Hello Everyone,
Long overdue update! February was a slow month with 37 machines shipped due to some delays in us receiving parts. We couldn’t finish building any machines for a week while we waited for a freight delivery, but we’re back into our groove. March was better with 89 machines shipped and a full time hire added to our team.
Production Updates:
Unfortunately, the mad rush of shipments sent out before Chinese New Year means that our parts took extra long to unload from the port. What could have been perfect timing resulted in a 2 week delay and a hit to our schedule. The parts arrived the 3rd week of February and our build cycle had to spool back up. This time allowed us to reflect on our process and work on reducing the number of hands that each machine has to pass through before completion.
Now that production has started to steady back out, we’re working with our suppliers to prevent future delays by signing larger purchase orders with monthly releases. These agreements will not only help us bring part cost down, but also provide us with consistent deliveries to help avoid halts in assembly.
We’ve had several more shipments showing up at the end of March and continuing into April. This should allow us to avoid any major setbacks, but delays and mistakes always happen so we’ll do our best to not let those slow us down.
At the start of March, one of our old part time builders joined the team full time and has been working on both assembly and packaging. While onboarding still takes time, this will allow us to continue to grow and work towards hitting our weekly targets of 25-30 machines.
Shop Expansion:
After a lot of inspection and cleaning, we’re now getting access to the additional adjoined shop space next week. This will allow us to move our small machining equipment, inventory overflow, and packaging boxes into the new space along with a small photo studio while making more room for assembly on our current side.
Specialty Coffee Expo:
Unfortunately, we will not be attending SCA Expo this year. We’re in a pivotal point of growth and expansion and we need to stay focused on increasing our assembly rate and quality. Expo is a great time to connect with the community and other businesses so we’re sad to miss it this year but we will return again soon!
Design Changes:
The 2 biggest headaches for us are LEDs and Restrictor Valves. Even though our LEDs go through multiple rounds of testing to ensure they will last, we still see issues with LEDs ceasing to function in our machines. We think it’s due to the constant heat cycles from the top plate and its proximity to the boiler. We plan to make a small change to the top plate for improved insulation of the LED lights as well as improved processes for crimping and inspection before installation.
The Restrictor Valves are a difficult part to have manufactured consistently. These were initially introduced as a fix for difficulties with air bleed consistency. We’re working on redesigning the piston bleed valve for improved functionality while being backwards compatible. In the meantime, our new inlet fill connectors have changed slightly and allow for a slightly improved user experience without the restrictor installed. This saves our techs quite a bit of time on valve installation, QC runs, and swaps when bad parts are detected during QC while maintaining the same shot pulling experience with the Argos.
Tariffs:
Unfortunately the time has come to raise prices. We’ve been working hard to keep the Argos as affordable as possible but with the recently announced increase in import Tariffs to America, we will need to raise pricing accordingly. You’ll find that this increase isn’t a direct correlation between Tariff percentage and retail price. We’re basing this purely on COGS (Cost of Goods Sold) and passing that onto the consumer without adding additional margin on top.
The new price for the Argos will be $1220 USD effective Wednesday, April 9, 2025 when the new country specific tariffs are set to kick in. It seems like this will be a constantly changing situation so we cannot promise that these will be the only price changes based on tariffs as time continues.
Canada:
For any of our lovely Canadian customers. The new 25% additional Canadian Tariffs have kicked in this past month and are less than ideal when added on top of your initial 5-15% VAT.
If you have a machine on order we want to offer a few options to try to make this better.
1. We can ship your machine when it's ready and if these newly enacted tariffs are still in place
Odyssey Espresso will put $150 CAD towards paying the import duties if your order ends up being
subject to this new tariff.
2. We can hold your machine waiting until/if tariffs end or until you let us know that you would like to
ship it regardless.
3. We can ship your machine immediately once it's ready without any deference to the tariff situation.
4. We can cancel your order subject to our cancellation policy.
For more information about tariffs and what you can potentially do to reduce the cost of importing, see our blog post here https://www.odysseyespresso.com/blog/canadian-tariffs-march-25-2025
Never a dull moment. Freight company delivered on a truck with no lift gate so we borrowed the neighbor’s skid steer. Battery died due to the cold and locked the guy inside so had to jump start it.
Shop pup happy about the delivery!
The goods.
Installed a new portafilter shelf for storing piece parts and viewing assembled units for matching wood to each machine.
Back to assembly!
Shop affogatos with Anthony’s homemade icecream!
Sincerely,
Ross & William