I missed the Spyro Reignited resin statue pre-order launch last week, but I’m back for… the final edition of the F4F Q&A as a weekly livestream?! Plot twist!! CEO Alex Davis and King Chockles will mark this shocking occasion by answering such momentous questions as:

WHY is the weekly Q&A going on hiatus and then not coming back as a weekly episodic series?

HOW fast did you have to validate to get a Spyro Reignited statue within the first 100 low numbers?

WHERE will First 4 Figures be appearing LIVE for conventions this month and throughout the fall?

WILL there still be Rewards Points given out now that the Weekly Q&As are ending?

Announcements and The Week in Review:

• If a product on the shipping calendar (such as Bowser) isn’t specified as the Exclusive or regular version shipping, Alex’s understanding is that it should be assumed to be both versions
• Ripto, Money Bags, Gnasty Gnorc, Sparx… what would classic Spyro fans like to see as a resin?
• Crystal Dragon’s wingtips were drooping after testing, so F4F thickened the wingtips, reprinted Crystal Dragon and are casting it again now
• You must open a ticket for Customer Service–CS does not go through E-Mail now and hasn’t for about a year
• Sonic & Tails diorama pre-orders still open until August 16th, but Chocks believes pre-orders will remain open as the statue isn’t on track yet to sell 1000 pieces
• There most likely won’t be a livestream next week because of Gamescom; going on a slight hiatus because of GamesCom for two weeks and then PAX West in Seattle at the end of the month
• Exclusive versions of Artorias Bust, Alphonse, Psycho Mantis, Mini Aku Aku Masks, Mario on Yoshi, Meta Ridley, Phoenix Wright and more are all up for order still
• They’ve hired a similar-looking woman to play Peggy for GamesCom this month (she’s under an NDA)
• After PAX, Chocks will return to Hong Kong around 9/4
• Busy working towards EGX and MGM in October
• This kind of busy convention schedule will become more and more the norm
• Q&As will be hard to maintain with all of these conventions happening, so the Q&As will be occuring primarily on launch dates for new statues from now on
• With Alex and Chocks going to bed at 3AM (separately), it’s difficult for them to get up on Saturday and live their lives; Alex generally spends 3-4 hours a day just on Facebook checking the club
• Alex wants to say “Thank you so much” to all who have joined for the weekly Q&A; would love to hear suggestions for what format they should work towards; will still do live launches instead of pre-recorded launches for now; feels as though the livestreams have become quantity rather than quality
• The recent issues with CS have led Alex to believe that he needs to get back to basics with the company
• Met with Phil, head of CS, this week and discussed the CS post Alex made in the club and what’s going to be happening to improve Customer Service; want to focus in and have a more fool-proof set of templates and guides for incoming CS representatives; Alex needs to laser-focus and monitor the teachings and the frameworks for CS
• Alex thinks he should be spending more hours in the factory, monitoring CS and fulfilling other duties and less hours hanging out in the club; he doesn’t even recognize some of the QC people now when he goes to China; needs to spend more time making sure that QC is up to snuff and less on Facebook
• Actions speak louder than words, and Alex is enjoying the challenge of dealing with this and working to manage things in a way that is sustainable
• Want to work toward validations being automated so that F4F doesn’t have to do these streams
• There will still be rewards points given out–they just won’t be as easy to grab anymore

Spyro Validation!:

• Spyro Reignited Resin Validation has now begun! You can still purchase Spyro Reignited between NOW and 11AM EST on Saturday August 10th 2019 to have your order auto-Validated and to receive the Signature Edition bonuses automatically
• How fast did you have to be to validate to be within a certain low number threshold?
• Sub-350: Validated within 1 Minute 9.2 Seconds
• Sub-300: Validated within 45.6 Seconds
• Sub-250: Validated within 39.6 Seconds
• Sub-200: Validated within 37.7 Seconds
• Sub-150: Validated within 36.0 Seconds
• Sub-100: Validated within 34.4 Seconds
• Sub-50: Validated within 32.8 Seconds
• The numbers are always in flux because sometimes people cancel their orders, but this gives you an idea of where you will be in the numbering sequence

The Q&A!:

• No Q&A today or for the foreseeable future… alas…

Dabid’s Reaction:

Since a couple people have asked me my personal and totally irrelavant thoughts on this development, I’ll record them here. Please feel free to disregard this as the ramlbings of a saddened fanboy. 😉

I don’t imagine it will shock anyone, but I’m personally not a fan of discontinuing weekly Q&As as a regular series. The culture and community of F4F and members’ rapport with Alex and Chocks as the faces of the company has been a major contributor to the growth of the company, IMO.

I think there’s definitely an audience who buys statues they otherwise might not because of their feelings of closeness to the higher-ups in the company; the weekly livestreams give a real feeling of being one big #F4Family.

It’s wonderful how much time Alex and Chock spend in the club, but being able to actually see and hear them regularly is an aspect of the rapport that drives a lot of collectors to want to support the company and buy statues that are just cool, even if they’re not necessarily things they’d buy otherwise. That closeness is important. Only doing streams when there’s a product launch is going to feel to some like F4F just wants to sell us statues, rather than the feeling of the #F4Family we get from face time being spent even when there’s nothing to sell.

I can fully sympathize with not wanting to go home at 1:30AM every Friday night, but I wonder if the Q&A couldn’t be shortened significantly and/or scheduled differently so that that’s not an issue? The actual Q&A portion of every livestream is generally only around an hour (sometimes even less) every week. If things like “Who Dat” that pad the Q&A an additional several hours every week have to be made more irregular or eschewed completely to keep the workload sustainable, I’m sure everyone would understand.

I struggle through getting through all 3.5 hours of the Q&A streams myself lately, but doing away with them as a regular thing as an answer…? In my opinion, I just don’t see that as a solution that’s going to be helpful to the growth and prosperity of the F4F community or the company. As much work and trouble as weekly streams are, going to those lengths and showing that love and passion even in weeks when there’s nothing new to sell us is a big part of #TheF4FDifference from every other statue producer in the land.

What do you think of the potential end of the Q&A, F4Fans? What format would you like the see F4F livestreams take in the future?