Just as we thought we were out of the woods and everything was going to plan, it turns out we're not there yet.
Manufacturing in Vietnam has turned out to be much more expensive than we anticipated - especially the cost of the shipping and import duties. The shipment for the parts from China to Vietnam is also too time consuming as well as the time and cost involved for us to travel to Vietnam should we need to for quality control purposes. As a temporary solution we're moving our manufacturing of the rest of the Indiegogo and other orders to China. In support of this, we will be at the factory in China from 13 December to 27 December 2016.
The supplier who needs to post the surprise stainless steel vats and build plates has been taking time off for the recent birth of his child and has since been really hard to get a hold of. He's provided no definite time estimate as to when he will be posting out the rest of the vats and build plates which means we are unable to give those of you that are still waiting for yours, an honest and exact estimate for delivery. As he is in China, where we are headed, we hope to assist him with speeding up these delayed deliveries. We have already paid for his service which has been great up until now, thus changing suppliers now is not an option. It is also too late in the process to try and find a new supplier at this stage, as they would need time (that we don't have) to create prototype vats and build plates which we would also have to test and approve. We really hope to grow the business so that we can have stock ahead of orders to avoid being impacted by any supplier changes such as these in future.
