Kickstarter

Hi Backers, the end of March is approaching and we are getting anxious too. 

Where are we at? The short answer is that we think some of the early birds will ship by end of March, the majority of our other orders "should" ship by mid April. 

The detailed version: We have been pushing our CNC supplier to get more wallets done in less time. They pushed back and said that they could do more but they are concerned more speed could compromise the quality. We think this is a sign of a good supplier and a fair point. Currently they have 4 machines running simultaneously and say they will have 500 units finished by the end of March. 

We are hoping next week to receive about 200 units from them to send to the anodizer. We have made up some custom hanging racks for the anodizing process. The purpose of these racks is to improve efficiency and reduce the possibility that there will be marks left on the wallets from the anode that they hang from. The racks can hold 100 wallets. Our anodizer tells us they can produce 200 wallets in one color in two working days. Its most efficient to anodize them in color batches so our plan is to start with 200 pieces of the grey. 

This brings me to a problem we have been having with our custom colors. It has taken some time to get the colors we wanted as hard anodizing color is not a dye there are many variables that control the color. The black was never an issue. Gold was the second color to get our approval. The grey has just been approved. The olive though has been the most challenging and we are hoping it will be finalized this coming week.

The reason we got into this problem was our original supplier that made the prototypes anodized them to the colors we specified and told us they where hard anodize, but actually they where standard anodizing that was dyed. We didn't realize this fact until we tried to replicate these colors with true hard anodizing. The colors are beautiful, but the problem is almost no andozier has experience doing custom hard anodzing colors. Or they just don't want to as they know how tricky it is. You can usually get black, grey or a copper color with no guaranty of the final shade you will get.

We never thought color would be one of our biggest challenges. 

So our goals if for next week to get 200 units of Grey anodized. With any luck we can start on the other colors too. 

For people wondering about the survey. So far we have just done the early birds. There is no point to send out the survey too early in case there are any problems or people change there shipping address. The sleepy bird survey will go out within the next 24hrs and the others will follow. 

Thanks for the support backers, we are getting closer to the destination. 

Obtainium team.

http://www.facebook.com/Obtainium