City of Shenzhen

March Update: Three Week COVID Delay

In the time since our last update, we’ve continued to make steady progress and conclude our QC checks on the individual components from our molds. However there is a very slight delay of three weeks as we’ve had to postpone our flight to the factory. This is due to the Shenzhen lockdown that happened earlier this month, and while technically lifted, continues to impact logistics of a few of our final components coming out of that region.


Let’s take a closer look at that:

Shenzhen Lockdown Causes Slight, Three Week Delay

While the assembly and manufacturing of many of our components is being done in Mexico, some components do need to be sourced from other places around the globe. The increasingly globalized supply chain for modern manufacturing is due to a number of factors, and any sufficiently advanced product will require components to be sourced from a variety of regions. The iPhone, for example, features component suppliers and manufacturing that’s spread across 43 different countries and 6 continents!


In some instances components can only be sourced from a particular region. This may be because the tooling for creating said components is so complex and expensive that only one or a handful of factories are set up to produce it. It could also be a climate based limitation or a limitation of the ability to transport the raw materials needed to produce the end component. 


Other instances are merely a cost savings measure due to labor or transportation costs being too high to make sourcing components from a particular region a wise business choice.


In our case, the power supply used for the Instafloss is produced in Shenzhen and in all of our testing (58 different power supplies were considered before we selected this unit), the only power supply we were able to identify which met our strict requirements was produced there, and nowhere else.


These power supplies, like some of the other components within the Instafloss, feature manufacturer warranties that begin when the parts have shipped. So we purchased the power supplies, with the agreement that they would be shipped when needed for manufacturing. This is an example of another trend in modern manufacturing known as Just in Time inventory or JIT. You can learn more about it here.


Shenzhen locked down for COVID just before our parts were supposed to be shipping out. Luckily, the lock down is already being eased with 50% capacity being allowed in workplaces now. However, there is now a small backlog at freight forwarders and shipping industry within Shenzhen as they struggle to catch up with the backlog that the week long closure caused while still operating at 50%.


In talks with our Shenzhen based supplier, we estimate that our parts should be able to be in Mexico in 2 weeks from now. As a result, we’ve changed our plans to fly out for assembly QC in 3 weeks, giving the parts an additional week just in case there is some delay in shipping.

Next Steps

Our next step and update should be coming from Mexico where we’ll be directly overseeing an initial, small batch manufacturing run of about 100 units. This test manufacturing run will enable us to ensure all of our molded parts are working together seamlessly as current prototypes and samples use a mix of CNC machined, 3d printed, and molded parts which may not represent how tolerances will really stack in the mass manufactured models.
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7 comments

I haven’t flossed since I ordered my Instafloss!
Can I haz maybe one of these 100 ? 😇👀
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Instafloss replied:
We hope to ship your Instafloss very soon, but please make sure to take care of your teeth in the interim!

Dylan

How am I able to update my shipping address for my preorder?
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Instafloss replied:
Hello Darin,

Please email us at Smile@Instafloss.com and we’d be happy to assist you with that!

With Smiles, The Instafloss Team

Darin

10-second floss time is with the wait!!

Ms Margie

I’ll be moving in a couple months when is this product expected to ship to customers?
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Instafloss replied:
Hello Lucas,

Check out our latest update if you haven’t yet, but our current ETA is November, 2022.

With Smiles, The Instafloss Team

Lucas

Thanks for the update. Hoping it is worth the wait. 😀 Thank you for ensuring quality of product rather than just substituting cheaper or more readily available parts.

Sharon

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