Fri Feb 9 '18 Announcement
about 8 years ago
– Fri, Feb 09, 2018 at 09:58:26 AM
Dear backers,
In our previous update, we mentioned that the molds would be flown to the Netherlands. We are happy to tell you that the molds arrived good and well in the Netherlands along with the production samples from the third feedback round.
We are now awaiting customs clearance for the molds and samples before the can be transported to our production partner. Our production partner confirmed to us today that the molds and samples will arrive at their company next Monday (February 12th).
On Monday we will review the production samples and the molds to decide which final steps are necessary to start production. Our engineers Arjen and Richard will be on side with our production partner fulltime to be able to iterate quickly and execute the feedback as quickly as possible.
Next week we will share a detailed planning based on our findings regarding the molds and production samples. So stay tuned for our next update!
Enjoy your weekend!
Much love,
Team Knops.
Fri Feb 2 '18 Announcement
about 8 years ago
– Fri, Feb 02, 2018 at 09:36:48 AM
Dear backers,
Thank you all for keeping faith in us! We are working around the clock, so we can start the production and shipping of our product as soon as possible. As always we want to be as transparent as possible and keep you all in the loop.
Everything is looking great and this means that we are almost ready for full production. As of now, the molds are being finalized in China. Our partner in China delivers great work and is taking the product to the next level. We are now in the third feedback round, which is the last round of feedback within China. The process of finalizing took longer than we expected as this depends on many factors. Also, this was a time-consuming phase because after each round the production samples had to be shipped to the Netherlands to test those samples. Next week, the new samples and the molds, after this last feedback round, will be flown into the Netherlands so we can iterate much faster with our Dutch production partner and test directly after any adjustments. This means production can almost start at this stage.
Unfortunately, we weren’t able to ship the first orders by the end of January. We are sorry to keep you waiting a little bit longer, but it will be worth the wait. We want to ship the product as bad as you want to receive it. In this stage, we have to wait for the molds the coming week to make sure all is well delivered and we can identify the situation to enter the last stages of finishing the product. Shortly after receiving the molds we’ll provide you with a detailed planning on the final steps.
We want to show you all as much as possible of the production process of Knops. Below you can watch two videos. The first shows the production samples of the Knops earplugs after the second feedback round. The second video gives you an impression of how the rings for Knops are made.
Video one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PT7EirWF3z8
Video two: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOUDeKfErJE
(the embed function didn't work, therefore the links to the videos)
We kindly ask you for some more patience as this is fine engineering work that needs to be delivered in the best possible way.
We will share a new update next week, stay tuned.
Much love,
Team Knops.
Tue Jan 16 '18 Announcement
about 8 years ago
– Tue, Jan 16, 2018 at 06:42:49 AM
Dear backers,
With this update we would like to remind you of filling in the Backerkit survey! :)
We are going to use all the data from the Backerkit surveys to ensure the fulfillment and shipping process goes as smooth as possible.
So please make sure you fill in the Backerkit survey as soon as you can access it.
IMPORTANT: You will be notified by Backerkit within 11 days after you made your pledge.
You can access the survey via this link using the email address you used to pledge to the Indiegogo campaign.
If you have any questions, please leave a comment.
Much love,
Team Knops.
Thu Jan 11 '18 Announcement
about 8 years ago
– Thu, Jan 11, 2018 at 10:28:27 AM
Dear backers,
Welcome to our first message of the year, a promising year for Knops. We want to take this opportunity to wish you all the best for 2018! Knops feels blessed to have you on board as our backers and supporters. We have a lot of exciting (visual) news to share with you.
On the picture above you see the first production samples after we finished making the molds. This was around the end of December.
As you can see our final prototypes have arrived. So what now? Well, we are busy checking all the specs and details. What we mean by this is that we are preparing the molds for production as making adjustments to the molds is very detailed work. Furthermore, we have started assembling some parts to see if they all fit perfectly. Also, from these samples, we have started testing them in different acoustic levels to see how they perform. We have now started tuning some of the assembling machines and are almost ready to start full production. Yep, a lot is going on!
Knops Original and Gold Plated production samples in the Knops case.
As shown above, we received our production samples. But, what is the first impression? Well, the quality of these first samples is better than expected. When making a product using molds you can calculate and anticipate a lot of things, but you have to iterate to create that golden sample. So we’re really happy that these first samples are already of high-quality, and have started with fine tuning right away to be able to produce a perfect sample as soon as possible.
This is the final stage of Knops, the fine-tuning of all these different parts until everything is set to perfect levels. You could compare this to tuning the strings of a guitar until they sound just right. This fine-tuning consists of altering the molds accurately with tiny steps. We use these very accurate machines to make these tiny adjustments to the molds. See the image of one of the machines above.
As mentioned in a previous update, we were looking into the possibilities to scale up production as soon as possible. Once we produced the first batch of products and we are satisfied with the result and quality we ready to scale up production. This will enable us to ship way faster, also to our backers in the second batch.
We are still on track to ship the first orders by the end of this month. We will share an extended delivery schedule very soon, so you know when to expect your order!
On the Knops earplugs will be an L (left) or R (right) so you know in which ear to plug in your Knops.
Thank you all for your patience until now, we’re very grateful for this. We understand that you are excited to receive your pair of Knops and we can ensure you that our new product will be worth the wait. The whole team is looking forward to start shipping. We are working around the clock to arrange and produce everything as fast as possible, we’re almost there.
We’ll keep you all posted and share a new update next week!
Much love,
Team Knops
Mon Dec 18 '17 Announcement
over 8 years ago
– Mon, Dec 18, 2017 at 07:50:33 AM
Time flies when we are having fun! We are already two weeks into December, and we have made a lot of progress.
This week we finalized the design of the packaging and the user manual. We are very happy with how this turned out and we will be sending everything to our printing company today. This company will produce the packaging and user manual for Knops.
We are setting up high-quality test equipment for quality control and expect to have this 100% functional next week. In quality control, it’s quite common to test products sample-wise. But for the first production batch, we’re going to test every single pair of Knops for every different setting. In this critical first stage of production, we want to make sure that all products are fully functional in order to provide everyone with a high-quality premium product.
In the last update, we told you that we were exploring options to scale the production capacity. In order to do this, we have to purchase an extra ultrasonic welding machine. We expect to have good news about this next week. If so, it’s easier to set up the delivery schedule, so we can be clear about when you can expect your pair of Knops.
We understand that you are all waiting for a definite date as to when your pair of Knops will be delivered. For now, it is still difficult to give you an exact date. This because the whole process of testing and perfecting your pair of Knops is a very detailed engineering part of the pre-production and also depends on the feedback that comes out of these testing phases. The test results of our samples from the first batch will give us feedback whether or not that batch is 100% perfect. Then we might have to finetune, and retest, re-adjust etcetera.
It could be that the first batch is almost perfect. However, there is always a possibility for things to arise. That is why the entire engineering team is going to be onsite during the production batches, to ensure a quick response time to any possible test feedback that might indicate a necessary last fine tuning. We expect to ship the first orders in January.
We are telling you this to be as clear and transparent as possible, and hope you understand why we are still a bit vague on when we will be delivering your pair of Knops to you.
As promised in a previous update, here is part 3 of the interview with Arjen and Richard. This time they share some insights into making a brand new product. In case you missed the earlier parts, you can read part 1 here and part 2 here.
Much love,
Team Knops
