Here's what's been happening since I wrote you last:
My order hit the sea right before Chinese New Year!
It landed in Long Beach a few weeks ago
The Pitchers should arrive at my studio this week—Wednesday March 6 is the estimate
Coffee orders, tea orders, filter orders, sticker orders... lots of stuff being ordered
The shipping survey will be sent out this week
What this means for you:
The survey will be where you give me your shipping address, you will pay for shipping (as I did not collect any shipping fees during the campaign), and you'll have a chance to add on any additional items (like glassware)
If you are in Chicago, I encourage you to select "Local Pick Up" in the survey. I will announce an "open studio" event when I have the product available to get from my North Side Chicago storefront. If this date happens to not work for you, there will be other "business hours" announced as well.
Production/packing should be wrapping up this week!
We are looking at booking our freight shipment somewhere between February 7-13
This likely means the freight will arrive in Chicago in late March!
What this means for you:
I will be preparing the shipping "survey" to go out once the freight is on its way to the US
The survey will be where you give me your shipping address, you will pay for shipping (as I did not collect any shipping fees during the campaign), and you'll have a chance to add on any additional items (like glassware)
If you are in Chicago, I encourage you to save the shipping costs and simply come to my studio/storefront to pick up—I will announce an "open studio" event when I have the product in my studio. If this date happens to not work for you, there will be other "business hours" announced as well.
Manufacturing is underway, so I wanted to share a few visuals.
Below you can see the latest two pre-production samples which I received last week. The tweaks and updates to the glass are subtle (for most people) but are completely dialed in now! We were able to kick off glass manufacturing—which is the most time sensitive since it is all done by hand.
The corks are not sealing quite as well as I had hoped, unfortunately. After a few samples that did not quite nail it, I decided to order a bunch of stock corks and see what I could learn. It turns out the softness of the material, the angle of the cork and the slight inconsistency of the handmade glass make a trifecta of variables that I believe are driving the issue. The stock cork on the right fits wonderfully, though—so I was able to use that as a baseline and update the design. I should have new samples to test within a few weeks.
Below is a fun new detail I was dialing in on the glass—a new variation on the Manual logo:
This radial layout plays better on the bottom of glassware, and I'm excited to roll this out across the Manual line going forward! Below you can see the bottom in more detail: the new logo, the glass seal, and a slight indentation in the middle. Like I said, these things are subtle, but the details make the design.
And finally for this visual update: the packaging!
Packaging for glass is always a challenge—how do I protect a fragile object that needs to be shipped around the world—and without using foam/plastic? After years of glass products I'm hopeful I've finally found a way to economically protect the products while not having to mold custom pulped paper packaging (like an egg carton—they look awesome, but the molds can be costly).
If you were curious, I always mock up my packaging and test it out:
Just a reminder of the estimated timeline:
December-January 2024 - Manufacturing
February-March 2024 - Shipping from factory to Chicago
April-May 2024 - Fulfillment of orders
As you may know, China celebrates new years with 4-6 weeks of vacation where almost all business grinds to halt. So we are up against an early February deadline—if we can get the manufacturing wrapped in the nest month, and then spend January getting it all packaged and palletized and on a ship, we should be good for early April fulfillment. If we miss the CNY deadline, it will certainly be late May/early June. I'm optimistic we can make it work on the earlier side.
That's all for now. Thanks for following along. Feel free to leave questions below!
And with that, this crowdfunding campaign is now over.
Thank you!
In the end we hit $21,218—double our goal. More importantly we have 258 people who believed in this project, and wanted to have the Pitcher in their life. I genuinely appreciate you.
You unlocked two stretch goals; everyone will be receiving a sticker pack and their choice of coffee or tea. You'll get to select your coffee/tea in a few months when I send the shipping survey.
To celebrate, I'm having an open studio this Sunday.
Come see the new Slow System Pitcher prototypes in action brewing Ceramic Coffee (a fresh new Chicago micro-roaster), munch on some amazing baked goodies from Del Sur Bakery (a small batch Filipino-inspired bakery, as seen at local fave Side Practice Coffee), and play a round of ping pong in the Manual studio. If you're in Chicago, I'd love to see you!
For those of you that have backed a crowdfunding campaign before, you know the basics:
Your credit card will be charged in the next 48 hours (If it fails, you'll have a week or so to fix it)
I'll submit my purchase order with my manufacturer
They will produce a final "production sample" for me to approve
If all goes to plan, December to January is when manufacturing of the pitchers will happen
If we can get manufacturing done before Chinese New Year (when all factories close for 4-6 weeks) then the products will be in transit roughly from February-March.
Somewhere in March I'll likely send the Backerkit survey—this is how I will get your shipping address, you'll pay for shipping (or select local Chicago pick up at my storefront studio) and you'll be able to add on any other things you'd like to purchase.
If all the previous phases go to plan then shipping and local pick up will happen in April/May 2024.
If you have any questions, please comment below or send me an email. I hope you're as excited as I am!
