News: Price Increase, $6 shipping here to stay

Happy New Year!!
I'm back from #coasterbreak, and so is our manufacturer. I went on a wonderful trip to New Zealand to visit with friends and family, and our manufacturer went through some big changes over the same period. Big thanks to everyone for being patient over the last couple of weeks. Now that everything is settling down on the production front, we'll be back to normal coaster turn around times this week.

Price Increase
There are lots of new things in store for 2015, and the first thing is a price increase. The big changes I mentioned with our manufacturer unfortunately mean that they've had to raise their prices for the first time since Coastermatic started. Working with a USA based manufacturer is something that's really important to Coastermatic's vision, and the fact that they make coasters of an exceptional quality means we'll be working with them as we move into the future. 

So what does this mean for you? It means Coastermatic sets will rise from $25 to $28 on Feb 1, 2015. We'll also be updating our wholesale pricing. If you'd like to learn more about wholesale, just drop me a line, [email protected].

$6 Shipping
No one likes to pay for shipping, its a fact of life, but our coasters are fairly heavy, since they're ceramic and not plastic. To try and make peace with this, over the holiday period we trialled $6 flat rate shipping for all US orders. It's as close to free as we can go, and it also simplifies the process for you. No matter how many sets of coasters you buy, we shipped them all to you for $6, easy.

The trail went really well, so $6 shipping is here to stay. Go test it out by ordering 2 sets ;).

Other New Things
I'm excited about 2015 and all of the improvements we'll get to work on over the next 12 months. One of the biggest things to start chipping away at is adding drag and drop to the website. I know a few of you have done some odd hacks to get around posting things to your Instagram account, and it's much appreciated! By summer time though, that'll all be in the past.

Be sure to check the blog for updates on all the various things I'll be working on. 

Coasterstory Update

After a topsy turvy year, I’m back as the full time Chief Coaster Officer. It’s been about 6 weeks since the switch and it’s FANTASTIC. Thanks to everyone who’s commented/liked my posts on Instagram on Facebook, it’s fun to be back.

As some of you know, Coastermatic started as a grad school project I put together with Tom Harman. We had a lot of fun working together in early days, Jeffrey Zeldman even interviewed us.

A lot has happened in the couple of years since. Last year, Tom left to pursue a different set of challenges, and is now doing work that he loves with Project Florida in New York. I continued to work on Coastermatic from Hawaii, then moved to SF for love. It was a crazy time, and since then I’ve had to decide what to do with Coastermatic: Do I make it my full time thing? A hobby? Do I stop entirely?

Not knowing which road to chose, I tried all of them. Last holiday season I started to rebrand and redesign the site, while also putting together Coastermatic Collections. All of which was far too much for 1 person to pull off. Burnt out and at the end of my financial reserves, Coastermatic went on auto-pilot for most of 2014. During that time, I gave a talk on conversational frameworks, and worked with The Feast on a tool to bring together members of their community online. It was great to have a break from Coastermatic to explore new ideas, working environments and challenges.

Through it all, I realized that Coastermatic is the project I want to work on more than anything else. It’s fun and fulfilling. I can directly see the results of everything I do - I’m responsible for when things go badly, and when they go well. I love making something that helps people keep their favorite memories & ideas close and I love the opportunity that it gives me to connect with and work with others. It’s entirely different than any other job I’ve had.

Now, I get to spend every day working to make Coastermatic a little more awesome.

Big projects I'm working on are:

  • A new website!!
  • Holiday season ideas
  • Putting new energy into the newsletter, blog, FB, and IG streams up and running

While Coastermatic is largely a solo endeavor, it’s not without the support of many others. David Bellona and my parents have offered unconditional support since the beginning. Over the summer, Sarah Illingworth resuscitated the blog, Jessa Clark did the same for the Instagram feed, and Leia Sefkin made life a lot easier with some new order processing codez. There’s also no way I’d be here with out the Successcalators, or my coaches Patrice Perillo and Charlie Gilkey


#coasterthanks to everyone!

x t