The first 3000 magnets arrived today at lunch time. They passed the first important quality check with the eating irons as you can see on the picture. But before they can do their future job some more components will arrive here.

Dirk

Today our project got funded with your help- Thank vou very much again!

Now we prepare a sheet we'll send to you to check if all the information we have is correct (reward selection, address, adapter). Some forgot to choose a reward- we'll fix this. So you don't have to send messages - just wait until tomorrow when we'll send more information to you. 

Best,

Dirk

time has gone by so fast and counting hours instead of days forces up this feeling of time passing by faster and faster. tomorrow the situation will have changed. no more curiosity about the kickstarter indicator but work on reward delivery and all the things involved.
so now i stop the time for a moment before the counter goes down from 20 to 19:

when my daughter lisa pressed the start button 4 weeks, 4 and a half days ago i was really excited what would happen. i had informed many friends via facebook and wished the project would take off like a rocket from the beginning. unfortunately this didn't happen but - better than nothing- we started like a cyclist with flimsy legs faced by a huge mountain stage like alpe d'huez in france. i hoped that kickstarter would take notice of our project and someday put it in on their start page. unfortunately this also didn't happen - which is no real surprise as our project even was rejected by kickstarter on the first try and only jumped in by incredibly good luck - but something else happened. more and more people from overseas backed our project and more and more online magazines and web forums wrote about and discussed our project. on the way up to the finish line of this long mountain stage more and more spectators pushed us up the hill and with increasing speed confidence dominated doubts. this was so exciting and only comparable to these rare minutes in a big race when you feel that you're gonna win from a hopeless situation. but this kickstarter project is not measured in minutes but in hours, days and weeks and the experience of being supported by so many people worldwide is worthwile investing so much time and work.
before we started the project i had the idea that we had to mix virtual reality on kickstarter with real life because of the unbelievability of magnic light and so we went to a small fair trade not far away from our home town with the smallest and cheapest booth but the maximum audience possible. i think this was a good decision because people can see that you exist in reality, so if you ever do a campaign like this consider to present it in real live and not only on the web.

while we climbed up the hill and got closer and closer to the finish line the project and our backers which are the only ones that move the kickstarter indicator became like good friends asking many questions, giving so much feedback and encouraging to move on. without this support i would never have plucked up all my courage and go to berlin and even to taiwan from one day to the next to make more than a kickstarter project from this.
i didn't notice the moment we passed the 100% border because i was far away and offline in taipei and now this good friend has only 20 hours left. it's not important how far we get above the finish line because we now really have the chance to build this product so many people regarded as one of these internet fakes. i am convinced these people have contributed much to the success of the magnic light project because a controverse discussion is much more interesting and reaches much more people than a normal success story. 

and i want this story to go on which means we're not just gonna sell the idea but work on it and build it up in future. feel invited if you have refreshing ideas how to move on.

but to wipe away the sentimentalities on the last remaining hours of my good fried here i have the final technical magnic light news:
since we want to invest some more in magnic light and also pre-invest in the kickstarter version we plan to solve the problem of limited side view on the opposite side by a more complex led-lens part. since many tires are too thick to get the light above, we'll have some light passing below the rim reaching the opposite side (only interrupted by the spokes which is less than 1%). this will work for more than 80% of the wheels, except when you have high-profiled rims. this means all of you that have pledged for a double version to be visible from both sides can decrease their pledge to the single version (or give the remaining lights to a good friend) because magnic light (front and back light) will be visible from both sides. i have no actual pictures but they will follow here the next days and for today i hope you will be able to figure out in your mind.  

thank you very much - and have a nice sunday,

dirk

If you wonder what happened to my 200 km tour I planned on Wednesday I must admit it did not take place. I was too tired after all these days. But it was not cancelled completely. I made a nice night training tour with my friend Lukas (one of the most talented cyclists in Germany- but with too less time and motivation for training;-) ). So we made 55km on the famous "Saurierspuren" round and Magnic Light worked without problems- except when I passed rails at high speed the adapter moved a little bit. Not really a problem but the adapter has to be and will be stronger in future. I got hints from the backers concerning this point and we will integrate them- Thanks Rudi!

