The last few months have been very busy at for both myself and Greyed Out Productions. I ended up with a large surge of dice bag orders beginning near the end of November, and ongoing to the end of December. I’m not sure if someone found a Greyed Out product they liked and reviewed it to thousands of readers, or if the holiday season is simply when more people go searching online for gifts both handmade and manufactured. Either way, I’ve been busy sewing dice bags for the last several weeks, and still have a few orders to catch up on. It’s been incredible, and I’m hugely thankful to every one of my customers.
One thing I do know is that Graven Games reviewed a couple of Greyed Out dice bags, and that I’ve already seen several orders as a result. Graven Games is based in the UK, and the last week has seen orders with United Kingdom mailing addresses, so it’s a logical conclusion that the review caused the orders. It was also pointed out to me by a customer that Tabletop Gaming News posted a link to the Graven Games review.
As the new year approaches, I’m already thinking ahead to 2013 and to a few things I’d like to do differently in the coming months. I want to build up stock, so that I can reduce my shipping times. I do make all Greyed Out dice bags myself, and a stock of already-finished dice bags would allow me to ship within 1-2 days rather than the current 3-6. I also want to seek out more opportunities for having my dice bags reviewed, and may look into craft fairs or conventions here in the area as well. I have no experience with selling locally, so it would be a learning experience for me.
Life-wise, the year is ending well. We had our Christmas celebration a week early, when my wife’s mom came to visit for a weekend. The days afterwards were weird, as I kept thinking that Christmas was already over, and had to keep reminding myself that the rest of the world didn’t celebrate the day on the 17th. I received several very cool gifts for Christmas, including a few Moleskines(limited edition Hobbit kind), a book on the sketchbooks of various authors and illustrators, new boots, wine, art, and a few roleplaying books.
I now own the Hackmaster Player’s Handbook and the Hacklopedia of Beasts, and Kenzerco has outdone themselves on the production values for both. These are incredible books, both faux leatherbound, 400 page hardcovers. I can’t wait to start running a Hackmaster game, and I may already have several interested parties. Earlier, around Thanksgiving, Kenzerco had a Black Friday sale, offering 50 issues of Knights of the Dinner Table for $50. I snapped up the deal, and am now actually mostly caught up with the magazine. I’m still missing a few issues here and there, but for the most part, the entire collection is mine. It’s hard to believe that the magazine started around 1996-97; I was in high school at that point, and although I can’t remember when I first picked up an issue, the comic/magazine is one of the pillars of my high school roleplaying experience; nobody I knew was like the characters, and yet they were easy to identify with. Issue 200 is closing in fast, and the magazine is still as great to read as it was in high school.
2013 is going to bring new challenges and tasks, but I’m looking forward to it. I want to see Greyed Out Productions grow, and I want to take on some challenges for myself as well.
