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Batch 2 Delays & the Current State of our Supply Chain
Batch 2 is delayed, with the current target date of Q2-Q3 2022.
• There's about a 3 month backlog in the Aluminum / CNC machining supply chain
• Omicron Supply Chain disruption + Holiday Order congestion
• Shipping Lanes and Ports are saturated, and many holiday shipments are running weeks behind, which pushes other orders further behind.
• Lunar New Year is happening and all factories shut down for the duration of this holiday
• Manufacturers are prioritizing larger orders, and orders where people are willing to pay a large markup for priority.
I know many of you are going to be disappointed and frustrated by this news. The entire world is dealing with supply chain disruption, and there is little small companies can do to work around these issues. It requires massive capital investment at scale to make supply chains run smoothly. Smaller manufacturers are very much at the mercy of priority queues at each stage, and unless you have a larger order volume, or pay a massive premium for each stage of the process, you go to the bottom of the queue.
We are losing money on Batch 2 as the pricing and margins of the Kickstarter + additional website Silver orders did not take into account the crazy supply chain disruption caused by COVID, and the doubling of aluminum prices and tripling of shipping costs. Despite this, we have decided to deliver the entire batch, with the understanding that there would be significant delays.
1. Silver case shipments have been moved to 2022, and we're missing our December target.
2. Accessory shipments have been moved to 2022 alongside these orders.
3. Our earliest possible (most optimistic) manufacturing dates for silver cases are now *after* Chinese New Years, which would place us in fulfillment for Q2 2022
4. A more conservative estimate for B2 shipping out to customers is Mid-Q3 2022.
We are committed to delivering, but want to communicate the very real frustrations and that we continue to do what we can to push manufacturers to raise our priority in the order queue where possible, but there's a limit to what is possible right now for a company of our scale, with the situation in the world right now.
Updates stopped for a while, as we were sorting out stuff behind the scenes to solve supply chain issues. However, many of you have expressed some frustration at the lack of updates, so we'll make sure to at least regularly post once a month, even if it's only to say "situation has not changed". We continue to be open about the state of Batch 2 and the company as a whole.
Best,
The Winter Design team