We received a status update from our manufacturer in Shenzhen, and China is in effect back under quarantine due to the new variants of Covid-19 cropping up. Travel– and business operations– within the city have slowed due to 48-hour testing requirements anywhere you go, so even something simple like going from Point A to Point B within the city to get raw materials, to ship, anything at all, what used to take 1 day now takes 3 days. If you want to travel within the country, or travel between Shenzhen and Hong Kong, there’s a 14-day quarantine, making business travel next to impossible.

An example of how this applies to the production process resulting in delays: the gilding applied to the cards is done outside their office location, in a different neighborhood. Now, due to the travel restrictions and 48-hour testing requirements, anything at all that took one afternoon to complete now takes 3 days minimum.

We had hoped that the actual production of the decks would be completed by early July, and then the 40 to 45 day shipping time would mean receipt of the containers at our front door by mid-August. However, with the new quarantine regulations in effect in Shenzhen, the projected date we got from the manufacturer for production completion is now the last week of July, which pushes everything back by two to three weeks.

In the meantime, I wanted to share with you some insights I learned about the deck printing and manufacturing process.

Continue reading “SKT Status Update & the Cards Printing Process” →