Hi Bouncers,
It’s been a roller coaster ride in the past few weeks and we apologize for this long awaited update.
In the past weeks, our focus has remained on the product development side and we are happy to finally announce that the development of the molds has finally started. As you can see below, the pressure release sound is a one of a kind and will certainly capture the attention of your fellow partners (don't pay attention to the color of the tube ;)).
We told you in one of our last updates that we’d share with you a more accurate shipping date once we’d have more visibility on the planning. Well, the time has come. We plan on shipping the tubes around May/June of 2023. We understand this is a massive blow for you and we’re very sorry about this.
Developing a product that needs to be hermetic (but user-friendly and design at the same time) is definitely a huge challenge that we thought we’d be able to overcome sooner. In the past weeks, we have done many small adjustments to the tube that have had positive impact on the hermeticity. Every series of change had to be tested and validated by 3D printing which took a lot of elapsed time (3D printing is a super cool technology but it is quite slow to get the pieces printed).
For you to understand why the tube will only be shipped around spring, we want to share with you the planning as a sign of transparency.
As you can see, the planning is challenging and doesn’t have much space for buffers. We’re also going to be unfortunately impacted by the Chinese new year and the shipping of the molds that takes minimum 1 month. Once the molds arrive in Nantes, France (our production site), we’ll be able to start producing the tubes. The whole production and assembly process will be done in France.
Now in an effort to ensure the best quality, we’ll have to gradually increase the production volumes and will have to start with smaller batches that we’ll thoroughly test. Once the quality is stable, we’ll start producing in larger volumes and shipping your tubes. It is very important that we do things in the right order because we want you to have the best experience. We certainly do not want to rush it through and make you unhappy. Having waited an extra few months is painful enough.
We know this is difficult to hear as we all want to get our tubes as quick as possible. We appreciate your support greatly and ask you to bear with us a little longer. You can trust us when we say that we’re doing everything in our power to get you the best tubes in the shortest lead time possible.
On another note, in the last update we said we’d be spending a day at Roland Garros for an inter-university tournament. One of you showed up to meet us and this was an amazing encounter. David is our backer number 9 (kudos to him) and is an affiliate in a tennis club in Paris. We showed him one of our prototypes and discussed for quite a long time. Needless to say, this was one of the highlights of our day.
(sorry for the upside-downness)
And to finish off, we'd like to thank all of you again. It is hard to put words on the beautiful messages that you guys are sending to us (sometimes even to give thoughts on the injection process of the tube).
We are doing everything that is humanly possible to create the best tube in the market and surely don’t want to disappoint you!
Have a nice one,
Greg, Antoine & Max
PS: as soon as we have the first pre-series, we'll be organizing a padel event for you guys, we will keep you posted on the date and the place.