We are the founder of "The Universe Sphere" - a growing collection of beautiful desk ornaments containing parts of our Universe.
This post is for backers only. Please visit Kickstarter.com and log in to read.
Ok, to be precise, not all packages. But all regular packages and the few replaces for defective goods have been sent. We want to thank you for your patience! We know, a delay of 5 months is huge but we hope, in the end, it was worth the waiting.
43 backers did not fill out their surveys on Backerkit until today. We send reminders every week, so take a look in your spam folder, if you missed our emails.
37 backers did this and filled out their survey within the past 2 weeks. These packages will be sent now.
Hooray! We also got 491 preorders within the past months and we start shipping these right after the 37 late birds.
Thank you for your support, we hope you will also participate in our recently running campaign
The Star Constellations in a Sphere and a Game
Best regards and Merry Christmas,
CinkS labs, Christoph and Clemens
Friday 9th Nov at 18:00 CET(Ger) / 12:00 EST(US)
and will run until my birthday on
Friday 9th Jan at 18:00 CET(Ger) / 12:00 EST(US)
But, to be very honest, I am struggling to set a price for the Startets and would love to hear your comments. Please be as sincere as possible. For sure, most of you would love to get it as cheap as possible, I would for sure, but I want you to see, that there also was and is a lot of work in the game. It contains a minimum of 88 unique cards and a booklet, so we struggle between 10€ earlybird/15€ regular or 15€ early bird/ 20€ regular.
Do you think this is a fair deal?
Second question:
To make it a little more simple, we want to bundle every Sphere with an LED Baseplate, because only a few dozens of people bought a sphere without the base and some reordered them.
The price for the Baseplate would stay at 10€ and the Sphere´s at 59€ in regular, so it is 69€ then. Do you think this is legit or will lead to dissatisfaction and the question, if this is an out of season April fools joke (I guess, not everyone will get the reference, but that´s ok ^^)?
Last but not least, I would be very happy, if you support the campaign right at the beginning, so it will get a nice big impact and we will be shown as a team favorite. To make this even more attractive, we added some Early birds.
Thank you in advance for your honesty,
Have fun with the new campaign.
Best regards,
Clemens
We have some good news for you. Our laser is working, which means that the production is in full swing again. We expect the first 400 spheres at the beginning of next week and then we can start shipping them at the end of next week.
We hope that we can send out all missing packages within the next two weeks and then we can start shipping the preorders and complaints.
As soon as we receive the tracking codes for the packages, we will put them on BackerKit. Please note that if you have ordered more than one sphere, you will most likely receive two packages.
We are very sorry that you have to wait for such a long time. We learn from our mistakes and we will do better next time!
Also some good news, Clemens is currently in the last preparations for the new campaign, so we hope we can validate it through Kickstarter within the next days and launch it within the next week. We will announce it one day before the launch, so you can go for the early birds.
warmest regards,
Clemens & Team
Bad news everyone, ok not everyone, but those who still wait for their goods. After 9 years of good work, the laser diode of the machine that was used for our spheres died. Such a diode costs around 24.000€, which is not a huge problem because it was predictable, but that is the reason, why there is no other diode somewhere in the locker. On Monday we will know, whether the diode can be repaired or needs to be changed. Either way, this will need 4-5 weeks until the production can continue as usual.
When I heard this, I instantly booked a ticket for the train for the next day, went the 400km to the production facility and together, we set the settings for the other laser, so we can continue the production. Unfortunately, the laser is different, so we can only laser 7 spheres in one run. Of cause, the facility also has other customers, that shared the laser, so we can´t occupy the laser the whole time. We calculated with around 250 Spheres a week, maybe more. A new diode means an upgrade in the quality of the lasered dots, so this is a welcome surprise, especially for the star constellations in a sphere.
The production of the Pocket Milky Ways continues, so we thought we might send one for free for all of you waiting, but that would mean 500x10€ (of cause a little less for us, but still missing sales). So we decided to send each of the last 200 backers a PMW.
We also worked on the big Sphere, but it is more complex than expected. We want to try a completely new solution because nothing works really satisfying, but the recent try looked awesome. You see a clear filling paste, that we need to get rid of reflections because of the curvature of the sphere. When we pulled off the adapter it looked like a forest.
We are very sorry for the delay and hope, nobody gets too sad, mad or angry about the extension of your waiting time. I´m also a little sorry for the bad poem at the beginning, but I laughed way too hard about the Die-Ode pun, that I could not withstand.
Have a nice weekend,
Clemens & CinkS labs