It indicates that as of Dec 22, it was "in route" to the US export warehouse.
Yeah, no idea how they have organised the shipping or anything. I pre-ordered very early (21 Aug), and I've seen reports from people who ordered much later and already have details, or the actual items.
As mentioned, I got an email saying "it shipped" on 03 Jan. I never got the email with the tracking number, but it did appear in my account on the order. At first the link didn't work (and I had to search for it myself), but now the link is working.
The first entry, from 03 Jan, is "In Route To US Export Warehouse", which I think means the label has been created, but the shipper has not actually received the item yet.
Unlike Pukunui, I actually have some events since then: 10 Jan has "Shipment Received by Partner Carrier" in Chicago (seems a long time to take a week to arrive at the exporter). The latest update is 12 Jan "En Route to Destination Country" (hopefully not a cargo ship that is going to take several weeks).
It is really difficult trying to understand what could possible have happened. It obviously wasn't late production or unavoidable transport delays -- because the physical product was available in plenty of shops on 06 Dec.
Now maybe they are not as efficient in retail compared to wholesale, but it's like they didn't even plan or prepare. And when they did start processing, they appear to have processed orders in a random sequence. They do have my order date (it's in the system), so I would have thought you would start with order #1 at the beginning of the queue and work from there.
Why it took them 28 days just to generate a tracking number for me makes no sense.