its been a long time coming but finally this month a limited number of pcbs, kits & assembled units will be in stock for all 8 current projects in the underscores catalog
the best laid plans…
if you saw my introducing underscores vidicon talk from last year you might remember my rough roadmap:
- first 3 projects in stock by end of feb 2022
- next 3 projects in stock by end of june 2022
- another 3 projects in stock by late 2022
the idea was to try focus on bringing batches of 3 projects to market – avoiding my usual mistake of taking on too many concurrent ideas, but still benefiting from batch efficiency / parallel processing
this would also open up feedback cycles for the general processes before getting too far along in any one direction
as it turned out a number of setbacks delayed the shop launch:
- covid related shipping disruptions early this year made distribution from nz near impossible
- recurring issues with the sync_ope circuit caused me many revisions and much confusion
- i was away from my studio for 3 months over nz winter – traveling in australia and then visiting berlin
more the merrier
although distribution needed to be put on pause, this didnt stop my research and development ! as others projects approached a stable state i decided to add more and more to the launch line-up
the final result is an 8 product launch (although some of the more recent additions still needing proper photoshoots and demo videos)
one main advantage of this is the ability to combine shipping on mulit-orders. it works out to be a similar price to ship 3 products as it is for 1 (this calculation based on weight is built into the shopfront) so with more in stock at once you will have more options to combine and save money !
silent launch ?
im calling it a silent launch because at first there will be very little announcements regarding this. ultimately i plan to try keep everything more or less available (restocking projects in batches of 10) but currently i only have parts for between 3-8 of each project.
while managing such a large inventory i want to avoid being overwhelmed at first – i will stagger the announcements of the shop being open to allow time for feedback from early adopters and any adjustments needed to my workflow – also these initial orders can help fund the 8x10_bulk_part_order for a future full shop restock