Kickstarter

I managed to bring the first shipment of kits to the local FedEx office at 5:57, just in time to make the 6pm cut-off. Except, for some reason, pick-up had already happened at 4pm today, so my shipment won't actually go out until Monday. As far as I'm concerned though, the packages are in FedEx's hands, so I'm going to claim a moral victory nonetheless. 

And ignore the fact that this "shipment" only contained 5 kits...

I'm still happy to have sent out those kits, even if it was only five units. Because, from here on out, it's mostly about improving the process, more than figuring out how to do things. At least now I know I have all the pieces, and that I have a fully functioning end-to-end process, even if it's not streamlined. Now that I have that, I can break down the process and improve parts of it one at a time, which is far less intimidating than trying to come up with a super efficient system right away.

That's not to say that the hard work is over. In fact, it's just starting. To be able to ship out the remaining 240 or so kits (not to mention the orders that are coming in through the online store), I need to speed up the production and order fulfillment process. 

Now that I've started trying to crank out parts in volume, it's becoming clear that laser cutting time is going to be one of the big bottlenecks. To get today's shipment out, it took me (or the laser cutter, really) 40 minutes to make 6 bamboo plates with engravings. Technically, I only get 4 hours of laser time a week, so that comes out to something like 36 pieces / week. Obviously, that's not going to work. I've found a way to reduce that time to 30 minutes, but ideally, I'd like to cut that down further. And that's just one of the pieces I'm laser cutting. Each backing board takes about 5 minute too, and the cardboard packaging I designed is also laser-cut. So it adds up pretty fast. For now, I'm making do by getting "unofficial" laser time, mostly when nobody else is using the machines (which means after 10pm on a Friday night... for instance). Eventually, I may need to hire people to help out with the laser cutting, but I'll need to sell more kits to be able to afford that. 

Anyway, I'll keep making and packing through the weekend, and my goal is to have another 20 kits ready to ship on Monday morning, with all Beta kits shipped by the middle of next week. I'll be sure to let you know if there are any further developments...