General info about shipment and manufacturing

Won’t hold our breath but if true about the DHL pickup that is good news.

What about the forgotten countries…India…Bahrain…Kuwait…Saudi,…UAE? Any updates for them? @Philips_Support_T @Philips_Support_N

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Sounds good.
Since I found you here (of course u guys are very busy)
Just one query.for the remaining u.s backers what month do you estimate for delivery.(no pressure but would be great if we get an idea of the month of delivery )
Thanks and stay healthy

Hi,
This message is going to sound cynical, so I will apologise in advance.

History:- I backed in November 2019, but I had previously backed in October and requested a refund. Alas, that was a big mistake. Now I have never invested in a crowdfunding campaign, nor would I usually want to, due to the risks associated with funding an unknown unestablished company to produce a product which might not even materialise or be possible to manufacture.

The Picopix Max, however, was a mature campaign which was being produced by “PHILIPS”, a well established corporation, promising to start manufacturing at a rate of thousands of PPMs per week, (I’m at work currently, "working from home :wink: ", so I don’t have the time to specifically reference quotes) and they would deliver before December 2019. This would mean that I would essentially be a customer, rather than a backer. I will categorically state that these were my reasons for backing and yes they were naive, but I think it’s important that there is some transparency to my upcoming logic.

I do feel mislead, due to the following:

  1. It was misleading to call yourselves Philips, it was a good advertising strategy to lure people in like myself.
  2. Specifications regarding autofocus, 4-corner correction not now being possible under certain conditions.
  3. Stating you were ready to manufacture back in November/December 2019
  4. The continuous promises to manufacture at a rate of thousands per week (I think at one point there was a promise to produce thousands per day (I’ll search for the quote if contested)
  5. There seem to be new reasons every week, which were foreseen back in December, that are producing bottle necks in your manufacturing.

Please can we be provided with some clarification as to why it isn’t possible to produce thousands of PPMs per week, when there’s sufficient stock of the light engine and also 2 manufacturing lines? I thought the point of the addition of this secondary line in the better factory was to improve the efficiency and rate of the manufacturing process? So far, there have been no significant increases in manufacturing rate.

I shouldn’t complain, and I’m not complaining about aspects which are out of your control- shipping and COVID delays. Yes, the manufacturing rate has been slowed by COVID and the lack of employees able to work on the manufacturing line, but it’s been a sufficient period of time that those employees have been able to return to work such that we should be able to see some real improvements.

I’m advocating for the case of some sort of discount being possible here- for all backers who’ve received and for those who haven’t (obviously for those who’ve backed within a reasonable period of time). I know @IvoGrijt has brought this up before, so kudos. I can already foresee the argument against this though, that there are increased costs due to shipping, that there is a bottleneck in the manufacturing rate of the light engines and this isn’t our fault (there’s > 1000 of them in stock now!) , and there is COVID. Well, once Philips have fulfilled the backer orders and COVID is over (please be soon for us all) they can sell to distributors, whom then can sell to large Media stores, websites etc. The backer list is finite and while producing for us will likely yield either a smaller profit margin or loss, they will profit from selling to websites and distributors (I don’t know much about this component of the business model). This product will be on the shelves for a couple of years to come and Philips will make back any losses quite easily.

Notice I said Philips above, I note that it seems to be Philips when selling to people, but Screeneo when having to discuss reasons for delays…I think it’s only reasonable that I ask for some accountability here, since it is our money which has been used to start this process, our insights (albeit not mine) which have helped develop it and our patience which at times wears thin.

In summary to my long winded rant, although I intend on it being more of a discussion:-

  1. Reasons for the manufacturing being <1000 per week
  2. Discount for all

I look forward to your responses and our forthcoming discussion :smiley:

David

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I might have already made a boo boo, I think I’ve misread regarding the quantity of light engines. Okay, still though, let’s see some real figures. What are the stock levels like for this component at this time?

Everything is in stock. The only critical component is the light engine which comes everyday to our factory: 500 today, 500 tomorrow and then 300 a day. Really tough to make this engine due to high brightness for the size. We didn’t plan to have so much issues with this supplier. We are controlling the quantities everyday with him.
In fact here are the main issues we had during this development:

  • Light Engine cost: increase from TI in Sept, we lost around 30 USD per device
  • Autofocus issues: we managed to find the problem but that cost some delays in January
  • Software: issues with Google and Widevine: but that’s done. Our product is pretty stable now and we will release a new super update
  • Light Engine production capabilities: the suppliers told us they can provide 5K a week… In October, they even refused to ship us the engine and ask us to pay more. They saw that we were tied up with this Indiegogo project
  • Covid 19: that didn’t help at all!
  • Customers complaining directly to the CEO of Philips: that is not helping at all, instead to focus on production we need to focus on those cases
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@Philips_Support_N Could you please share your backers the planned shipment strategy and forecast such as the batch of planned set of countries or contribution ranges moving forward and probably tentative shipment schedule?

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yeah!! great news!

Hello, we can do it only weekly.

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@Philips_Support_N I understand your viewpoint. However, at the moment it’s really hard to get an idea of where we stand in the queue or if forgotten. So atleast at every shipment announcement if you could declare that upto this contribution ID or for these countries we have closed all cases(shipped everything) then it will help backers to set right expectations.

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Very comprehensive and precise message.
For a change would request at least once to answer my question re expected month of delivery to remaining backers in the u.s.
Not even received one answer till now.

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Thank you @Philips_Support_N for the explanations. These are good points!. I think that this is something that many backers were hoping to read without asking. I think that sharing the hard points in the production is something that make everything more transparent!

Thank you again :ok_hand:

yes this is something we will do at the end of the campaign: a recap on all positive and negative points

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did you manage to decrease the fan noise?

this is a surprise in the next update :slight_smile: We are testing it now

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@Philips_Support_N any update on shipping to the countries on the list where the expenses for shipping tripled or quadrupled. You had mentioned you were looking for alternatives. Any progress there?

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yes we are still checking

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Hi @Philips_Support_N. Can I check how many units are shipping to Singapore on the latest shipment, and whats IGG contribution number it is up to?

I certainly hope that you are going according to IGG contribution number and not an arbitrary number for each country, which amongst other things could be based on how much complaints each country raises, in which case you’re just inviting more complaints.

Hey @Philips_Support_N, could you please advise what is the timeline for shipment to Czech Republic? Thank you in advance, Rudolf

CZ: 19 backers for this shipment
SG: 0 for this batch

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