Kickstarter

Hello everyone,

Just a quick update to share with you: early tomorrow morning I'll be hitting the road for a 6 day trip to Rochester. I can't stress enough how excited I am for this trip. A lot of final details should start falling in place and set up Stylus Caps for production. I'll be keeping you up to date with new stuff as I get it.

A special bonus to this trip: I have been asked by the Industrial Design student organization at RIT to give a talk about my work and my experience with Kickstarter. I'm framing it as sort of a prequel to everything that led up to the Kickstarter and where I think MORE/REAL could go.

The talk will be take place this Friday at 6pm in the Liberal Arts Building (Room 06-A205). If you are in town and are interested, please feel free to stop by, it would be great to see some Backers. If you aren't in town, don't sweat it: I'll be posting the video on Kickstarter for everyone to see.

Talk to you soon,

Don

Hi Backers,

An update to you is about a week overdue but you'll understand why in a minute.

A week ago Tuesday, the agreement between myself and the company that I had been working with to machine the metal cap portion of the Stylus Cap changed to the point where we could no longer do business. I can't go into details about why this happened because we parted on good terms and because I have no interest in throwing them under a bus. Nevertheless their work on the Stylus Caps had to come to an end.

Less than 12 hours after I was made aware of the new circumstances, I was able to send out several new requests for quotes (RFQs) to potential machine shops and less than a week later I think I have identified very promising alternatives.* By early next week there should be an agreement in place with one of these shops.

So, what does this mean?

1) Your Stylus Caps are still being made. You will get your pre-orders shipped to you the very minute they are ready.

2) There will however, be a delay in when Stylus Caps will be ready.

Manufacturers have production schedules that stretch out several weeks in advance. If you show up today looking for something to be made, you don't get parts tomorrow, you have to get to the back of the line.

That unfortunately means that there will be a delay to when your Stylus Caps will ship. As for when exactly that will happen, my best guess is that instead of the end of April / early May timeline I had been working towards, they will likely be shipping in June. I will update you on this timing when I get more concrete information.

I'm extremely disappointed by this reality, but it is the reality. Manufacturing a first run product is rarely a straight and easy line from start to finish. There are all sorts of hiccups and bumps that can happen along the way. You rarely get to see this because for the most part, product development happens behind closed doors. If Apple announces a new iPhone, thats usually because its ready to go on sale in a week or two. You don't get to see the thousands of iterations and set backs that it takes to create something. (Cue James Dyson saying "After 5,000 prototypes we had it.) 

Kickstarter has radically changed this equation. Instead of seeing a product at the very end of the process you get to see the whole thing made, warts and all. When you back a project on Kickstarter, you aren't just pre-ordering a product, you get a front row seat on the journey that product takes to production. 

No one is more passionate about Stylus Caps and wants to see them made more than me which is why I know this will be all worth it in the end. I appreciate your patience and support.

Talk to you soon,

Don

*On a side note: My dad deserves total credit for being able to help me identify and turn around quotes to potential manufacturers in record time. After I told my wife, he was the first person I brainstormed with to figure out the best way forward. Not only is he partially responsible for my existence and upbringing, but he has an uncanny knowledge of the manufacturing capabilities of the western New York region. Thanks Dad.

Ladies and Gentleman, I give you the Stylus Cap family.

These are second round samples from German Tool, and the first time I have been able to see them all in person, so I was super excited to see them come out so well. (The Sharpie was the only one I had machined prior to the Kickstarter campaign.) Overall, I am very pleased with the direction these are headed, and think just one, maybe two more rounds of sampling should have the caps ready for production.

I am planning a mega post detailing these out further, along with a video showing German Tool's shop, but I couldn't wait any longer to show these off.

WEEKLY UPDATE

1) Backer Surveys

Over the weekend, I sent out surveys to almost every Backer level*. These surveys are super important to fill. They will tell me where to ship your Stylus Caps pre-orders when they are ready and in some cases which Stylus Cap you want (for those who selected the $20 and $25 Backer Levels).

*All except for the $5 Level and the No Reward Level. (I am still working out details with some of those Backers on a case by case basis.)

2) Shipping

I have successfully tested out the solution to add the cost of shipping for those of you who missed paying for it during the Kickstarter funding. 

How it works: If you missed adding shipping, I will be directly sending you a PayPal invoice for the shipping amount you owe to your email. When you receive it, all you have to do is click on the link and pay via Credit Card or with your own PayPal funds. 

I will be slowly sending PayPal invoices only to those Backers who still owe shipping over the course of the next 2 weeks.

3) Prototyping

Caps / German is already hard at work on the third round prototypes with the goal of having them as close to what the production finals will be. These prototypes will have minor dimension refinements, correct finishes, and an engraved MORE/REAL logo. If those look good, production will start soon after on the caps.

