Stingray update: June 29th
In short we should have all of our components by the second week of July and should resume shipping watches at that point. I will be working over the weekend to re-schedule customers and notify them of the revised ship dates. Thanks for everyone’s patience.
June 25th: Stingray Update
The crystals have been inspected by the factory fortunately the problem was limited to only a small percentage of the crystals made. Some of the pieces will need to re-worked. All of the crystals will be returned at one time and I am supposed to hear by tomorow or Wednesday how long the re-work will take. At that time I will post another update and begin revising ship dates.
Stingray Production Update
We have identified some crystals with cosmetic issues from our production batch. To ensure that we ship the best and most consistent possible product I am sending the crystals that we have on hand back to the factory for review. The issues are cosmetic and will not affect important issues such as water resistance. Checking crystals is best left up to the factory as it is time consuming and quite difficult work (i.e. one is inspecting something that is for all intents and purposes supposed to be clear). I should know by the end of next week if there will be an appreciable delay (since the inserts that I need won’t arrive until next week) and if so how long.
I have a handful of crystals that checked out okay before I decided to send the batch back for review so a trickle of watches will begin shipping this month. In the interim I am pushing up the delivery dates of all other watch orders in order to minimize shipping delays for the Stingray once the issue with the crystals has been resolved.
We are getting down to our last few handfuls of ETA movements. We have enough to keep us going at this point through the middle of July. Our latest order is due to ship any day now from Switzerland baring any unforseen production delays on their end. I mention this because given how busy the factory is (and I mean crazy busy) there is a remote chance we may be twiddling our thumbs for a week or so if there are any delays in shipping our order.
Thanks in advance for everyone’s patience. I will continue to stay on top of these issues and report back when I have more info.
Status
Stingray:
* The general ordering pages are now active.
* Pre-order customers: Shipments will actually begin this week (one week late). The reason will be outlined below. There are two current issues that may delay individual orders 1) AR coated crystals will arrive this week. This may mean that shipments due for June 9th may be pushed back if the parts are not received early enough in the week 2) The Stingray 50 and 60 Time-elapse (diamond) insert are still enroute from the factory. Orders requiring these parts will be assembled as far as possible without the parts in order to ship these orders as quickly as possible after the components arrive.
General: I am trying something new and that in the past has been largely impossible to do in order to improve communication. I am aiming to reply to e-mails pretty much every day rather than in the past where I did them in a batch once every week or so. Getting into this rhythm has actually cost me productivity this first full week back, which is why no Stingrays went out this past Saturday as originally scheduled. However I am hoping with all the improvements that we have made in scheduling and communication, as well as the change in the mix of services that we offer, that we will be able to function in a more disciplined manner. My hope is that this change will be sustainable.