Kickstarter

Dear Kickstarter Backers, 

It’s been nearly a year since we shipped your ReadySet Solar Kits. We hope you’re enjoying them. 

We’ve had a great year at Fenix International - we expanded our sales in Uganda with MTN (Africa’s largest telecom) and launched a new solar partnership with Vodafone in Tanzania. To celebrate, we’re writing to offer you 40% off on ReadySets exclusively from now through Cyber Monday. 

You can now buy a ReadySet for $165 (40% of $275 retail price): http://fenixintl.com/shop/readyset-solar-kit/ 

Get a second ReadySet for yourself or one for the gadget geek in your life today for an unprecedented $165. As you already know, the ReadySet is perfect for car camping, emergency preparedness and volunteers abroad. Pick up a second ReadySet for yourself or get one for the gadget geek in our life! Hurry because the sale ends December 2nd, 2013 or while supplies last. 

You can also help us by sharing this deal with family and friends. 

Click here to take advantage of our Black Friday sale, today (no coupon required): http://fenixintl.com/shop/readyset-solar-kit/

Happy Thanksgiving,
Mike, Brian, & The Fenix International Team

Hi Kickstarters,

We’re writing with some exciting news. Our latest shipment of ReadySets has reached the US, and we’ll be shipping all remaining Kickstarter orders out as soon as they arrive in our warehouse (hopefully this week).

It’s been an amazing year and we’re grateful for you being such an important part of it. We launched ReadySet sales in Uganda and Rwanda, we raised over $112,000 through your support of our Kickstarter campaign, and today we have more exciting news.

We’re happy to announce our launch of the ReadySet Solar Kit in the U.S. and Canada (just in time for the holidays)! Check out the Fenix Web store.

We designed the ReadySet to provide life-changing access to energy in Africa, but we always knew that it would be great here at home too.

This holiday season, give the gift of:

• Emergency Preparedness
  Charge your phone, power lights, radios, and even WiFi hotspots when the next storm or earthquake hits.
• Outdoor Power
  Power your campsite, watch a movie outdoors and re-energize the family picnic.
• Clean Energy
  Harness the sun to charge your iPhone, iPad, Android, and other devices to power your low-carbon digital lifestyle.

You can now buy a ReadySet for $275 (that’s $25 off the original $300 price):
http://fenixintl.com/buy

Holiday supplies are available now so get your orders in! Also please share the link with your friends and family on Facebook and Twitter!

Thanks again for your continued support.

Happy Holidays!
Mike, Brian & The Fenix Team

Hi Kickstarters,

We’re excited to hear that many of you are receiving and enjoying your new ReadySets. We’d also like to share a terrific ReadySet review on GigaOM yesterday:
“How My Mobile Devices Are Ready For The Next Storm: Fenix ReadySet”

As you may have questions on your ReadySets or issues with shipping, we wanted to let you know the best ways to reach us:

• For questions on using your ReadySet, we recommend reviewing the manual and our online Support Page first. We’ll be updating the FAQ as your questions come in. (Thanks again for being our early adopters!!)
• If you don’t find the answers you’re looking for there, you can use the “Support” button (on all of our website’s pages) which will bring up a form for submitting your questions.
• Similarly if you have shipping or other questions, please use the "Support" button on our website, or you can enter your question directly via this link.

We’ll respond as quickly as we can!

Thanks,
Brian + Mike

Hi Kickstarters,

We've got an exciting update to share with you!

We're happy to report that we've just shipped the first 334 ReadySet kits! These units are going to our first backers who purchased units w/o extra solar panels (Canada units are shipping too). We've sent the tracking info to you individually via email.  For those of you who backed the USB Universal Phone Battery Chargers, those went into the mail today as well.

We'll of course continue to keep you updated on the arrival of new units and the extra solar panel kits in the coming weeks and the tracking info as they ship out.

In addition, our team has been busy working around the clock covering multiple time-zones, supporting our ReadySet entrepreneurs across Africa (Our employees are currently in San Francisco, Paris, Nairobi, Kampala, and Dar es Salaam - Fenix never sleeps!)

