CELLv1.0 Progress – Doing it right

The serial entrepreneur in me is screaming “GET IT DONE” constantly, but my hare-brained personality needs to be a little more turtle-ish for this one.

It’s been just over a month since the Kickstarter successfully funded and it feels like an eternity – but that’s good! I think. So much has happened, and mostly good things! Some of it will be kept up in these posts (blog.sparqee.com) and others in the forums (forum.sparqee.com) since they may be technical pieces. So what’s happened?

CELLv1.0: On to the fun stuff – the board! All the final designs are done, the boards are here, the parts are here, the new paste is in, the masks are here, the certifications are lined up, now it’s build/test time!

Logistics: Logistics has actually been quite a time suck and is one of the most frustrating parts. Making sure everyone gets what they expect, didn’t under or overpay and if they did, correct it. Correcting credit-card processing errors, picking dev points, dealing with Kickstarter’s VERY limited console (BTW: for the survey Kickstarter gives you radio buttons or fill-ins, that’s it! AND every field MUST be answered… not my fault people, just the nature of the beast.)

Distributor: Yep, I’m Hare-brained thinking that I’d have a big announcement for everyone already… it’s coming, but for a sneak peak, we’re working with a great distributor and really excited where things are headed. Contracts are in the works.

You know how this post is called “Doing it right,” well, one bad thing about going with a distributor is that we have to do it right rather than quick. For the longevity of this project, product, and thus company, there are some delays happening. We put some “slop” into the schedule to provide for just these types of circumstances to deliver on time, but the wiggle room is slowly running out. Once we get the contracts in place and solid quotes back from the distributor’s assembly house (It’s thrilling to be in the big house BTW) then we’ll be able to set a more definite timeline.

Don’t get me wrong, we’re still blazing forward and can see the finish line – it’s comin!

As always, we appreciate all the support of the community that helped push this project, product, and company to the next level. We look forward to getting the product out ASAP and are fully focused on providing the best product we can!

-Chris