I know everyone is excited and anxious as we near the end of April, our target ship month. We deeply appreciate the patience and enthusiasm as we are working hard to finalize details that didn't perform as expected on the prototype. It is important to us that the quality of the Argos is up to our standards and your expectations.
Unfortunately, it's become clear that we will not be able to ship by the end of April. This is my first time leading a small batch manufacturing project and as such we were overly optimistic about timelines to complete all the final tasks. My day job has been very busy lately, further reducing my bandwidth to get items finalized and the necessary systems in place for production. These are not meant to be excuses but to provide transparency on why our estimated shipping date of April will be missed.
In order to wrap up final tasking, I will be taking 1-2 weeks off of the day job to focus on closing out the remaining production setbacks.
Now what?
1. We now have a launch checklist to provide full transparency on what’s left.
We’ve gotten feedback that our newsletter updates are lacking on what's actually left to complete. This checklist will be updated every time we start working on and complete a task. This should provide clear transparency on how close we are to finalizing everything.
2. We will be hiring design engineers to help us with revisions.
It’s clear that for this to be done in a timely manner, we will need some help. These revisions relate to how some specific parts mount and interact with each other, and making small adjustments to better fit off the shelf parts to keep cost low. These tasks may be tedious and time consuming but are nonetheless important and necessary. We’ve already begun talking to some people that are excited to help and will be starting very soon. I will still be reviewing all final designs to ensure it meets our standards and expectations.
3. Estimate shipping dates are hard, we expect to start shipping this spring/summer.
There is always a level of uncertainty when picking a target completion date. The more specific the date, the more margin you have to add to ensure it's met. Nothing is certain until machines are shipping. Instead of communicating a specific date or month, we want to focus on transparency of what's left through the launch checklist and making consistent progress. We are expecting to ship this spring/summer. We feel good about this estimate, but want to reiterate that it is an estimate. The launch checklist is the best way to keep track of our progress.
4. We want to provide an extended warranty on all our existing orders.
As a thank you for your patience, we will be extending our standard 12 month manufacturer warranty as noted in Section 10 of our Terms of Service, to 36 months to all current customers as of April 24, 2022 as a way to instill confidence to the initial backers that are making this product a reality.
Hardware
Double spouted portafilters are ordered with an estimated 3 month lead time.
The first product packaging samples should arrive tomorrow or early next week. Very excited to see these in person and test out the unpacking experience with a prototype machine.
Picture of the packaging sample from one of the suppliers. Great work by Sam and Michelle on this!
Software
Working on getting apps published for both Android and iOS
Thanks,
Ross Ainsworth