It’s been quite a year… and boy are we looking forward to 2021!
We started the year on down note.
- Our initial crowdfunding effort failed.
- Responses to our post-crowdfunding survey indicated our pricing was too high.
- Our manufacturing partner bailed out because covid lockdowns caused a spike in demand for the home office furniture, their main product.
The year was spent refining the design.
For the most part, people are happy with the XOOT design features. Most of our changes were aimed at lowering the build cost without sacrificing features or quality.
The design changes fall into three categories:
- Addressing customer requests and comments.
This year, several individual artists and an animation studio tried early prototypes. In general, the feedback was very positive but there are always areas to improve.
- Working with our manufacturer.
There’s a lot of back and forth to figure out the best way to make, assemble, test, and package the XOOT system.
- Working with third party suppliers.
Not all of the parts will be made by our manufacturing partner. This can lead to design changes to match the parts or a manufacturing processes of a supplier.
For all three categories we aim for a level of understanding where either side can ask “what if …”. A dialogue with these type of questions is where the best solutions are found. This is the most satisfying part of the design processes. However, transforming those “what if …” questions to working solutions is seldom easy.
Where are we now.
We’re just finishing up our last round of design changes (Changing a few parts to accommodate for an improved Spring design.) I expect it will take a month or two to finish the changes, order new parts, and test them.
If testing goes well, we’ll lock in pricing and a timeline for production. After that it’s Go Go Go Manufacturing!
That’s where things get interesting. You’ll hear a lot more from us. The focus then goes to marketing and product launch. That means a website update, contests, giveaways, and discount pre-orders.
Hang in there. We are getting sooo close.
Chris Myerchin (XOOT Founder)