And now there are just 67 hours to go for our project. Many companies asking for information but I can promise: We'll start and concentrate on this Kickstarter project first. So much encouraging mails I never expected have reached me and on the other side also bearish messages of people I can't understand. I have the plan that some day I'll write a book on these exciting days and some of you will be part of it but for the next time it seems there is not enough time for this.

And for today there is one thing I'll start in 5 minutes: Cycling with sunshine! Too many days and nights in front of my computer the last weeks but actually cou can smell the spring which feels nearly like summer here in Germany. Below is a look out of my window.

So for today I like to forget about computers, production, design, money and contracts and join the spring-summer on my bike (call it a daylight cycling test if you like). If you have the chance to do the same: Enjoy the sun!

Dirk

The Final Countdown- Less than one week for our project!

Magnic Light was at the Taipei Cycle Show (one of the three main bicycle trades worldwide). Here is the summary:

Last Wednesday I started at 5:00 AM at home and drove to Frankfurt Airport, started at 10:40 in Frankfurt - 12 hours later in Taipei at local time 6:00 AM at 8:00 Am at the hotel - at 9:00 at the Taipei Cycle until 18:00 PM. Two more days at the Taipei Cycle on Friday and on Saturday and back to Germany on Sunday evening.This was hard but is was more successful than I ever expected. Although nearly noone knew I would be at the Taipei Cycle nearly everybody passing the TIMAC booth- a distributor from Taiwan where I got a bike and some place to demonstrate Magnic Light- stopped and watched the strange lights. 

I didn't count but it felt like it was several hundred times I let a ball magnet run down an alumnium rack with slow speed to explain the physics behind Magnic Light. 

(I found this video on Youtube- Thanks!)  

And it seemed more and more people where coming and even more and more large companies and distributors among them. First people stopped accidentally but with the passing of time they seemed to come targeted and even more on Friday. Then someone told me, that in his eyes Magnic Light would be the main innovation of the Taipei Cycle which felt like a nice but exaggerated compliment- but then I heard this again and again. So, true or not this is at least very encouraging and when the Kickstarter project passed the 100% after the first day in Taipei it felt really great!

But what does this all mean for our Kickstarter project?

You - the backers of this project are responsible for our success, because you have trusted us while many people outside in the web thought this project was just a joke. From now on the bicycle market is keen on Magnic Light and maybe close on our heels. So it is clear we don't want to stop after delivering the Kickstarter version to you but go on since the potential is amazingly high.
This means we will invest more money in the development and your Kickstarter version will draw profit from this, while it will still remain unique (carbon version) and much cheaper than versions that will follow (because on Kickstarter we can deliver without distributors and dealers in between).

Should it become reality that Magnic Light revolutionizes bicycle illumination then you should have an eye on your Kickstarter version, because it may become a hot collector's item with an historical touch. So if you are a collector and have pledged for a light you should better stop promoting this project from now on since the collector's value decreases while the size of the unique Kickstarter edition increases;-)

While it turns out more and more that this project is the start of a permanent business we want to fix the following for the future of Magnic Light:

1 We will give our best that Magnic Light will be a fair business. 
(fair to people doing the production, fair to customers and fair to the market)
2 no second point.

Companies thinking about a copy should notice that cooperation may be more successful because otherwise point 1 can't be applied on them.

What comes next in our final countdown:

The weather forecast is fine so we'll start our Magnic Night (200 km long distance test to the Netherlands and back) on Wednesday, March 14th at 21:00 PM.

And- can anyone tell the Kickstarter people that they might consider putting us on their start page only one time and only for 5 minutes to make a screenshot? - because this may be the first time a relevant technical innovation starts its way on their wonderful platform;-) I would love to print a poster but only if it's real.

Dirk