Kickstarter

Hi everyone.

Our 2nd US shipment has ben released by US customs and should be delivered to the warehouse for kit assembly and fulfillment after the weekend. It will take a couple more days from there to process all of the outgoing rewards. This weekend, we will send a heads-up email notification to those who will be receiving their Portholes in this wave just in case there are any address changes etc.

The assembly factory is now preparing the next shipment which will take us half-way through the Kickstarter edition. Those pieces should ship to backers in late May.

Thank you for your patience,

Martin and the Crucial Detail team

Hello everyone,

The next batch of Portholes is scheduled to make a landing in Chicago April 20th. Unless there are delays in customs processing, we should be able to turn them around and ship to backers within a week after that. The following wave of Portholes should arrive in Chicago in mid-May.

Unfortunately, the production has not been continuing as smoothly as we had hoped. The glass manufacturer did not deliver the subsequent round of side glasses on time and we learned that they lost a huge number of parts to micro-fractures caused by a new tool. The cracks were not apparent until after the parts came out of the tempering bath, leading to thousands of glass sides produced between those steps that are not usable. The factory has identified the problem, corrected it, and has restarted production this week, causing a roughly 3-4 week delay in assembly.

Note to backers in the EU, Canada, and Rest of the World: We learned from some of our Kickstarter peers that international backers frequently get charged for duty, customs charges, and taxes. To avoid this, we're working on fulfillment with partners in multiple countries that would allow us to legally import the rewards and ship to you without incurring additional charges by local authorities or removal of the tea. EU and Canadian shipments are scheduled to ship with the next wave of Portholes. Australia, and the rest of the world will follow.

We appreciate your patience,

Martin and the Crucial Detail team

Hi everyone,

Production update: The glass process changes were successful, yield has improved, and the factory ramped up production. The assembly line is completing 2000 Portholes this week and plans to continue at roughly that rate until the Kickstarter edition is complete. We expect to receive the 2000 in five weeks and in about another week, they should be in backers' hands. The rest should follow in two more bi-weekly waves.

In terms of the 160 that were supposed to ship last week, our printer producing the kit box, recipe cards, and shipping boxes had to postpone due to an equipment failure. I was at the printer yesterday for a press check of the recipe cards and the kit box that holds the Porthole, tea, and glasses along with the recipe cards, few images are below. All packaging components should be finished this week and the Porthole kits will ship after the weekend.

Thanks again for your patience. Have a great week!

Martin and the Crucial Detail team

Hello everyone,

The first small shipment of Portholes is in Chicago. After inspection, they will be transferred to a warehouse for the complete Kickstarter kit assembly and fulfillment - initial 160 kits should be en route to the first backers by the end of the week.

Some of you suggested including additional recipes with the package and the Aviary guys have been kind enough to share a couple more. There will be four recipe cards in the kit. From the left: Blueberry, Chai, Cider, Cranberry.

Post-holiday production resumed this past week and we'll get a better sense of manufacturing speed in a few days once a new 2000pc batch of glass has been tempered. That will tell us whether changes to the process have improved the yield and the production can ramp up. You'll be hearing from me again soon.

Thank you for your patience.

Martin and the Crucial Detail team

Hi everyone.

The first small shipment of Portholes is en route to us now and our early backers will receive them before the end of this month. The glass production is still not progressing quite as fast as we anticipated, a relatively high reject rate caused a production halt and process tweaks. In light of this we changed our plan from a single large container to multiple smaller shipments in order to get the Portholes to at least some of you faster. Once both factories resume production in the second half of February, the production will continue and with it our rewards fulfillment. We will be shipping rewards in the order in which the project was backed.

We really appreciate everyone's patience.

Martin and the Crucial Detail team