Hi just a quick update on the micro ruler campaign. Thank you for everyone who contributed. It was awesome! It absolutely went. Gang Busters Fantastic and uh, like in the order of 9 or 10,000 rules or something like that 2300 supporters? it broke.

Uh, all records. Smashed all records for the largest supported campaign. Imposs history. So awesome.

Thank you very much. But now I got to pack and ship them and I thought I'd just do a uh little video here of me actually um, packing what I have to do to uh, pack and ship just the Australian rulers because I've uh, found an external mail inh house? uh, because you know we're talking 2300 envelopes here I've got a label, pack, ship, and uh uh, put stamps on and everything else. Just not practical for me to do it myself. but I did promise that these things would ship in September and I do have 1,200 rulers here here.

they are in in packs of 100. Um, so I do have 1,200 R rulers which I initially uh ordered, but the extra 82,000 rules aren't going to um, ship to me until the end of September So by the time the mailinh house deals with that, they probably won't ship until October. So I felt bad about that and I'm sitting on 1200 rulers. so 1 1200 is almost the uh just over the exact number required to fulfill the Australian orders.

So I thought I'd personally pack and ship all the Australian Rules I think it's 280 odd envelopes or something like that and uh, I think it's 1150 Ruler. So I've got all of the rulers here. I've got my uh envelopes I got a box of 500 envelopes. It's A actually, when you start packing and shipping stuff like this in uh, quantity, just little tiny things make a big difference.

For example, get getting an envelope which is, uh, self sealing like this doesn't have that peel off strip on it to actually protect it. It's got the gum on on the top part there and gum on the bottom part there. You know you can save a second just peeling off that thing and tossing it in the bin. so all that sort of stuff in high volume actually adds up.

So I've got 500 self seal envelopes even though I don't need that many. That's the Box they came in made in Australia by the way, Beauty and um, I've got my 1200 odd rulers there. they are. They look fantastic.

Um, the extra 82,000 on the way should be exactly the same, except they will have a a 2 mm hole just down around. Oh where down around there? Somewhere like that? They had to do it for high volume 82,000 Manufacturer these things to get the nice routing. Edge They needed two tooling holes on the thing so it already had a 2 mm hole over here. so they needed another 2 mm hole over here just to ensure that uh, they could.

Um, because all these these 1200 they made don't have the hole but They hand taped the those down apparently to hold them in place while they routed while the machine routed all the edges. They said they couldn't do that for 82,000 I Had no idea and well, I had no real option but to include that extra hole so the 82,000 will have that. No big deal. It doesn't, uh, ruin or obscure anything or anything like that.

So there you go. We got our 12200 odd rulers and got all the stamps in these nice roll packages. So uh, Sean attacked this one. It's already see the tops ruined on that.

But anyway, you get them in roll and you peel them off and just really easy and efficient to peel those out. Um, I've got my tape because I'm actually going to have to tape the rulers together first so that they don't uh, you know, rattle around inside the envelope or at least rub against each other. Um, that's the fear. Some people were concerned about that.

So I'm going to have to tape each individual ruler. So I do a whole batch of the two rulers, tape them all together. Then UND do a whole batch of five. So and little things like for example, my uh tape dispenser here is really quite annoying.

The the uh, little serrated edge on that isn't very good and it's very difficult to sort of. You know, it's not very efficient, so if you're doing this in really high volume, you'd get one of those automated tape dispenser things that actually you know you push a button and it dispenses a set length of tape and stuff like that that can really little things like that can save you a bit of aggravation so got a bit of AGG there. But anyway, um, that shouldn't be too much drama I think it should only take me a couple hours all up. I've got all my addresses uh printed I'll show you that so they're all printed and sorted in the particular types I'll go through that uh on the computer but we're ready to go.

One last thing, you need chocolate and just on the uh, mailinh housee issue actually. um I did ask them to pack and ship the Australian Rules early the 12200 that I have here and they said yeah, we can do it but uh, we'll have to charge you that big you know upfront NRE cost again CU They like to do everything all in one big hit. so for them to set up and get ready for it even though it's I don't think it's a huge amount of work. Anyway, they wanted to charge like a wounded bull for that.

so I went a bugger that I'll just ship these on my own. Go! it's got to take me less than a day surely. And also just to uh, tape those rulers together. The house is going to do that as well I'm not sure you know how whether they got some Automated machine, they can do it? Probably not, it's just going to be done by hand, but they've probably got one of those tape dispenser things make it a bit easier than me.

but um, that's actually a significant cost just to tape those rulers together. actually? uh, cost the same as it does to actually, um, stuff the envelopes and seal them. or uh, to address the envelopes and stuff like that. So all those little steps, those manual steps at the mailing house all add up to.

you know in this case, in terms of you know, I got $30,000 from the campaign. It's not a huge, uh, you know, percentage of that cost. so that's why it was a no-brainer to go for the mail inh Housee. But you know, if you're on razor thin margins, these things do add up.