Tips / Harbec has been hard at work testing the conductive material needed for the tips. We should be close to placing a material order this week.

Packaging / I have been working on the graphic layouts for the pack. Feeling good about where its headed.

4) First Notify List.

I got a really positive response last week from posting the Stylus Cap - First Notify List for those who missed out on the Kickstarter funding but still want to place an order. Here is the link again to sign up. 

Thats its for updates this week. I am working on a feature that will show the process I go through when I get a prototype and how I convey feedback to a vendor. It's inside baseball type stuff, but thats the type of OCD detail I like, so I figure some of you might as well. I will hopefully get that up by the end of the week.

Talk to you soon,

Don

You should follow me on Twitter: @itsMOREREAL and @afterschool

Hello everyone,

I thought I'd give you a little recap of what I have been working on since funding closed on Tuesday night.

1) Amazon payment issues.

There were very few (maybe 40 Backers?) that had issues with having their payments processed via Amazon. This is a somewhat common issue with funded Kickstarter projects but its very fixable. Kickstarter has been very good at alerting those Backers who have had issues and telling them how to fix it. For my part, I have been trying to field questions as quick as I can and direct them to the information they need.

2) Shipping.

First, I want to thank everyone that updated their pledges to include the cost of shipping before the end of the funding period.

There are still about 200 Backers that need to add shipping. If you are in this group, DON'T WORRY! I am very close to rolling out a solution that will be somewhat easy for you and me to work with. I will test drive this with about 10-15 Backers at first, just to make sure it works, and then I will get it out to the remaining Backers who need shipping help.

3) Backer surveys.

This afternoon, I sent out the first surveys to Backers who pledged at the $290 Studio Pack level. I only sent it out to this group because there are only 11 Studio Pack Backers and if anything weird pops up, I can still correct it for everyone else. So far everything is looking good, so the rest of the Backers should be getting surveys a bit later in the week.

When the rest of you do receive your surveys, please be sure to send them back to me as soon as you can.

4) First Notify List.

Since funding closed, I have gotten a ton of email from people who wanted to pre-order Stylus Caps, but missed the end of the Kickstarter funding. Since I am still in the middle of setting up my fulfillment house and creating an e-commerce storefront, I have started a "First Notify List" for those who want to be the first to know when they can buy Stylus Caps online. They will, of course, receive their Stylus Caps AFTER Kickstarter Backers.

If you have some friends that missed the Kickstarter or if you want to be the first to know when new MORE/REAL products come out, sign up for the First Notify List.

5) OK, now the good stuff.

Lots of actual Stylus Cap work going on. 

Harbec has been doing some material measurements to help me figure out the optimal tip size.

German Tool (whom you haven't met yet, I'm working on a video featuring them this week) is putting the finishing touches on the latest Stainless Steel cap prototypes. Super excited to get these.

Flower City Printing (whom you also haven't met yet) sent over a dieline of the packaging, that I will use for creating graphic layouts. I really need to spend a full post breaking down the packaging effort. Some great work is being done here.

Chris Drackett (my web developer) has been hard at work on getting the MORE/REAL e-commerce site up and running. He did a lot of coding while being at SXSW this past week, so a big round of applause for Chris and his extra effort!

My dad, Stan Lehman, who I like to refer to as my own personal Tim Cook (Cook is the COO of Apple and makes sure everything runs on time) has been a huge help with figuring out logistics and fulfillment. We put out a request for proposals (RFP) at the end of the week for fulfillment houses and should have some of that nailed down by the beginning of April.

Did I miss anything? Probably, but you will be hearing more soon. Even though the funding period is over I'm fully committed to keeping you guys in the loop.

Talk to you soon,

Don

You should follow me on Twitter: @itsMOREREAL and @afterschool

Update: I was having some technical issues on my end with the podcast so Dan and I are rescheduling for sometime next week. I'll let you know when. Go ahead and listen in to 5by5 today regardless, Marco and John are great.

Good morning everyone,

I know there are a couple people that are having issues with Amazon Payments or the cost of shipping on their pledges this morning. This is a somewhat common occurrence when Kickstarter projects close, a small percentage of people have these types of problems, so don't worry, there are ways to fix this.

I thought I would give you a heads up: at 10am Eastern US time, I will be a guest on 5by5.tv on Dan Benjamin's excellent Daily Edition podcast. You can listen live at this address, or come back later and listen to the recording (I'll update with a link when that goes live.)

If you're smart, you'll stick around on 5by5.tv to listen to the two guests who come on after me: Marco Arment of Instapaper and John Gruber, the Daring Fireball. It's a Murderer's Row of podcasting.

Thanks!

Don