Hi there Everybody,
April was a sophisticated month with the frequently altering Tariff state of affairs. We had some delays on our imports whereas we labored on navigating this however we appear to have issues largely found out. We shipped 81 machines in April and can proceed to work on ensuring tariffs have a minimal influence on our achievement.
Manufacturing Updates:
81 machines continues to be decrease than we’d like (for quite a lot of causes) so Ross is engaged on hitting the store flooring to assist out extra with meeting and QC for the subsequent few months till we’re in a position to catch up.
We needed so as to add one other layer of transparency about fulfillments. Now we have shipped over 900 machines all time and at present have roughly 700 excellent orders whereas delivery between 80 to 100 models monthly. New preorders will probably ship in 7 months however delays are at all times doable.
Let’s have a look at some stats:
This graph exhibits all machines shipped since 2023. As you’ll be able to see, issues began off slowly as we labored on creating our processes with half time employees. In December of that 12 months, we started bringing on full time technicians, which is mirrored within the preliminary spike in shipments. The dips in meeting have been primarily as a consequence of procurement delays, particularly between batches 1 and a pair of, in addition to a slowdown throughout Chinese language New Yr this previous February. This highlights the significance of our long run buy orders, which assist guarantee a constant stream of merchandise into our store.
This subsequent graph exhibits guarantee repairs by serial quantity, highlighting machines which have been despatched again to us for guarantee repairs. This information is vital to monitoring enhancements in construct high quality and high quality management. Whereas some defects are inevitable, it’s nice to see the numerous progress we’ve constituted of the primary 200 machines to the place we are actually. This displays our ongoing efforts to enhance and guarantee a dependable product.
Some would possibly marvel, “Why not simply rent extra individuals?” That’s a fantastic query, and we have now three essential causes for taking a extra measured method.
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Inconsistency: As an alternative of increasing the workforce in an inefficient system, we’d moderately first give attention to enhancing our processes. As a brand new enterprise, we’re creating our personal requirements and procedures from the bottom up, tailor-made to our particular wants. This takes time as we establish gaps in our workflow and implement obligatory enhancements. The identical goes for constructing a constant provide chain with high-quality components.
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Sustainability: Our aim isn’t to rapidly ramp up the workforce, fulfill orders as quick as doable, after which face the problem of layoffs when demand ranges off. We’re centered on sustaining a steadiness the place we constantly fulfill extra orders than we obtain, decreasing our lead instances, and setting the stage for sustainable progress and gross sales enlargement.
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Recruitment: Whereas we’ve paused interviews lately for the explanations talked about above, discovering the appropriate individuals is difficult. We’d like people with a eager eye for each the technical facets of the builds and the finer aesthetic particulars. Given the early stage of our startup, we’re nonetheless figuring out new challenges within the store that require drawback fixing expertise and independence – traits which are tough to guage throughout interviews. That’s why we’re cautious about dashing into new hires till we’ve reached our present manufacturing targets.
We’ve utterly overhauled our stock administration course of. The workforce carried out a radical stock audit to evaluate present inventory ranges, and we’ve applied a brand new system to trace stock primarily based on our weekly construct schedule. Prior to now, stock was ordered primarily based on batch measurement, and we’d reorder as inventory ran low. Nonetheless, once we switched suppliers or ordered outdoors of the standard batch cycles, it created inconsistencies in our stock ranges. On high of that, scrap components and defects made it straightforward to miss orders that ought to have been positioned months prematurely. This led to our store supervisor manually monitoring stock, which was time-consuming and made it tough to plan forward successfully.
Now, with our new software in place, we are able to simply replace a number of key numbers every week, permitting us to robotically observe stock ranges throughout all components within the store. The following step shall be integrating extra superior software program for much more exact monitoring.
As of now, tariffs shouldn’t considerably influence the achievement of our orders.
Design Adjustments:
LEDs:
A few of the most fun information out of the previous month is new LEDs. Our authentic necessities known as for a shorter LED housing to suit across the temperature dial and steam manifold. This compelled the provider to supply a brand new LED bulb that would slot in this smaller package deal. These bulbs are rated to ~80C which is roughly the temperature that the highest plate can stand up to, nearest the boiler. We’ve discovered that the steam LED burns out probably the most which is sensible as a consequence of its proximity to the most popular a part of the machine.
After extra dialogue and testing, we’ve discovered a method to match their most well-liked larger high quality bulb in a barely longer, up to date housing. The LEDs will look the very same however are actually rated to 120C which we count on to essentially scale back the variety of failures. That is the most typical half to exit on prospects’ machines so we’ll proceed to trace these replacements in hope of an enchancment. A pilot batch of the brand new lights will arrive this week.
Drip Tray V2 Improve:
We lastly have the Drip Tray V2 Improve equipment out there on our website. This may ship instantly whereas provides final. At the moment out of matte black which is in manufacturing once more. https://store.odysseyespresso.com/merchandise/drip-tray-v2-upgrade-kit
That is additionally a good time to order the V2 Lengthy Throw Piston Linkage which permits for larger output photographs in direct mode on Batch 1 machines.
https://store.odysseyespresso.com/merchandise/piston-linkage-v2-0-long-throw
Technical Assist:
William and Wern have been working onerous on further technical assist assets. This button on our web site’s navigation bar will take you to https://assist.odysseyespresso.com/
From right here, now you can seek for a primary time period or symptom to search out a wide range of useful assets, together with images, movies, and detailed explanations. Wern has executed an excellent job documenting all the most typical troubleshooting points, together with our beneficial diagnostic steps and options.
We hope it will function each an academic information and a long run software to assist forestall customer support backlogs. We encourage you to discover this new useful resource so the subsequent time you run into a difficulty you might be able to self diagnose for a faster answer!
Sincerely,
Ross & William
