORE I LEAVE IN TWO DAYS!!! I cannot explain how happy I was when I got the bulk order and that I will have new keychains for Dokomi:''')

What's better is that the keychains looked amazing too!!

I was afraid that they might come out not as food, and they are not as saturated but I still love their quality!

Especially my Tristamp flower keychains🥰

My only issue is that they look a bit less red/saturated compared to Zap printing, I've send the same files, apart from the Tristamp charms that I had to edit a bit.

You can see that Makima's skin color is more rosy in the Zap one on the left, but overall the Vograce charms look great imo, without this comparison I would not have even noticed it.

Denji looks much paler, but again if you don't have the comparison the Vograce one looks amazing.

So these were my adventures with Zap and Vograce! 

Will I use Vograce in the future? Definitely yes! I'm very happy with their service, I love their quality and so far I've had great experiences with them, I know not every merch artist will agree with me, because everyone's experiences are different(I did hear bad things about Vograce too, both service and quality vise!), but I think I'll stick with them if I need to make any new keychains or charms in the future!

I ever use Zap again? I doubt it, as much as I love their quality of printing and colors, financially it's not worth it for me. I am not a merch artist per se, but I like making merch and sadly my merch does not sell that well at cons, so it's mostly a fun lil thing for me to do and hope that I get to sell some things! 

Apart from how well my Tristamp keychains sold during Dokomi, cuz I think it was 90% luck that there were so many people still so actively into Tristamp and that there were so many cosplayers. Meanwhile my CSM keychains barely sold during all three days(checked my notes and I sold 2 Makimas, 7 Powers(my best seller from CSM ahah), 1 Yoshida, 3 Angels and 1 Aki, no Denjis sold rip), even tho there were a lot of CSM cosplayers, so it all depends on luck, your merch, the type of merch you have and what people want to buy in the end!

A very lengthy post, sorry about that! But moral of the story, make sure you have at least 3 extra months of prep time before the con, dont order epoxy coated charms if you have a month before the con, ordering samples is good BUT make sure you have enough time and read reviews about manufacturers and hopefully have fun!

The sticker post will be shorter I promise! 

But also it made me so happy to meet people who bought flower charms from me before, be it my Voltron ones or my BNHA ones, the fact people recognized my flower charms too made me very happy :')💕 Thank you all so much for the serotonin boost!😭💕💕💕💕

Have this crazy closing idea I had last day of the con:

Me: I don't go there, but what if I make Genshin flower charms?:D
Aira: 😑

Smooch smooch! thank you for reading!