So the majority of my cost is of course actually manufacturing the rulers themselves and the postage. I've got like U you know, I think over $5,000 in postage or something like that. So absolutely incredible. But of course, the mail Inhouse won't be uh, sticking on stamps like this.

They've got those franking machines Like official machines that are tied into the post office system and can inkjet directly onto the individual uh envelopes and it's all official. and then Australia Post charge them and you know. And then they pass on the charge to me and it is actually uh, cheaper to get it bulk done with one of those uh franking machines now on the posible uh website here. uh because it's my project I can go in and uh, get a supporters tab here and it tells me.

number of supporters: 2,300 27 the uh total pledged amount $ 31,38 Incredible! Uh, not captured I have no idea what that means I guess they didn't go through the Fulfillment process or something anyway. Um what I can do is I can download a CSV file containing all of the address and shipping data which is fantastic except for those who after repeater request would not enter their address data in. Then what I can do here is I can use my Dio labeling uh program to import the CSV file and here's all the fields: I want all the datas down in there I won't show you but it's split up all of those um Excel files into fields and I can just put uh, the various names on the particular of the various fields on the label here. So it's going to have the person's full name, their uh, street address, their suburb State and postcode and that's how you would, uh label things for the Australian postal system like you wouldn't bother putting the country in there of course because because it's only uh, local mail so it just Imports uh the particular field and uh I can just press next and bang it Imports all the data and then I can just press print and bingo out will pop in this case.

Uh, this particular Uh file is only for the Uh 76. There it is 76 labels. So these are the Australian customers who have only ordered two rulers and there we go. Out come all our labels.

76 of them and it takes no time. All as you can see I got my Doo 450 turbo. The turbo is like twice as quick as the other one so there you go. Too easy.

So there you go. We have our 76 printed labels. Only took like a minute. Fantastic.

Another minute just to uh, import the names and all done very quick. very efficient. So that's for uh, the people with who ordered two rules. I'll do the same again.

There'll be a few more people who ordered five rules. So ah, way too easy. And once you've got these labels printed then of course you can't really miss anyone because you go well. is the uh uh label or are they all empty? The answer is yes, you sent them all out.

Far too easy. Now on the posible uh website here. Uh, because it's my project. I can go in and uh, get a supporters tab here and it tells me.

number of supporters 2327 the uh total pledged amount: $31,385 Incredible. Uh, not captured over no idea what that means I guess they didn't go through the Fulfillment process or something anyway. um what I can do is I can download a CSV file containing all of the address and shipping data which is fantastic except for those who after repe request would not enter their address data in and here is what it actually uh spits out. please forgive the lack of screen capture I couldn't be bothered here and uh basically here is number one.

it's got their full name and the amount that they uh bought PayPal transaction the reward that they got the Uh $10 one I.E two rules or the $15 one plus some people actually just uh donate donated some money which is really good. thank you John and uh, we've got over here, the address, full address and uh, their street address. Now their full address I've raised this info here to, uh, protect everyone's privacy of course and the full address actually contains all of these fields over here. Uh, but in just in one big long line and that's so that's not the full address.

there is not very useful for importing or it'll be a pain in the ass to import into my label um, label program. So thankfully they split those out into the Uh street address and then the suburb and then the state and then the post code over here and then the country. Fantastic! So I can then go into um my spreadsheet program I can sort by country of course cuz that's what I you know I would I'm going to ship all the Australian orders myself and then all the overseas ones I'm going to leave up to the mail in house. but uh, there you go.

So I can sort um array, only get the Australian ones and then then further sort those once. I got the Australian ones. further sort them into the reward cuz then I need to print out separate labels for the ones who've ordered two rules and for the ones who've ordered five. otherwise I'd be shipping people the wrong amounts.

So ultimately, I'm going to end up with four different files here. one is the Australian one for two rules Australian for five and then overseas for two rulers and overseas for five rulers And the overseas ones. Uh, those files those CSV files I will send to the mailing house. and if you want to have a look at the countries here, if you're curious, I can uh, sort here.

extended selection? There we go. Um, one from Al Melo in the Netherlands So they you they've put the they've got somebody has goofed up their state and their country there. So little things like this: I have to go in and fix up manually otherwise it's not going to work too well. and uh, there's one ozia in there, but that's actually Austria I believe.

So there you go. I've got to go in and fix up that manually. but there's uh I think there's 270 Australian ones there's Austria Some people have put Australia not Austria Fantastic. Um, but that doesn't matter, that won't screw me up.

