Pre-Order Update: September 2025

This update, directly from founder, Jean Simonet, has been adapted from the communication shared with our Kickstarter Backers and contains transparent, detailed information about Pixels production. Some details may have been adjusted to focus on Pre-order info vs Backer Rewards. These updates are published at the end of each month and will continue to be re-published on the Pixels Blog with information relevant to Pre-order customers.

I know you can’t believe it: the September update is here a full day early! Unfortunately, that’s because there is not much for me to report on this month.

As we’ve been doing for the last few month, we’re continuing to hold on to our stock of dice, hoping for the US tariff situation to get resolved, all-the-while preparing ourselves for the alternative, which is importing the dice, chargers and packaging separately into the us, packaging the remaining rewards here and shipping them out domestically. For reference, the first half of rewards (which were shipped in waves last year and this year) departed directly from Hong Kong, but doing things this way will save us a significant amount in tariffs and shipping (…and apparently tariffs on shipping, isn’t that ridiculous?)

The optimizations and improvements I hinted at last month are going great. In fact I can’t wait to share more about what we’re doing and what that means for backer rewards and future Pixels, but I won’t quite yet. Backer rewards is what I spend every day worrying about and I know that many of you are as tired as me, and really just want to be updated when shipments are going out.

• The new casting process we’ve been working is mostly relevant to future production runs so it feels a little tone-deaf to share too much about right now. Just know that it specifically affects the opaque colorways (like MG and OB) and it addresses the cosmetic issues of those dice.
• The Sets charging case updates are really neat, and in my opinion, improve the current design and functionality. I’ll be talking about these more as we get closer to ship.
• The packaging updates are not that exciting and have to do with being able to ship the packaging separately to the US in a flat-pack so we don’t waste a ton of freight volume on empty boxes. Thrilling, I know…

Anyway, right now I am scheduled to go back to China at the beginning of November, again in order to try and speed up some of the processes. So the October update will most likely be short as well. Please don’t read anything into that. I just feel that at this point it’s “put-up or shut-up”. Me sending more updates filled with the latest complications we’ve experienced, the steps we’ve had to take to compensate or the optimizations we’ve found along the way just ends up sounding like excuses. I don’t want that. Please just know that things are moving, they’re just not crossing oceans yet.

I will be doing deep dives into all those details once we’re through, you can be sure of it. This manufacturing/engineering stuff is absolutely fascinating to talk about and share. However, until the time is right, I am going to keep the updates short.

More soon,

Jean