Simply because some weeks these numbers grow like crazy and some others not so much.
Being super accurate sharing them with only cause two things (as I already wrote here multiple times):
misaligned expectations;
way more work on our site that would be deducted on the “solving production and supply issues” time, “quality control” time, and “fulfillment” time. Resulting in more delays.
For example, back in summer, we needed to completely stop all the shipments to the US and reprioritize the list simply because UPS was losing devices and taking months to deliver.
Issues similar to these happen all the time. We do our best to update you and despite everything that we say we must admit that sometimes the personal reports stole time to the processes above.
Giving you all those numbers would not at all facilitate our shipments process and minimize the inquiries, rather the opposite. We already did similar experiences and it just increased the number of requests. For example, each time that we release an update, regardless of the distance from the previous one, we have a spike of contacts asking (to put it simply) “where is my device?”, “Where are my licenses”, “How is the color of the special edition”, etc., etc.
I believe that we even shared similar numbers to what you are requesting. Currently around 400 devices were already shipped for crowdfunding backers both on Kickstarter or Indiegogo (and only this report I know that will trigger DMs to me asking if a particular device was shipped, when, etc.)
It has been:
18 months since my contribution to MOD Devices in order to fund and get Dwarf
17 months since first estimated delivery date
10 months since filling the survey choosing tier 2 delivery (estimate delivery aug/sep 2021)
9 months since Dwarf is available at retail stores
1 month since the last update here
…
Today I received an e-mail saying
You must have already received your device a while ago and we really hope that you are enjoying it.
Well, I have not received my Dwarf, neither any tracking info. Any updates on progress?
As I answered you in the email this was a mistake of mine.
I generated the coupon codes for everyone since a lot of backers that already received the device were waiting for them for quite a long (including the ones that selected option 1).
By mistake, I blasted the email for everyone. And there’s no one more “pissed” with that than me for 2 reasons:
1st: as I already explained before every email that we send with updates even when we can’t deliver much news triggers a bunch of answers to which we try to respond to all. I do this mainly alone. As you probably may expect, this mistake triggered quite a lot of emails to my side in only 1h hour and even more after 12h. All have been answered for now, but I spent quite some time covering up my mistake. This shows that our community is really really engaged and on the edge waiting for news from our side - what is good.
2nd reason: I actually prepared everything to generate the coupons for backers that still didn’t receive the device on option 2, but I didn’t want to send it yet. A simple mistake on a couple of clicks made all that work a waste of time.
As you can see mistakes and issues happen and we don’t enjoy it.
Now going a bit on your counting system, and please take it with all respect:
It’s been 1 pandemic that is lasting for 2 years since the launch of the campaign. This pandemic was not happening when the campaign was launched;
It’s been countless days, weeks, and months that we can’t work “normally” (either our production) due to laws and regulations meant to prevent and tackle this pandemic.
It’s been a supply chain crisis happening for quite a long time that created huge waiting lists and lead times on the supply mainly of electronic components
As a consequence of that, many electronic components had increased in their prices that in some cases going up by factors of hundreds.
On top of that spike in the procurement costs, also the lead times to have them shipped to the buyer increased in some cases for waiting lists of years.
Quite a few of the components used or planned to be used on the Dwarf suffered from these previous points.
Despite that, we didn’t ask the backers to cover those extra costs (that we didn’t expect when we planned that campaign). We asked the backers to wait a bit longer and opened direct sales and retailers to cover those costs.
To help on this some months ago we had floods affecting Germany.
Also around the same time, we had a ship blocking for a few weeks one of the most important channels for the transport of goods on one of the most important trade routes of the world and particularly important in the electronic components industry.
Now (since about a month or so) we have a war in Europe that is affecting a bit more the full picture since it’s increasing energy costs that is necessary for multiple steps of the full process for producing and delivering any product. And let’s hope that this war doesn’t escalate to more than the country where it is happening now.
