Hi hi, I'm sorry if this is a weird ask but I'm very curious as to what manufacturer you use for your merch? Specifically, the keychains and standees
All of the items I've bought from you have been very good quality and I'm looking to make some of my own but have no idea where to start
hi! it's junocharms on twitter, I've also had some stuff from vograce here and there but it seems I always run into trouble of sorts with them lol so ye I mostly work with the first one
there are a lot of places doing charms, stands etc tbh, you can even browse on alibaba and try out different places! u basically contact whichever manufacturer you want with what you want to order and they'll give you a quotation, once you confirm that, you send them your files and proceed with the order
for the charms it's something like: which quantity you want, which size (mine are 2.5"), clear or glitter epoxy etc, you'll usually want double sided image so the back of the charm isn't blank, and double acrylic board (which means both sides of the charm have acrylic encasing the image)
(if it's a charm used as display u can get away with just one acrylic board but the back might get scratched doing normal use instead, so I always get double board just in case, for the stands I do single board/single image though since they are for display and only meant to be viewed from one angle haha)
good luck! 👍
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Hi! ;v; May I please ask, how did you make your Vograce standees? I want to make one with my OCs but I have no idea how I’m supposed to measure the millimeters... or how to submit the artwork, like if it’s all just on one file? or if I have to submit the base design separately from the upright designs? I tried reading through their instructions and I didn’t understand, and when I reached to them for help I didn’t get a response for a month, so I’m kind of at a complete loss and would appreciate any tips you might have. Thank you for reading!
Hello anon!
As of right now I cannot reach my file and tell you exactly what I did, but in general what I essentially did was put the drawing and the design for the base in one file and then added suggestions for cutting lines on a seperate layer.
If you have more than one upright design, it seems that only one file has to have the base included and when ordering, you essentially have to order 2 standess, just with one having the meassurements for the base at 0.
As for the millimeters, you can usually change your sizes in your art progam to millimeters. If you want to know how big that is irl, Id suggest just using google to convert your meassurements into millimeters.
I saw youtube video that goes over the process in a relatively good way:
I do hope this helped you out a bit. Normally, if your stuff doesn't work out, someone from vograce will contact you and check with you anyways.
Also, lastly, just a small tip, be sure to check your CMYK values as well, cos boy oh howdy, I forgot bout it and lost a looot of colour haha
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Hi I hope it's okay if I ask, how do you make your standees? ;w; I just want to make one standee for myself of my OCs, but I get totally lost when it comes to sending/laying out the actual files to the manufacturer. Do I put the base design + upright designs all on one single file? Or do I make one file for the base, one for the upright, etc. and label them as such and then submit one at a time? Do you recommend any specific manufacturers? Thank you for reading!
Hi!
It’s totally fine to ask! I’m happy to share. :)
The manufacturer I used for my standees was Zap Creatives. They’re great with communication, and I’ve been very satisfied with their product’s print quality. They have options as well for small orders of 1 unit and 10 units.
Vograce is an alternative, but I haven’t tried them and so can’t personally vouch for their print quality. Depending on how many units you order and where you live re: shipping fees (Zap is in the UK, though offers free shipping for orders large enough. Vograce is in China), you may want to weigh options.
So! Here's how I make standees with Zap:
1. Go to the website , pick a standee size, find the "Artwork Setup" tab, and download the templates they have in your preferred format. There should be one template document for the uprights and one for the base. The size I chose for mine was 90mm x 125mm:
2. Paint your uprights. With the template’s dimensions, plan what goes where. In a separate document (preferably) larger than the template and no less than 300dpi, make the artwork. Keep the edges of your shapes as clean as possible, so they will cut crisply and not show the white layer beneath when they’re printed.
3. When the uprights are done, place them in the template doc. Place the tabs on each one. All of the uprights go in the same doc, on separate artwork layers.
4. Once you’ve decided where the uprights will go, make the shape of the base in the base document and place the tab holes for your uprights accordingly. Paint the base art with the uprights’ placements in mind.
5. Prepare both your template documents. Use the instructions they have in the Artwork Setup page on the website. Make your shapes for the white backing and acrylic cut lines on each piece. Don’t forget to flip all your shapes in the documents or they will be printed backward.
