Hello,

I just wanted to give you the good news that I wired the funds to the factory yesterday to start production in Corona, CA. Why only now? I first needed to get most of your surveys back to know the quantity to order for each model. Thank you for responding to the surveys so quickly!

What's the next step?

The next step is for the factory to procure enough of the special TPU material they will be using to make the product. Once they receive it (hopefully in a few days) they can start shooting this material into the 2-cavity mold they've already made for us: one cavity makes the iPhone 5 version and the other makes the iPhone 4 version.

(Snapshot of the factory in Corona, CA where the Smarter Stand for iPhone is being made)

As soon as they have enough parts manufactured, they will ship them to the fulfillment center who will pack and ship them to you! 

As you can tell from the several steps above, it's still hard to predict exactly when the product will ship to you but my best guess at this point would be sometime in late May.

Need more?

In the meantime if you or your friends need to order more of the Smarter Stand for iPhone or for iPad, you can do so right now at Smarterflo.com. The Smarter Stand for iPad orders will ship immediately while the Smarter Stand for iPhone orders will ship right after the Kickstarter rewards are shipped (around late May).

A sneak peek at my next Kickstarter project

I will keep you posted as we get closer to the shipping date but in the meantime, I'd like to give you a sneak peek at my next Kickstarter project which will launch soon... the Smart Cargo for iPad!

The Smart Cargo is a sleek hard case that attaches to your Apple Smart Cover magnetically and holds all your iPad essentials while adding very little bulk or weight to your iPad.

It also serves as a comfortable ergonomic grip when you carry your iPad around.

Stay tuned for an announcement as soon as the Kickstarter project goes live. Limited quantities will be made available at an "early bird" price!

Cheers,

Dotan

I wanted to take advantage of these last 30 minutes in the spotlight to thank everyone for another successful Kickstarter!

I have more unique products in the works so keep an eye out for new Kickstarters from me coming out soon, including one for iPad that I am very excited about.

If you want to change your pledge to order more Smarter Stands at the Kickstarter price for friends, family, etc. you have less than 30min to do so on Kickstarter or you can now pre-order from my website at Smarterflo.com.

Thanks again for all your support!

Dotan

Following my update yesterday, many of you were confused about how to change their pledge to order more than one unit so I created this visual step by step guide.

Note that for now you don't need to tell me how many of which model you want (that will be asked in the survey before I ship). You just need to make sure you're pledging enough money for the number of units you want.

You only have a few hours left to update your pledge but the good news is that it only takes a few seconds (as shown below).

This is probably the last update before we go into fulfillment mode so I want to clarify a few things while there's still time:

With all the excitement generated by the reviews, I have been getting a lot of questions about ordering more than one Smarter Stand (i.e. to give as a gift to friends, family, etc.) so let me clarify once and for all:

• You absolutely CAN order more than one and
• You only pay once for shipping regardless of how many you order!

All you have to do is login to your Kickstarter account and change your pledge amount: just multiply your pledge to the number of products you need and add shipping. 

Shipping is just $3 for the US, $7 outside the US regardless of how many units you order. 

For example if you need 4 Smarter Stands for iPhone shipped to a US address, you pledge $9 x 4 + $3 for US shipping = $39. 

Easy, right?

If you want more than one of each in a combo deal (Smarter Stand for iPhone + Smarter Stand for iPad), you can do that as well: They're both discounted to only $9 a piece during this Kickstarter campaign so decide how many you want of each and multiply your pledge by the number of Smarter Stands you need in total (iPhone/iPod touch and iPad models combined).

Before we ship, I will send a survey asking you exactly how many you need of each model so you don't have to worry about that for now.

But act quickly: there's only a few hours left to change your pledge before the campaign ends!

Thanks again for backing!

Dotan

___________________________________________________________________________

Here are a few more quotes we got from the latest round of reviews:

Slashgear: "it’s incredibly genius and really handy". "In the end, if you need a simple and cheap stand that also doubles as a headphone wrapper, this is probably what you want."

International Business Times:
"the Smarter Stand for iPhone is a great accessory to own, mainly because it packs a good deal of function into an incredible bargain"

Appleinvestigator: "Once you use it, you'll understand how significant the Smarter Stand will be for you because it's amazing". "I love this product".

AppAdvice: "As a way to keep EarPods tangle-free, the Smarter Stand is an absolute wonder."

Gadgetsteria: "this has really saved me about 19 hours this week by keeping me from having to untangle my EarPods, to say the least."

When I sent the first samples that came out of tooling to bloggers a few days ago, I was well aware that professional gadget bloggers are bombarded with new products and that it's hard for them to really spend the time to provide a thoughtful, insightful review each and every time... and then I was blown away by these reviews:

Jordan Carpenter, Editor in Chief of Gadgetsteria really spent over a week LIVING with the product every day before he published this incredibly insightful review: http://gadgetsteria.com/2013/04/05/review-smarter-stand-for-iphone-and-ipod-touch/

Appleinvestigator, a youtube reviewer also published this very informative video review:

Here are my favorite quotes from the Gadgetsteria review if you don't feel like reading thew whole thing:

"this has really saved me about 19 hours this week by keeping me from having to untangle my EarPods, to say the least."

"I used the Smarter Stand with and without a case over the past week. It worked exactly the same both ways. I even set out to find a case in my arsenal that wouldn’t work with this stand and was actually out of luck"

"I keep my EarPods buried deep in a pocket of my messenger bag, a bag that is carried with me everywhere, and the first 5 minutes of every commute is spent untangling said EarPods. I honestly didn’t think this Stand would be something I’d use for both designed intentions, but I’ll say I will never have my earbuds not wrapped around this. It’s quick, simple and pleasant just wrap the chord around the Stand and walk away, no more, no less."

"I never thought I would have so much use for an earbud cable manager until using one for a week and seeing the amount of headaches I wasn’t having."

"And I’ve actually used a kickstand for my iPhone. Something I’ve really never had the need for, and that comes from the lack of worry ill break it as well as it not being a hassle to use."

Again, I recommend reading the full review at http://gadgetsteria.com/2013/04/05/review-smarter-stand-for-iphone-and-ipod-touch/

There are only a couple of days left to pledge on Kickstarter so feel free to share this update with all your friends who own an iPhone or an iPod touch and make sure they won't miss out!