Please note that despite the previous sentence we consider that it’s already bad enough and all our prays and support should go to the Ukrainian people and we can’t wish for anything else but their houses and streets to stop being bombed and their friends and families to stop being killed.
We understand and share this frustration with all of our backers and we don’t want to use these events in order to clean our hands from our responsibility to fulfill our backers. After all, without them, the MOD Dwarf would not exist. We couldn’t be more thankful for the patience and continuous support.
Yet, we kindly ask you all to understand that all these situations and events also affected the plans that we put together 2 years ago. In fact, they affected the plans that we had 2 years ago, 1 year ago, or even 2 months or 1 month ago. The world is currently in an extremely unpredictable stage that makes it really hard for any of us to keep up with expectations even in super short terms.
So we’re headed into the 2nd quarter of the year. China is yet again locking down their citizens and, little doubt, we can expect further supply chain issues … How might this effect–or is it already effecting–Dwarf production and should we expect any further delays? Kindly asking. Thanks.
I didn’t answer you early in the morning because we were planning to release an update today. The update is out
Skies are not yet bright and shinny but things are moving.
At this stage is hard to predict how in mid/long term that will affect the production, but right now it seems that things are ok at least to reach the start of the Founders Edition production.
From the update : “Founders Edition enclosures also got their fancy coating. Production and fulfillment of those special Dwarfs are supposed to start in May.”
Translation : production may start before the end of summer and the luckiest backers from Tier 3 may receive their units before Christmas.
Sorry, it’s just the way things happened since my contribution to the campaign in late 2020 so I prefer laughing about it. I hope you won’t take it too seriously.
@funkypou you are free to take the interpretation that you want and makes you comfortable. That’s not the plan, but as you know for the last 2 years a lot of plans went almost terribly wrong. So, I can understand your perspective.
No, not at all. It’s nice to keep chill about this. The situation is clearly inconvenient and not the best, but we won’t mind your comment. We are aware that somehow similar already happened. That’s a fact, we assume it. It’s nice to keep a light view over it
HI guys, apologies for the question, but I’m in the last part of indiegogo tier 2, I have to arrange a return to my home address in the coming weeks for a couple of days and it would be wonderful to go back with the dwarf. Any idea of when you will end shipping to the remaining backers of tier 2 ?
I know, annoying question ( Sorry!) but it could be useful for my plans.
Thanks a lot!
(lastest CV synth pedalbords you have shared make me cry! Great Job! )
We hope it to be really soon. Yet, I can tell you (and you know it by now) that hopes and reality lot’s of times are misaligned in this process.
Just last week we were expecting to get a bunch of units from the factory, but an issue with the self test of them made us get stuck and not get out for our office so we could QC them and then ship.
On this specific case, this doesn’t mean necessarily that the devices are faulty. It could be that something was wrong on the self test. But before making the units move around we need to be sure.
Thanks for your fast reply Jon.
As Human beings and workers we are all subject to Murphy’s law…
Still proud to financiate your Project.
Hold on Guys in these dark times!
I wondering here… how many 3rd tiers there is?
As of now I´m starting to feel the need to buy something else, since the MOD DUO hardware limitations became really obvious with the latest plug-in updates.
Hello @rogeriocouto, sorry for the late reply. I’ve been off for a few days.
There are quite a lot of backers. Yet, we expect to start this shipments soon (right now we are finishing the few left on the 2nd “wave”).
The fact that the number is big doesn’t directly mean that we will take a lot to ship any device or not. As soon as we can we will start shipping this devices, as the number of them is big, what will happen is that the process will take a while to finish completely. How much is “the while” depends on a lot of things as you are already aware. We can’t certainly stock all parts and accessories for these devices at once so we need to rely that the supply chain will not have issues again or at least not take long to re-stock any part, component or accessory.
I believe the MOD devices all use SoC/SoM solutions, so you don’t have a separate CPU and RAM in sockets. The exact details would depend on which SoC/SoM are selected.
Sorry!) but it could be useful for my plans.
)
