Last update, we looped you guys in on Chipaggedon and its impacts on our business, but since then, the global chip shortage has continued to worsen, pounding businesses across the globe with a one-two punch of decreasing supply and rising costs for electrical components. Auto industry giants such as Honda and Volkswagen have begun shutting down production due to the lack of semiconductors needed for vehicle production - with executives saying they could continue to face problems well into the second quarter of this year.
We won’t bore you with the details of how it’s gotten here, but feel it’s important to show how major an event this is. We’re really dealing with unprecedented shortages on a scale that few if any have dealt with previously. With that in mind, let’s get to the update:
Chipaggedon and Instafloss: A Big Win, But Not All Good News
Our team has been working around the clock to acquire the components needed to manufacture instafloss, and we were able to secure a major win in purchasing the necessary components to manufacture ~14,500 instafloss units.
Unfortunately, despite this win it’s not all good news. We were hoping to secure more components both to fulfill all existing pre-orders and enable us to have inventory for new orders, but due to the circumstances we will only be able to deliver the current pre-orders. In one case, we had an order placed for thousands of electrical components which was snatched out from underneath us after we had paid for the order. We weren’t even notified until we saw a refund for the order pop up in our account!
Here is the production timeline, given the components we’ve been able to source:
If you’ve already ordered as of this posting, we’ve been able to source the components for your Instafloss and will receive these components in time to complete the production run in Q3 2021 (Batch 1).
We have found an additional small batch of components available at a later date, which will allow us to make a mini production run of 1,200 units in November 2021 (Batch 2). The next 1,200 pre-orders will be part of Batch 2.
Towards the end of Q1 2022, we can secure a larger batch of components, so anything beyond the next 1,200 pre-orders will be delivered in Q2 2022 (Batch 3+).
Of course we’re continuing to explore alternative options for sourcing including purchasing from the secondary market and will update you if we’re able to bring that date sooner.
Other Manufacturing Updates
The other stages of manufacturing are proceeding according to plan albeit some of the start and end dates will have to be adjusted after our manufacturer receives these components. At that time we’ll share a new timeline chart.