Hi everyone! I hope everyone is in good health and high spirits. I just came home from visiting my homeland after 3.5 years and I'm back and pumped to make a few announcements! Let's summarise them for easy reference:
- Website Renewal
- New Product Pricing
- New Shipping Rates
- Additional Payment Options
- Alice in Wonderland Club #2 Pre-orders
Website Renewal
First of all, welcome to the brand new ITOBITO website! This is still a soft launch as we continue to tweak the website until we fully launch it in June. We finally made the decision to move our website to Shopify after a few scary glitches from the previous provider’s system such as, selling over the inventory amount. I cannot guarantee that it won’t happen here but I have heard good reviews about Shopify and even though it’s a little more pricier than previous, I decided to make the jump.
Due to privacy issue, I am not able to import your login passwords so you’ll have to re-register again. If you use the email that you registered previously, your address and phone details should still be there, please check to see if they are correct. As we have trouble contacting people who uses mobile email, please use a non-mobile email if possible, eg: gmail, yahoo, etc. Also, you will not be able to see your previous purchase records as this is a totally different system. If you would like to check your previous purchase records, please visit the old website here. This website will be running until the end of June.
New Product Pricing
Now for the more dreadful news...yes we are increasing our prices. There are a few reasons why we have been trying to keep the prices low but due the sharp depreciation of yen recently and the constant increase of shipping, I have to make the necessary adjustments. The increase is about ￥50〜￥150 per skein. These prices are pegged with a few dyers’ pricing to make sure that we stay within the market prices. While this is an unfortunate news, I hope for your understanding.
New Shipping Rates
On a brighter news, we acquired term contract with courier companies so that we can introduce lower shipping rates. I have grouped these courier services together and will choose which will be more convenient for us to use at that point of time. Basically, purchases of 6 skeins and below will be charged a flat rate of ￥580 for courier delivery. Of course we still maintain the economical charges of ￥300-350 for 2 skeins and below for standard mail delivery.
For International deliveries, we have extended Yamato International TA-Q-BIN to our Asian customers. As of May, there are no changes to EMS or Yamato charges but EMS will cost significantly higher from June 2022 onwards. Therefore, we may not be using EMS in the future. Please see this table for reference. We are still unable to post to most European countries, Canada and Australia.
Additional Payment Options
As for payment options, we are now able to offer a few new options. We used to only offer Paypal payments but now we are also accepting payments from convenient stores and bank transfer. On top of that, as an alternative payment to those who need assistance in cash flow, we are introducing BNPL system with Paidy. We hope by implementing these new payment systems, they will provide a more convenient shopping experience for you.
Alice in Wonderland Club #2 Pre-orders
Next, we are opening up for club preorders! Alice in Wonderland themed 2nd club preorders starts 22 May (Sun) 9pm until the end of 23 May. As usual, please allow 3-4 weeks of production time. In this installment, we are offering the same base options as the previous.
Please note again that this is a soft launch of the new website and we are continuously updating it. Please let us know of any issues you have during this time and we will do our best to solve it!
Have a great week ahead!
