Hi everyone,

I wanted to share my experience with the new Houdini Boutique merch in case it helps SideFX improve future runs.

On February 5th I received the announcement email about the store. As a long-time Houdini user and big fan of the software, I was genuinely excited and ordered the black shirt with the pighead on the chest and the Houdini logo on the sleeve almost immediately.

The base price of the shirt was $23.
Because I live very close to the SideFX office, I expected shipping to be fairly small, but after shipping and taxes the total came to about $43. I decided to go ahead anyway because I thought to myself that this might be limited merch and I was happy to support the company.

Unfortunately, when the shirt arrived, the quality was not what I hoped for.

The cotton feels quite stiff and scratchy, but more concerning is the embroidery quality:

- letter widths are inconsistent
- some of the stitching is misaligned
- threads are already loose
- the back side of the embroidery looks messy and unfinished

Because of this, I can’t really say I’m excited to purchase additional items, which is a shame because I was really looking forward to representing Houdini.

I’ve attached a few photos below for reference.





I’m not posting this to complain for the sake of it. I love the software and the company, and I’d genuinely like to see the merch reflect the same level of quality that Houdini itself is known for.

If anyone from SideFX can advise whether this is expected, a defect, or something else, I’d appreciate it.

Thanks.

Hi Alex - thanks for your feedback.

We refreshed the old store due to our own frustration with quality and the selection of items available, as well as shipping costs. Before going live with any item to the store, we made samples of each and verified quality. We have already seen many purchases of this shirt and did not receive any negative feedback until today. We are verifying past prints to compare the quality of embroidery, so we will get back to you once we can provide some comparisons.

About shipping cost - please know that we don't bulk print/store/ship these items from SideFX HQ, so any production of these items are from a facility that is _closest_ to the person ordering from it - this applies to any city, worldwide. Therefore, the shipping is a flat rate applied, respectively, and -- taxes we unfortunately cannot do anything about.