Hope you guys had a much better week than we did and it’s really heartbreaking to have to make this announcement. After some harsh testing, the fiberglass tape for PIE did not meet our quality standards and is going to delay the assembly and shipping by 2 weeks minimum and 4 weeks maximum. We are truly devastated to announce that shipping will be delayed to mid-August and owe you an explanation.
Per our Update #9, samples for PIE’s final fiberglass tape arrived on July 2nd. The design was just as we had ordered, markings were pinpoint accurate, and the print quality surpassed expectations. All in all, we were very satisfied with them. We planned to receive the full lot by July 16th, start assembly on the 17th, run quality checks and start shipping by July 27th.
However, the full 2,000 pieces of fiberglass tapes that we received this week were not of the same quality as the samples and did not meet quality standards. After 3 days of running the tape on our test jig, its printed markings started to smudge after about 30,000 repeats of pulling and retracting. 50,000 repeats left some serious damage. This had not happened with the samples.
30,000 pulls means that you can take 10 measurements daily for more than 8 years. And of course, PIE has a display that shows you the size measurement and so you don’t really need to ever look at the printed markings. Still, the markings are a way for us to show and guarantee you that PIE is always accurate, and some of you might be planning to use PIE more often than others. More importantly, we just cannot repay you for the support with anything less than perfect.
We addressed this issue with the supplier, who admitted the defect and gave his word that he would deliver extra-coated fiberglass tapes, the same quality as the original samples, by August 4th. We already have everything else ready and will be able to start the assembly line(which has been waiting for some time now) by the second week of August and start shipping on the week of August 13th. And of course, we’ll keep updating you every week along the way.
We are truly sorry for the delay announcement and hope you all agree with us in that quality beats everything. Rephrasing a quote from Nintendo’s famous producer Shigeru Miyamoto, we believe that a delayed product is eventually good, but a rushed product is forever bad. Please share with us if you have any other thoughts.
Lastly, since shipping has been delayed until mid-August, we’ll keep the shipping surveys open until August 4th so that you can make any changes to your addresses. You will receive a final call notification from Kickstarter 48 hours before it closes.
Well, that’s it for this week. Again, we’re genuinely sorry for the delay and will do everything we can to shorten it as much as possible. Please fill out your shipping surveys if you haven’t already done so, and message us if you have any questions or comments. We’ll see you next Thursday.
