Pre-order Announcement and the End of Wave 1
We've finished all of Wave 1 orders! Apart from a single leftie model, all of the orders were shipped today (the leftie will be shipped on friday). You should start receiving your tracking numbers soon. Don't worry if you don't receive them immediately. We currently send them out by hand, so it might take some time, as we do it between answering your emails.
That means we are starting production on Wave 2 orders this week. The first four were shipped together with the final orders of Wave 1. We were cautious about over-promising, but our assembly employees are getting more efficient and have exceeded our expectations. In addition to that, new employees start training on Monday, thus we should be able to fulfill all of the Wave 2 orders sooner than initially planned. We'll ship them out at least every other day, so you just have to wait for a tracking number.
Does that mean we will take new orders soon? Why yes, it does! But before we talk about that, let's talk about what we have achieved in the two months so far.
In the beginning of August we moved from producing the keypads in Imants living room, into our current space, soon after we hired two more employees to help with assembly, and now we are a team of 10 (including the 4 founding members). As mentioned above, more employees start training on Monday, and we plan to hire more in the coming weeks. We have recently doubled the amount of 3D printers we have. And that is not the end of our growth.
Which brings us back to the next Wave. We've been talking about this internally for a while now, and the response from Wave 2 helped solidify our plans. A lot of you have suggested either larger waves, or taking pre-orders in the classical sense, since many of you can't get one, either due to time constrains, time zone differences and the huge demand.
So we have decided to open up a lot of pre-order spots. Not entirely unlimited, but most of you
should be able reserve a spot. A lot of people contact us about wanting to order
a keypad between waves, and are willing to pay extra for a faster service. These
aren't just a few people. It's a whole customer group. Thus, we will open two
pre-order queues:
- standard queue - 1000 orders, guaranteed to be produced in 180 days (6 months), shipping excluded;
- priority queue - 200 orders, guaranteed to be produced in 30 days, shipping excluded.
The priority queue will be produced first, ahead of the standard queue. But if you got in to any queue at all, you are guaranteed to receive the keypad. No more waiting for a monthly-ish wave to have a chance at getting one.
Getting into the priority queue, to have your keypad be produced and shipped first, will cost 135 EUR extra. We wouldn't offer it there weren't so many people requesting it. The price is just for the priority production, to get the keypad sooner. Unlike Wave 1, there are no other benefits included.
As for the standard queue - we have decided to increase the price as well. We are continuously making small improvements to the keypad. As a recent example, we added metal threads, to users from over-tightening the screws, when adjusting the tower position. We're also buying higher quality filament and 3D printers, as that allows us to print faster, and the parts come out better looking. All of these small things don't make much of a business difference on their own, but they add up together. We also plan to hire more people that are not directly related to production. Like customer support, so you all would get better support than you are getting now (it would also save time for the rest of us), and at least another programmer, as the Azeron software has been left by the wayside and leaves a lot to be desired.
To sum up, the pricing will be as follows:
- standard queue - 150 EUR + shipping + VAT;
- priority queue - 285 EUR + shipping + VAT.
We plan to remain at such pricing for the foreseeable future. If these queues get full, we'll open them back up once production is up and we can fulfill the 30/180 day promises.
The pre-orders open:
Wednesday, 23 October 2019 16:00 UTC
The time of day remains the same as the previous days. But instead of a Sunday, it's going to be on a Wednesday.
Best regards
Team Azeron
PS: Since the store now supports signups, you can register and save addresses to speed up the checkout process.