6. Send in the docs with your order.
I hope that's helpful!👌
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Excuse me for a bit, but I’m going to word-vomit here.
If you follow me on YouTube, I had previously made two Vograce review videos. I was set to make an update after my second one because there were some issues with my orders that I was working with customer service to fix.
Long story short, I have decided not to accept the resolutions they offered me. Ultimately, the biggest thing I lost, out of this whole situation, was my time. For anyone who is interested in reading about what happened or if there is any artist who is still debating what manufacturer to order from, buckle in because we're going for a loooong ride. I'm going to touch on details that I didn't cover in my review, mainly how this began and my experience with their service afterward.
First things first, Vograce reached out to me asking me to review their products. They offered three different options for compensation:
$150 coupon to use on their site
$70 coupon + $50 cash
$70 cash
I picked the second option because I was interested in checking out their stuff and the $50 cash was nice because I knew that the shipping cost was going to bite me in the ass. They sent me a list of things I was required to mention in the review video, which all seemed harmless enough. I've had another company reach out to me before and their demands were much shadier, so Vograce seemed legit to me.
Since I didn't have any designs to order at the moment, they shipped me a sample pack to review. I had to order the sample pack, which was $9.90 and the shipping cost was a whopping $20.18. I was refunded this cost. The products in the sample pack were genuinely very nice and my review reflected my honest opinions about them. Because of that, I was excited to place my first order using the compensation they sent me.
Order #1 January 21, 2022
6x 5 acrylic charm designs with no special coating
6x 1 acrylic charm design with star holographic on both sides
3x A6 spiral notebooks
3x A6 leatherette notebooks
Cost: $90.45
Shipping: $41.21
Total: $131.66
Out of pocket cost: ~$15
Since they liked my first review, they came back and asked me to do another review based on the order I put in. This time, I opted for the $150 coupon because there were some other things I wanted to check out.
Order #2 February 20, 2022
3x acrylic standees
10x 15mm washi tape
10x 30mm washi tape
100x 7cm heart memo pads
Cost: $156.57
Shipping: $51.17
Total: $207.74
Out of pocket cost: $57.74
Grand total spent: ~$73
I received my first order on March 21, 2022, so it took about two months. I gave them some leeway because Lunar New Year was within that time so they were on holiday. I let them know that I received the package and asked if my second one was coming any time soon because if it was, I could wait for it and review those items as well, even though I didn't have to. I just really wanted the review to be useful to fellow artists. My second order arrived on March 31, 2022.
At this point, I finally took the time to unpack and check everything. What I received was:
6x holographic acrylic charms
35x standard acrylic charms (7 each of the 5 designs)
3x A6 spiral notebooks
3x A6 leatherette notebooks
3x acrylic standees
11x 15mm washi tape
8x 30mm washi tape
50x sticky notepads
I'm not going to go into detail over what was wrong since I spent a ton of time doing so in my review video here. But basically, the notebooks were poor quality, dots printed only on one side of the page, the page count was wrong, I receive 50 sticky notepads instead of 100 memo pads, 8 instead of 10 of the 30mm washi tape, etc.
(Also, if anyone who is knowledgeable about shipping costs from China could confirm with me if these shipping costs were legitimate or not, that would be great! I had been suspicious of them overcharging on shipping to boost their profits, but since I don't have any actual knowledge on that, I won't say for sure.)
I spent about two days gathering my thoughts, images, videos, and screenshots and then made the review video. I reached out to Vograce and told them that I posted the review and that there were several issues with my order. As to why I made the review before contacting them, I felt that it would be a better reflection of what you could expect when receiving your order (in this case, a lot of errors). I also did not want to be coerced into not making a less-than-stellar review.
They apologized for the mistakes and then asked me to delete the review. Apparently, they didn’t like how critical it was despite the fact that I tried to be understanding about everything and was told by friends that my review was TOO nice. The way it was worded screamed 'scummy' to me. "Could you delete the video, first?" As if them fixing the order would be dependent on me deleting the video.
I replied back and said that I wouldn’t delete my review. I may have been compensated but I’m still going to be honest. And let's be real, my time is worth a lot more than what they sent me, considering how much time I spent working on the videos. I told them that I trusted they would allow me to be honest and that if I deleted it, it would be very clear that they’re only out to buy positive reviews.