We hope that those of you who were in the path of Hurricane Sandy are safe and recovering. We reget that logistics prevented us from getting the ReadySet to you before the storm, but the need is now even more clear .

Many thanks again for your continued encouragement and support!

Brian + Mike

p.s. We're working to get our website updated so that we can launch retail/web sales soon after we ship out the remaining Kickstarter units. In the meantime if you come across someone interested in getting a ReadySet, please send them our way. We're collecting pre-sales inquiries here: http://eepurl.com/m2y5L

Hi Kickstarters.

Thank you for your patience and continued support! The Fenix team is currently working around the clock (literally). We’ve got engineers in San Francisco and Shenzhen and business development folks all over East Africa.

We’re excited to let you know that the first 475 ReadySet Solar Kits have landed in the United States. While many of them will be sent out to backers this month, unfortunately due to US Customs and logistics delays, we will not be able to deliver to everyone who was expecting to receive them in October. But rest assured, all of the standard ReadySet kits ordered will ship before the end of November. For those of you who ordered extra solar panels, they are scheduled to ship from our factory this Tuesday and then arrive in the US in mid-November. We’ll then pack and ship the ReadySets + extra panels as quickly as we can and get them to you so you can get powered up!

We’re sure you’re curious about what’s been happening behind the scenes. Here’s a short saga of what’s been slowing things down:

• While the first 175 ReadySets were being shipped, the U.S. Government launched a tariff on solar panels coming from China. We were faced with surprising customs delays and import duties potentially exceeding the total value of the ReadySet kits, which would have forced us to bring in the ReadySets at a massive loss or destroy the inventory. Thankfully (after much negotiation) we were able to avoid throwing the kits in the dumpster and got them out of hock, though not without paying a pretty steep duty. As a result, we’ve had to find a new solar panel supplier to ensure that all USA-bound ReadySets will have non-PRC silicon. For everyone’s edification, the Department of Commerce recently clarified its tariff policy (New York Times story). If you’re curious, the difference in cost of a 15W solar panel made w/Taiwanese Silicon vs. Chinese Silicon is roughly 41 cents. The good news coming from all of this drama is that we’ve found a second supplier of solar panels, and the competition between our two sources has helped bring down our costs. We think we’ll now be able to offer ReadySets in the US for $275 rather than $300.
• We’re constantly looking for ways to improve the performance of our ReadySets, and in part that is through firmware changes. While the first batch of Kickstarter ReadySets were in-transit across the Pacific, the Fenix engineering team created a firmware update that we thought everyone would benefit from. That meant we’d need to take those 175 ReadySets out of their boxes, plug a special programming cable into the USB port and send a firmware update. Normally that would be easy enough to do, but the ReadySets were on their way to an Amazon warehouse in Phoenix, Arizona. We had visions of flying down to Arizona, renting a refrigerated truck, picking up the units from the Amazon warehouse in the desert, performing the updates (in the refrigerated truck!) and then driving the units back to Amazon. Long story short, that was a non-starter. The 175 units, and in fact all 475 (don’t get me started!), are now on their way up to California from Amazon warehouses in Phoenix AZ, Charleston NC, and Carlise PA. If you’re doing a Kickstarter and thinking about fulfillment services, I have some thoughts for you...

Without the customs delays, firmware updates, and the ensuing logistical nightmare we would have easily been able to ship all October units in October. We really do apologise for the delays! Live and learn. We just want you to know that we’re incurring this additional expense and headache to ensure that you have the best ReadySet experience possible.

We’ll continue cranking away and try to deliver them to you ASAP. More updates on our African adventures coming shortly.

Thanks again for your patience and keep questions, comments and ideas coming!

-Brian, Mike, and the Fenix team

P.S. If you haven’t sent us your address, please respond using the link below so we can send your package as soon as its ready!

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dDhFN1ZTWjRmZHl2cUVuMG1KdnFZWXc6MQ