Hey everyone,
Today, we come to you with some unfortunate news. Earlier this week, one of our main bagmakers—responsible for a majority of the W?ldcard Custom Rainmaker bags—was injured in an incredibly unfortunate accident.
While heading home, she fell down the escalator of the Kajang MRT station, resulting in a broken wrist, deep cuts around her face and head, among other injuries. The good news is that the doctors have informed us that her condition is stable, however her wrist may require surgery.
Nobody could have foreseen such an accident, but we are all glad that the injuries do not appear to be life threatening. We will continue to monitor her health and wellbeing and we wish her a speedy recovery.
That being said, we now have to deliver some bad news to you, our customers. We will go into detail our thought process and why we are making the decisions we have made, but the gist of it is this:
All W?ldcard Custom Rainmaker orders that are currently being processed will be delayed. How long? We don’t know yet, but we will keep you updated as soon as we have a clearer picture.
We will be DISCONTINUING the Rainmaker effective immediately.
WHY ARE W?LDCARD CUSTOM RAINMAKERS AFFECTED?
As we mentioned earlier, our injured bagmaker is responsible for a large majority of the W?ldcard Custom Rainmaker builds that we produce. Our bags are all handmade from our micro workshop in Kajang, and only a small handful of craftspeople have the skills and experience to handle W?ldcard Custom builds.
That means that it’s not as simple as just handing it off to someone else, or promoting someone less experienced, and we’re back to our usual production output. This process will take time as the ability to build our bespoke bags can’t be picked up overnight.
We've been hiring since the start of 2023 but these new recruits are still early in their training. They’re not ready to take on complicated builds just yet. On average each recruit goes through 3 levels of training before they possess the needed experience to take on custom builds—a process that usually takes at least 2 years.
Luckily, we have some incredibly skilled people in our team working on other product lines. And we have already begun the process of spreading the load to our other experienced craftspeople so production of existing W?ldcard Custom Rainmakers won’t grind to a complete halt. In fact, if your order is the next one in line, you could see your bag ready sometime in the next week or so.
However, delays are absolutely unavoidable because at the end of the day, our team is down one person. We understand that this can be frustrating to hear that you will have to wait even longer, especially if you’ve already ordered your bag some time ago.
That’s why, in light of these circumstances, we will be offering customers who do not want to or are unable to wait, the opportunity to cancel their W?ldcard Custom Rainmaker order and receive a full refund. If you do choose to go down the refund route though, we’d like to make one appeal to you to reconsider.
We’re a very small outfit with no external financial support, which means we have to be very careful with our cashflow each month to ensure materials can be bought and wages can be paid. The W?ldcard Custom Rainmaker represents about 30%-40% of our revenue, which means if every order was cancelled, we will really feel it.
With that in mind, we will still honour every cancellation and refund request, and will hold nothing against those who do decide to cancel. All we’re asking is that if you can afford to wait, please wait. You will get your bag eventually.
MOVING FORWARD WITH THE RAINMAKER
Although things are looking rough now, we have to look forward as a company and try to find the silver linings where we can. The Rainmaker in its current form has been in production for over 7 years now. It is our best-seller, and has become probably the most iconic product in the lineup.
But, there’s no denying that its design comes from a bygone era. A time where we didn’t know any of the modern techniques and building methods that we do now. And if you want evidence of that, simply compare it to our newest backpack, the Northseeker.
The Rainmaker is simply far too complicated for its own good, especially to produce. That is one of the main reasons why only a small handful of our craftspeople can make the Rainmaker, and an even smaller subset for the W?ldcard Custom builds.
That means that the Rainmaker was due for an update, and has been for a while now. We were hesitant to pull the trigger on it because it was such a big part of our revenue generator. But now with what has happened, it’s a sign that things have to change.
We will be discontinuing the Rainmaker effective immediately, but the good news is that we have already begun work on developing the next-generation Rainmaker.
However, this is not going to be a quick process–nor should it. We want to make sure that the next-gen Rainmaker brings meaningful updates to the way you carry all your hopes and dreams. We want to make sure that the new design improves upon the old from both a consumer and production standpoint, without compromising any of our quality standards.
We want to make sure we do it right. And that is going to take time.
Our earliest projections place the launch of the next-gen Rainmaker sometime in early 2025, with W?ldcard Custom options available a couple of months after that.
Because we’re going to continue to fulfil the remaining Rainmaker orders, these bags will be the final batch that we produce before the update. And these will be the final chances for anyone to own this generation of Rainmaker before it is completely replaced.
THANK YOU FOR YOUR CONTINUED SUPPORT
2024 is shaping up to be an incredibly challenging year for us. But, we’re hopeful, and that is all thanks to your continued support. We wouldn’t be here without each and every one of you believing in our vision to build better carry gear, and to build it right here in Malaysia. That’s why we believe in being as transparent as we can, and hope for your understanding when it comes to situations like these.
Thank you again.