It’s been a while since I last wrote one of these — nine months to be exact. My last blog post was for my return to KULT, and it detailed my absence from September 2018 up until October 2019, when I came back. This one is decidedly much less serious, and I write this post today with happiness in my heart, and focus in my mind.
I wanted to speak to you all directly about my plans for KULT over the next 12 months and beyond. It’s been clear for quite some time that keeping over 100 pieces available as made-to-order is a difficult and exhausting task, which pretty much birthed my absence last year.
So, with that being said, it’s very clear to me that the very foundation of KULT has to change: no more made-to-order. Maybe one or two select pieces a month, but certainly not all pieces currently available.
Over the last few months I’ve slowly been showcasing more in-stock releases; these are pieces which I print, label and package before they ever go on sale, meaning that once one of them is purchased, it ships out immediately. My last four releases have been of this kind, and all future releases will be, too. In the next 12 months, there will be no made-to-order releases — at all. It may mean that new pieces trickle out a bit slower, but it also means I can work on ensuring everybody has a smooth, fast service, and most importantly: a perfect piece, crafted in-house by myself. There’ll never be a compromise on that, and I promise that all of my printed pieces will be personally created by me; that perfectionist part of me definitely hasn’t changed, and I hope it never will.
I want to make this promise to you: By the 31st of March 2021, all pieces on the KULT store will be available as in-stock and will be dispatched within 3 business days. Further to this promise, by the 30th of June 2021, all orders will be dispatched within 1 (!) business day, something that has always been my goal. Imagine; a perfect quality, hand-printed tee, without a ridiculous designer price tag, that is delivered to you within a few days. You never have to send an email to ask about your order, its status or when you can expect it to arrive — it just arrives. That’s my promise to you all, and I won’t stop until it is achieved.
Speaking more broadly about KULT, here’s a few things that are currently not up to speed, which will be vastly improved over the coming months.
- Email enquiries — there is currently a significant backlog in email enquiries, and response times are very delayed. With the huge undertaking of ensuring all orders are being made perfectly, and leaving as quickly as possible, while also focusing on moving KULT towards in-stock releases, my time for working through email enquiries has been frayed, a lot. In the next 3 months I expect this to change dramatically, and you can once again expect a response to your email enquiry within 24 hours, not a week or more, like it is now. For the meantime, Instagram Messages remains the fastest and most efficient way to submit an order enquiry
- Made-to-order processing times — my usual processing timeframe in order to create and dispatch a made-to-order piece is between 7–10 business days, from the following business day your order is placed. This is currently running around 3–4 business days over, with my focus currently on working through around 150 orders placed in early June. You can expect made-to-order processing times to rapidly speed up over the next few months, and to be normal again by October 2020.
- Release schedule — while I'm focused on fulfilling existing orders, I know a lot of you have been wondering when certain pieces are planned for release, specifically the Social Distancing tee. I’ve created a Release Schedule for you all to reference, and soon you will be able to sign up for email or Instagram notifications via that page. I expect the Release Schedule to be a valuable resource in the next few months, and I will continually update it whenever there are new pieces expected.
- New site — I’m in the final stages of creating an updated webstore, featuring a much more intuitive Customer Care section and updated product pages. I expect this to be ready and implemented by September 2020 at the latest.
Finally, I just want to say a huge thank you to everyone who has ever been patient with me while creating their pieces, or when awaiting delivery of their order. Because of the pandemic, postal services across the world are definitely experiencing delays right now—some quite significant—and I hope that in the next few weeks and months, those services will get back up to speed.
Once I’ve met my goal in March of next year, I plan to contact everyone who has ever experienced a delayed order from KULT, and to show them each just how much their support has meant to me. Thank you all, be safe. — Sam