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Winter One shipping date pushed back to late January
Hello everyone, I’ve got unfortunate news about shipping dates for Winter One’s first batch. Due to issues we ran into, we’re pushing back our estimated ship date to late January. I know this is disappointing to hear, and in order to be transparent, I’ll walk through what went wrong and how we’re addressing it.
What Went Wrong: Our Packaging Supplier Backed Out
On Tuesday, a key supplier for the Winter One packaging that we originally contracted a month ago called us this week and said they were backing out of the deal. They currently don’t have the capacity to accommodate us right now due to an overwhelming holiday season.
How We’ve Addressed It:
We spent the last few days looking for and securing a new packaging supplier. We have found another supplier who is able to meet our packaging needs, and placed an order with them on Friday. Unfortunately, they will not be able to deliver packaging before Christmas.
What Went Wrong: We are having difficulty finding a lab to do material testing.
Part of our verification before production begins is having a materials lab run a metallurgy report to make sure the aluminum we are using is properly alloyed and free of defects. We have not been able to find a lab local to our manufacturers that could do this before the end of December. Shipping samples to the United States in order to use a local lab could get this report completed quickly, but may take longer than expected, due to holiday shipping times.
How We’ve Addressed It:
Samples were taken and sent to a US lab, as well as a lab local to our manufacturers. No matter which result arrives first, it will allow us to move forward as quickly as possible. If the results do not come before the Christmas shutdown, we will move forward with production but will have the factory hold the shipment until the metal reports come in so they can resolve any potential issues.
Why did we choose late January?
Late January is an estimate based on the ‘worst case' of our current lead times around production, lab testing, packaging, and QC. Pushing things back is disappointing, however I would rather not pick another ambitious shipping date and need to push the date back a second time, leading to further disappointment.
Late January gives us time to resolve these issues with the least chance of needing to make another delay announcement. If things go well, we will ship earlier and surprise you with good news at that time.
If things do not go well, we should be able to ship by the revised deadline. I know many of you were looking forward to a Winter One Christmas, and I sincerely apologize for the extra wait. I want to make sure that Winter One lives up to your expectations, and in order to do that we need more time. Thank you for being patient with us.
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