They backtracked, of course, and told me that they prefer honesty as well and that they simply wanted me to add on to the review after they fixed any issues because they pride themselves on their customer service. To which I told them that I mentioned in my review that I would give an update. I even stated that I had faith that they would fix it. So they had no excuse to tell me to delete it.
Anywho, we get past this and try to work on resolving my order. I pointed out all the issues they had: wrong info on their website, wrong templates provided, broken pages, etc. Let me tell you, my husband was not pleased whatsoever about this because normally companies PAID people to do what I did (finding errors, etc.) and I was doing it for them for FREE. He was even more so irritated because he is certain I got ripped off on shipping (since his line of work has him knowledgable about the Asia and Pacific regions). But whatever, you know. I really just wanted there to be a decent company out there that we artists could buy reasonably priced custom merch from, and if Vograce could fix these things, that’d be great.
So we went back and forth and my god was this painful. There are obviously several people that handle correspondence, which isn’t inherently a problem, but the thing here was that there was no communication between them and they didn’t bother going through the backlog to get an understanding of the problem. Some of them also aren't as good with English as others. I had to repeat myself several times. All I simply wanted was replacement products but for some reason, it felt like I was pulling teeth.
For example, they were utterly confused about the memo pads. I was questioned about shape and design several times. I used their template. I sent the design. What is there to be confused about?
For the spiral notebooks, where the image was stretched, they supposedly fixed their template and told me to send in the design using the new template. But when I looked at it, it still did not look like the right sized template for printing an A6 book. I measured the book, I got measurements for everything, and got back to them but they were still adamant that they were right so I went “You know what? Forget the notebooks. We clearly aren’t going to agree on this so I don’t want them.” They offered a $5 coupon to cover it:
Fast forward almost a month later. Honestly, I was pretty pissed. “How are you these days?” I was expecting my replacement order to be delivered by now only for them to be like “Oh, turns out we actually can’t make it.”
I replied and asked if there was a reason why they couldn’t be made. I didn’t pick a custom design. AGAIN I picked the heart which is one of the standard designs. And the listing was still on their website. The reply:
I was screaming at this point, really. Never have I ever worked with a supposed professional company that was this incompetent. I didn't bother responding to this and just left it. This morning when I checked my phone, "Rachel" had gotten back to me:
I was just so done at this point because I knew that getting the items I wanted was no longer an option and I didn't want to buy from them anymore after this experience so a coupon was worthless, not to mention I'd have to put even more money out to cover shipping.
This was the reply that I sent before blocking them:
I believe that it will be best for us to end this collaboration here. I do not want the sticky notes or the coupon, as I am no longer comfortable with ordering from this business.
I have to say that I am disappointed with this experience. I really wanted to like this company. There is a level of irresponsibility and unprofessionalism within this business that I find unacceptable—lack of quality checking, mistakes on the website, poor communication amongst the team, offering products that aren't available, etc.
I'm not impressed with the blame towards the factory. A responsible business would put in the effort to find out what their manufacturer is capable of and would ensure this by getting samples of what can be made as well as ensuring the quality of said items. Instead, what we have here is a business that makes assumptions of what they can sell and advertises them for sale without knowing if the item can even be made or is of good quality.
Personally, I feel that it would be best for you to stick to the acrylic charms until you can reorganize and ensure that you can manage selling the other products. My statement from my review still stands: I can recommend this company for acrylic products and charms, but not for the other products.
I wish this company good luck in improving for the future.
I'm just so disappointed because I really really did like their charms (the clasps!) But because I happened to try out the other products, I inadvertently found out just how poorly this business is run.
I know many artists have had very pleasant experiences with Vograce and I totally get that. I had very pleasant experiences with them too, where the acrylic products are concerned. I don't want to deter people from writing this business off altogether because they did try to resolve my issues. It's just that it wasn't something that could be solved. But for me personally, I don't think I will buy from them again. If they do manage to get their act together after all of this, then that will be great for them. But the way they push responsibility onto others (their factory, the customers) just rubs me the wrong way.
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