Tulip Bag Preorder
Intro
It’s finally here! Thank you so much for sticking around to see the fruits of our labour. It’s the biggest thing we’ve ever done!
Literally. It’s literally the biggest product we’ve ever made. It’s also super cute but we have some important things to talk about regarding this sweet little big thing.
Features
Our first—and probably not last—bucket bag. The Tulip Bag is 10” in diameter and up to 11” tall with the drawstrings relaxed which gives you room to spare even if you want a long item to hang out of it. It’s honestly huge—if you feel so inclined, speak into it and you might hear an echo (seriously, we tried).
The drawstring opening is easy to open and close with the gold hardware and provides a malleable closure. A fabric drawstring is threaded through 12 grommets at the top of the closure to help it gather in a way that looks like flower petals.
Included in the bag are three olive green straps, two of which can be used to turn the bag into a backpack, and the other, longer strap can be used to turn it into a cross-body bag.
The exterior is made of a soft, cruelty free leather alternative (polyurethane—more info on that below) and is dual-paneled for durability.
The bottom of each “petal” is slightly embossed to make it look just a little more like the petals of a flower.
Check out our “What’s in the Bag” reel on Instagram to get an idea of how you can use the Tulip Bag on the day to day.
Disclaimer: Real gold was not used to make any of the variants of this product. Any use of the word “gold” is in reference to the gold metalized steel used for the Tulip Bag’s hardware. Gold metalizing is a process that changes the colour of non-gold metals to look like gold.
Timeline
Ah preorders... you love to love them and hate to hate them. They’re great: you get to support a product you believe in, secure an order before they sell out, aaand wait for six months. 😰
Our manufacturer has given us as accurate an estimate as possible based on our projected quantities. To buy the material, manufacture the items, and ship them to us by boat, they have estimated that the project will take six months. A friendly reminder that this is an estimate and is subject to change with supply chain readiness, order quantities greater (or less) than our expectations, and force majeure. It’s a long process and we know how hard it is to wait, especially when our previous preorder is still yet to ship. So let’s talk about that!
Stargazer sweaters have landed in Canada and are still expected to start shipping by the end of April! You can read more about it in our Stargazer update post.
Why We Chose Vegan Leather (And What to Expect From Carmico in the Future)
We’ve received a few questions about our choice for vegan leather so we’ve included our answer here for any other curious cats.
Making leather and leather-like goods has few, widely accessible options: faux (polyurethane, vinyl, or silicone) or hide leather. There are some wonderful folks exploring sustainable leather technologies, but they aren't accessible for us quite yet. We chose the vegan leather option that was available to us as to not alienate our vegan audience and also to keep costs down.
Leather Alternative Technologies We’re Excited For
| Piñatex | Uses a previously unused part of pineapple trees to make a durable, waterproof leather alternative made entirely from plants. |
| Mushroom | Mycelium is grown as material is needed for the product and then harvested, processed, and formed. It’s biodegradable, sustainable, and evidence shows it’s stronger than leather but still maintains the leather look. |
| Leaf | Leaf Leather is made from sustainably harvested Teak leaves woven with fabric and sealed to preserve the organic beauty of nature. |
| Cactus | Nopal cactus leaves create a versatile material that is functionally and aesthetically similar to hide leather. |
As with any change—especially big change—it all takes time. Trust us when we say if we could have been using sustainable, vegan leather options from the very beginning, we would. We’re super excited to begin making products with these new materials and we hope you’re excited to see it all come to life.
Shipping cost increases
Ya hate to see it, and trust us when we say: we do too.
The team has been squirming for the past few days as we brainstormed ways to reduce shipping costs. The reality is that the tulip bags are just big and big things cost more to ship.
We’ve done everything we can to reduce the costs of shipping and will be absorbing some of the costs ourselves. Despite our efforts we know the shipping charge may still come as a shock to some. Because we haven’t shipped items like this before, we’ve also decided it’s safest for us not to offer a free shipping threshold for the preorder. We’re really sorry!
And so we rip off the Band-Aid...
Shipping charges for Tulip Bags to:
Canada and the US: $20
UK and Europe: $35
The Rest of the World: $60
We hope you understand that the nature of these shipping cost increases are not with malicious intent or out of greed. The bag is simply different than anything we’ve sold before; it’s total volume is three times the volume of the star bags!
Shipping Challenges to Addresses Outside of North America
We felt it was best to be transparent about a potential challenge regarding shipments outside of North America due to recent changes we’ve made to our supply chain. However, the challenge is purely operational and shouldn’t affect intercontinental customers too much; we’re just expecting a week or two of a delay for fulfillment once we receive the product (hopefully no biggy!)
For all of our lovely fans, you’re probably familiar with our old shipping service: ChitChats. We loved working with them but we’ve switched over to a local fulfillment center to handle fulfillment as our volumes increase. More information to come about this in a blog post in the coming weeks.
We have some things to sort out with international shipping from the new fulfillment center. Shipping internationally is incredibly expensive so we are looking into solutions to reduce costs. We have priced shipping based on our ChitChats rates under the assumption that we will use it again to fulfill intercontinental orders. This is for you, friends. 💖
International orders through ChitChats tend to use Asendia or APC Logistics. While slower, these services allow us to ship our products anywhere in the world at very reasonable rates. There’s nothing new about it, it’s the same service we’ve been using for the past year. The reason we bring it up is because we will likely manage fulfillment for intercontinental orders ourselves using ChitChats and their existing services. Around the time of fulfillment, orders to Canada and the US will ship first so that we can handle the remainder of the intercontinental shipments after.
The reason we’re doing this is because we want to keep costs low for our international customers. The new fulfillment center lowers costs for us in North America and also relieves some of the burden of what is essentially a distracting and unfocused proprietary fulfillment business, but it came with a price. We’re going to be working with our shipping partners and the fulfillment center to get a more affordable option for our intercontinental customers that doesn’t require circumventing the existing system and hopefully this will mean faster shipping times at reasonable rates all over the world. Stay tuned!
Final Words
As always, we want to say a huge thank you to all of our lovely customers and supporters. You let us do cool things for a living and we wouldn’t have it any other way. Thanks for sticking around and supporting the preorder. If you have any questions please contact us using the form at the bottom right of the page (yellow button that says "Contact Us") or email us directly at hello@carmico.ca.
— The CarmiCrew
