Yesterday the acrylic standees came in! The most surprising thing is that FedEx delivered on-time — absolutely unprecedented! It’s a good thing they were on the ball, as air mail express comes at a premium. Ouch.
So I’ll start off talking about what was on my mind, the product itself and then go over the vendor and the ordering process. I wanted to purchase 100 count to start off with. This normally isn’t a good idea if you’re sampling a vendor but I was feeling ballsy. Luckily for me it worked out, but there are a couple of issues that could have been prevented had I done a smaller sampling. I’ll get into that later, for now, let’s inspect the product.
I ordered double panel acrylic standees. There are a number of options for creating these standees. You can do a single panel with the image printed on one side without a finish, but the chances of the art scratching off are extremely high and it’s not recommended. Getting a clear epoxy coating will protect the graphic print on the panel, but I opted for double panel which prints the graphic on two separate panels. This way the graphic is sandwiched between them, giving the optimal amount of protection and durability.
They came packaged in a box — 5 large zip seal bags containing 25 units a piece. Each individual unit came packaged within a flap seal bag.
They were haphazardly tossed together, so my main concern was scuffing and scratching. None of them were cracked or snapped as the double panel acrylic is sturdy AF. Upon opening the first unit I noticed the base and standee were really frosty… I was immediately concerned.
Upon closer inspection I noticed visible scuffs and scratches as well as bubbling and some fluting along the surface. For a second I thought I was going to have to ship the order back, but then realized it was just the protective film. Similar to the panels on computer chassis, these were coated with protective film and fed through the laser cutter, leaving a perfectly fitted layer of protection on both sides of the panels.
Removing the film on these units is a royal pain in the ass!! Once you’ve got it lifted you get a nice, satisfying peel, but finding that entry point is a hassle. I gotta find my heat gun, I figure that’ll make removal a lot easier. If it wasn’t so good at protecting the acrylic surface, I would’ve repackaged every unit myself. But even standees that have deep scratches on the film are perfect once that layer is peeled off, so I feel good about shipping them as they are.
The acrylic is very clear, and the print job is perfect — as it damn well better be, I supplied them with the raw 600 DPI source file. Some of the units have harsh edges that aren’t visually noticeable, but could really use a good deburring. I wonder if there’s a way to get chamfered edges on these… but then they’d have to reseal each unit with a new layer of film. And it’s questions like these you want to bring up with the manufacturer, to see what options are available. Speaking of which…
The partner I used to create these is Firebird Gifts in Dongguan. They’re a Gold Supplier on Alibaba and I chose them based on the samples displayed. They were very easy to work with and had excellent communication, but I’m going to place a small order with a Verified Supplier next week and see what they can produce. Unfortunately, when it comes to producing these type of goods, we don’t have too many choices domestically and the ones that we do have are usually brokers that outsource to China anyway.
It took less than a day to get in contact with Firebird Gifts, provide the specs, the files and process the payment to get the order started. The next day I was provided with a proof, and then a revision with a thicker insertion point at the base (it was too thin with the first proof, following the outline of her legwarmers, so they fanned it out towards the base to provide better stability). One week later I got the notice that the order had shipped. Two days after that the package arrived at my doorstep.
The only thing I need to change in regards to the design are the colors. As I mentioned in the beginning of this post, you want a small sample size to see how the product comes out. In this case, I want to brighten up the colors just a bit, and also get the copyright and Murakumo Comics logo stamped on the base. But now that I’ve got a hot press machine, I could order a custom head with the Murakumo Comics logo and copyright on it and emboss it myself!
Anyway, that just about wraps it up for this report!