No offense taken my friend. You have a legitimate gripe and a valid opinion on the subject. I certainly didn’t mean to make little of the delay. By all means it’s a detriment to a start up company that is trying to establish a strong foothold in the wet shaving market. And I don’t disagree with @DesertTime and @LuvWetShavin in making the statement that this delay is not minor. But, here is how I look at it. The wet shaving community, in particular the razor production side of it is still an extremely small percentage of the overall numbers of shavers worldwide. I mean lets face it, we are an extremely niche group purchasing and acquiring razors that are rather “boutique”, for lack of a better word in the grand shaving scheme. We as a group collectively have wonderful razors and tools in our possession that already give us fantastic shaves. From the straight razor that has it’s origins from Ancient Egypt, to the modern works of art today from Timeless, Blackland, Above The Tie and a few others that produce wonderful pieces of shaving tool art. Now, not all of us happen to jump on the newest and greatest piece of hardware that comes out of these professional razor artisans workshops or manufacturing facilities. They are still small scale and cater to a very minute and specific market of shavers. I myself love modern razors and I oooo and aaahh over these new releases every time they are announced and eventually sold to the market. In the end, it’s just shaving. Do I get a little frustrated with these setbacks from these makers? Of course, who wouldn’t. Again, I apologize in advance to those who thought I was making light of the minor delay point. Certainly that was not my intentions. Shave on Gents....
January update posted 9 days ago on the Rockwell site. Notice the paragraph on the imminent "price increase" statement. Hmm? I wonder why?? posted by Rockwell RazorsJan 28, 2018 • 8:49PM 9 days ago January Update - T-Bar Head Manufacturing & Assembly Dear Backers, We’ve been working diligently on all aspects of the Model T project since the last update, and we couldn’t be more excited about the progress and the feeling of really being in the home stretch! In this update, we’ll be providing some news on shipping timelines, our early discoveries from the Canadian machining and assembly processes, and what’s next for the Rockwell Model T project. Final Parts Adjustments & Shipping Timelines In the last update, we referred to the manufacturing of a new T-Bar Head that had been redesigned to accommodate the reaming of a more precise assembly hole than the originally-designed assembly hole built into the casting. This design change had been made due to the variance in full production of the original design making the part not suitable for mass assembly at the precise tolerances required to get the perfect shave! While back in December, we’d expected we were nearly done production of the new parts, we discovered an issue in the mold in our post-production quality control steps that caused the T-Bar Head’s post to be “off” by several degrees. We fortunately caught this error, fixed the mold, and have since then produced new parts that meet all specifications, and these parts are being imported as I type this! While this means that we unfortunately won’t be able to begin shipping as planned at the end of January, we’re confident in beginning shipping at the end of February and still aim to be finished fulfillment by the end of May. We’ll be sure to include lots of pictures in an update as soon as the batch assembly is complete and we have razors heading out the door to our backers - we’re as eager to celebrate the fulfillment as you all are to receive the product! Canadian Assembly Process In our last update, we mentioned that the subassembly of the Model T in our own facilities has been moving along, but it had become clear that the demand for the Model T is so significant that we would need additional machinery and additional assembly lines get up to meet the demand of our existing backers, and the additional backers / wholesalers that pledge their support or inquire about availability every day. Those additional machines have arrived, which is part of the reason that despite the above-mentioned delay with the T-Bar Head parts, we’re still confident in completing assembly within the now-smaller time window. Some Final Words & What’s Next for the Model T Beyond that, there’s one thing we know for sure that we’re certain our backers will be interested in. We’d hinted at this announcement in our last update, but there was a lot of other information in that update and we noticed the increased price announcement may have gotten lost within all the other announcements! The final retail price for the Rockwell Model T will have to be significantly higher than the price that all our backers have pledged for their pledge rewards. We won’t know the exact final price until we’ve had more cycles of full product assembly, but we’ll certainly be announcing that price to our backers as soon as it’s finalized, and we’re certain you will find that all backers have received an exceptionally good deal. And frankly, we think you deserve a great deal for all your early support and ongoing patience! As always, thank you for allowing us the time to get things right on this pilot production run. The thousands of backers who have remained with us through this whole campaign represent the true essence of Indiegogo and product crowdfunding in general - believing in an idea enough to pledge their support, and providing feedback on the project through to completion. We appreciate each and every one of you, and look forward to sharing a bunch of exciting pictures of finished products in shipping boxes, hopefully in time for the next scheduled update! Sincerely, Gareth Co-Founder, Rockwell Razors
A couple of things here. Over two years since launch and they're still making design changes and have not produced a single usable razor? They clearly have a very poor design. It is not a production issue. Anyone here who's worked for a company that produces anything has to be a little surprised that this far down the road they still don't have any idea what the product will cost. I've read folks making the excuse that they cannot know the price point before they've actually been through the entire production process. That is not the way the real world works. You might miss it by a few percent, but to be off by 50% or more is pretty uncool and would get product managers fired in most companies. Just my two cents worth.
I would go on to say that if they need more capital to meet the demand, the price should drop since they would be producing significantly more units then originally planned and the fixed developmental costs, etc are distributed over larger volumes. There should be productivity discounts to their costs. If they raise the prices, it would lead me to believe their engineering, manufacturing, and accounting are a bit weak.
