(UPDATE, 2 April 2022)
Timeline recap since our Kickstarter launch
1. Pre-Launch: visiting potential suppliers in China, getting designs ready, selection of Manufacturer #1, and agreeing on prices (that justified the Kickstarter price level).
2. Launch: Crowdfunding Sales.
3. COVID hit the world hard.
4. Manufacturer #1 switched to face masks production and abandoned us.
5. Manufacturer #2 screwed us, by bluffing about their capabilities.
6. Manufacturer #3 produced the tooling, but then ran into our design troubles.
7. Redesigning the close- and lock function of the Bucqle.
8. Manufacturer #3 refused to continue production, due to the slow progress of the redesign. Even worse, they refused to refund our prepayments.
9. Manufacturer #4 was found in Amsterdam with a factory in China. He contacted us about why he did not see a finished product yet and then offered his services.
10. Manufacturer #4 quotation doubled our price, compared to manufacturer #1, due to all the changes in the world and a more complex product than initially planned.
11. Manufacturer #4 started to produce the new tooling.
12. The current planning is that we receive the first batch by the end of June 2022 and can start selling these online.
13. With the profits of that first batch, we can order a second batch for products for profitable sales and then again, use those profits for a new batch hopefully consisting of both crowdfunding deliveries and profitable sales, and so on until all crowdfunding orders have been fulfilled. This will take a considerable time.
14. Eventually, we should be able to deliver to each and every one of you, one way or the other, instead of pulling the plug and continuing to live our lives without this insane amount of stress. The only big IF is that we cannot generate enough sales at the new price level to fund the losses of the Crowdfunding campaign, but if that would happen, we would have tried everything possible.
15. The future timeline of batches with your orders in there is something that depends on the pace of our new sales and today cannot be forecasted. As soon as we get the first batch out of the door and reopen our web shop, we can make a better prediction based on our sales volumes. We are planning to deliver the crowdfunding orders on First-In, First-Out, while people that pledge €25 extra to cover our loss will obviously jump the line.
16. To show you that we are making progress, we are planning to shoot videos of the production process by the end of April, show you footage of finished products by the end of May, and show you footage of the entire batch ready for shipment by the end of June. This is a 100% promise from us and our new manufacturer to you. You must take the timings as estimates, as China is currently facing a new Covid outbreak with many lockdowns … Sorry, you can read this in the news, we are not making this up, it is not an excuse but a very hard fact that we have to deal with.
We understand your frustration at this point, but again, our mistakes in combination with external factors have pushed us into this situation, leaving us the option to proceed the proposed way or pull the plug and file for bankruptcy, leaving you and us empty-handed with a failed crowdfunding project.
Please find attached some photos of the tooling and products to show you the insights we have. Due to the current new lock down in China we are waiting for videos, but we will share those as soon as we can.
We hope that this approach will, in the end, make everybody happy. Necessity knows no law.
We thank you for your understanding and patience.
Team Bucqle
