First and foremost, this Disney Villains drop is exciting on so many levels!
Personally, I have been waiting a long time to get my claws on an epic Scar design, and from a business standpoint I still can't believe we are an official partner of Disney...we've come a long way since the days of working out of our living room on Manila Ave. in Jersey City.
We've heard the growing frustrations about product availability, fast sell out, app glitches, the secondary market, and more loud and clear. Believe me, we're working diligently on all this as fast as possible.
As we continue to grow and evolve alongside our various customer bases and our growing roster of officially licensed partners, and because Disney Villains is such a beloved property by so many different fans, we're going to spice things up a tad by trying something new with today's launch.
Our goal is to ensure everyone can get their favorite Disney Villains shirt without the stress given only by a Sea Witch taking your voice, Scar tossing you off a cliff, Jafar stealing your throne, and/or logging on to RSVLTS to see these newest, coolest, shirt is now sold-out.
So with that said, we're going to try a preorder experiment that opens today at drop and ends Thursday, Sep 30, 2021 at 12:00PM ET.
In the interest of being as transparent as possible, I am going break down everything a bit further below so you can get a grasp of what we're trying to accomplish, how it will all happen and all that good stuff.
Note this preorder process takes some work to connect all the various mechanisms, so we can't do it for every launch right away, but this could be a natural next step for RSVLTS.
Here's how it's going to go down:
When the launch goes live (going live 3:55 PM on RSVLTS App as all the Insiders have come to learn; there's sometimes a cache lag, cuz technology... working on it), we'll have about 30% more inventory than a typical drop in stock...so some who are quick on the check-out draw will have their orders shipped as usual, but when (and if) we sell through the initial batch of inventory we will continue taking preorders that will ship on or before November 20, 2021. Hopefully much sooner than that, but we want to bake in extra time to manage expectations.
So, why are we trying this today? Glad you asked...
• To provide more shirt options! Included in today's Disney Villains collection preorder will be our standard KUNUFLEX cuts and our new Women's 2.0 KUNUFLEX cut. We didn't initially plan to have the Women's 2.0 cut for this launch, but because of the positive response we had from many, we wanted to make sure these designs would be available in the 2.0 cut (for this launch in particular).
• Better experience next time! Preordering our most popular licenses could open the door to future preorder options, which will give everyone a stress-free way to get the styles you want.
• Yes, stress free! Doing this preorder will allow you to lock in your Disney Villains shirt without having to worry about securing it in the future, either from BST, the resale market, or when limited inventory is released to some of our retail partners next month. Yes, Disney items are a hot commodity across the board.
• This is just a test! Preorder will allow us to test this idea and figure out how to speed up the logistics of future preorders, work out kinks. One day I believe we can get the preorder window down to 3-4 weeks.
What are concerns we've considered?
• 6-8 weeks could be a long time. As Tom Petty has told us many times, "The waiting is the hardest part." We know this timeframe will affect some, but at least the option to lock in Disney Villains will be possible.
• Sometimes the messaging is lost. People are so excited to order they don't realize it's a preorder, no matter how many buttons and underlined words we put on the page, so we're trying to be transparent in advance.
• Shipping sometimes sucks. Logistics delays may push our expected delivery date. This isn't likely, but always a possibility and something we really had to map out but we feel very confident in the projected date.
• You might get this somewhere else. As with many of our drops, some of our retail partners are receiving limited quantities of this shirt in a few weeks. We know people might want to take their chance there instead of doing the preorder. Totally encouraged and that is the point of Shop Local. However, this is a great way to lock in your purchase in advance and know you have what you want!
• This is just a test! This process takes a ton of work. Preorders are highly manual from our end, with many moving parts and a fair amount of risk. We're running this test to find out if we want to move forward with this process and how to make it better each time.
One big questions we know Pete will get after launch is, "how do I know if I got a standard order or preorder?" Orders ship on a first come first serve basis. If you don't get a shipping confirmation from us within 5-7 days, assume you have a preorder item. We'll try to build some tech for our email confirmations that offers more clarity if we try this again in the future, but we don't have that ability just yet so please bare with us.
Since day one at RSVLTS, we've dedicated ourselves to one simple motto: DARE MIGHTY THINGS.
We've heard you all loud and clear about launch day stresses. In the spirit of evolution, we're giving this a shot, and hope it works and opens doors for future launch options!
As always, we appreciate your feedback and ideas on making this process more straightforward and more reliable in the future. Because after-all, “The RSVLTS are the coolest shirts in town, that makes them the best! And don’t I deserve the best?” –Gaston, Beauty and the Beast, (maybe)
Now...onto the LOOKBOOK, which also features a guest appearance from RSVLTS family and Disney super fan, Noelle Foley (note: she is wearing XS unisex KUNUFLEX, these photos were taken before we got any women's 2.0 cut samples)!
This is one of the most fun designs that we're worked on in a while. Everyone loves a villain!