Belgium Brazil Quite a few from Brazil Canada tons from Canada Chile Croatia Cyprus What on Earth is that? Hungary There we go. There's somebody else who's uh, mixed up their country and their uh, and their um, suburb or whatever there. so have to fix it up Denmark Deutchland Germany And then England Estonia Finland oh France Germany tons from Germany I've got a huge viewership in Germany uh, Greece Great Britain uh, Hong Kong Iceland Bo Hungary Israel Italy Oh man. all over the shop, there we go.

Another person's mixed up the uh that in the Czech Republic there. So there's you know, there are actually quite a few. There's at least a few dozen in here. I've got to go fix up.

Uh, manually. Netherlands New Zealand Norway Poland Portugal Slovakia South Africa Spain Sweden So it really Switzerland the Netherlands are USA and it's uh, quite interesting how another one there we go screwed it up with MN What? See I assume that's un us they haven't even put in their country in there. so I've got to go sort that out, manually, figure out where they're from and stuff like that. So really, you know there there is.

Uh, even though you've got all this data in a usable format, you really still have to go in and uh, tweak this sort of stuff. And it's interesting how some people put USA with dots and then some people put United Kingdom C because this is the problem that possible. um, have that country as a text field so not everyone see it. would have been better to have a dropdown box and then a proper uh text.

You know, proper text so that everyone has exactly the same uh, you know spelling. So if I wanted to sort these into the United States for example, some people have got United States United States of America America USA US USA USA with dots. all that sort of jazz. so you know, really, that's an issue.

If possible somebody in the UK is mixed up. West Yorkshire is not a country there you go in the United Kingdom in leads. So yeah, few things I got to fix up. So this thing isn't as automated as you might think.

even though you get the Uh data in a very usable format like this and I really needed a more efficient way to uh, count out the number of five here. So um, you know I I could do it by eye, but I'm probably eventually going to get a mistake and it's a bit tiring. so I thought I'd uh, just find something I found this uh uh, aluminium uh bar here which just happens to be the same thickness as these fires. So I can just go boom like that.

and I've got myself five rulers easy and if I was doing like the full order of 10,000 of these or more, of course, I would optimize this a bit more cuz then you wouldn't have to slide this across and then move these ones out and you know stuff like that. So I'd probably build some sort of, uh, little rig that just sort of held them all vertically like that, perhaps and then just had a little slot and I just you know, pushed them across and then five just fell out and maybe I could you know automate the tape in something like that? You know there's lots of little jigs you can come up with to, uh, help yourself, just automate these, uh, mundane tasks. but I don't have that many. so this is fine, and it really doesn't take long at all before you can just feel instinctively feeling your hand that there's five rulers there.

Four feels obviously too small and six feels obviously too many. Just P becomes instinctive. like you know, 5 10 minutes easy and almost done on the uh, five ruler lot. and that's taken me, uh, just on or just under I Think an hour to sort those rulers out.

So there you go. It should be less time again for the two rulers, or slightly less. uh, limited number. but that's maybe.

um, you know, maybe an hours, hour and a half. Definitely under 2 hours all up to tape those rulers. all 1,200 of them. And now we have the envelopes.

I Think it's probably more efficient to uh, label and stamp the envelopes uh, first, before we actually insert the ruler. So do it in a batch process. So this is where these little uh, peel off stamps come in handy Wham like that and then you can just peel off the sticker Wham and we're done. Well, that's 177 addressed and stamped envelopes and I haven't even put my return address on the back if I wanted to and that took Uh 41 actually 40 minutes cuz I sent a photo tweet in in the middle of that.

So uh, there you go. That works out to about a 13.5 seconds per envelope and what's left over? Well, there it is. and there you have it. That's actually not that bad at all.

although it is a fair bit of manual dexterity work to stuff those envelopes. it only took 19 minutes to stuff 177 of those. so that's an average of around about 6.4 seconds per envelope. and no, I didn't get any paper cuts Beauty And there you have it.

We have a tub of 177 letters times, five rulers in each one of course I've still got to do the 70 six or so, uh, times two ruler orders. so I won't bore you with all those details. but there you go. That wasn't uh, too painful at all.

that's you know. certainly less than a day's work to uh uh, you know, pack, ship, label stamp, um, tape. do everything for a couple of hundred orders. but I am glad this is like one tenth of the number of total orders I've got.

so I certainly wouldn't want to, uh, you know, spend another uh, you know, six or seven days. it'll probably take um, you know, a good working week to to uh, pack and send the 2300 envelopes I think if I just did it on my own. um, and yeah, it would not be pleasant at all. but at least I uh, personally packed and shipped the Australian ones and that was rather satisfying.

Actually rather enjoyed that. So anyway, that's the video and I hope all the backers enjoy their rulers. catch you next time and.