October Update: Happy Halloween!
almost 7 years ago – Fri, Nov 01, 2019 at 02:48:07 AM

Hey backers!

Welcome to October's update—and Happy Halloween! As always, it's been a busy month. We're close to some big milestones for this project, and we're excited to share those with you all. Let's dive in! 

Backers in Vue

It's been awesome to see backers around the world unboxing and wearing their glasses! We wanted to highlight a few recent pictures, seen below. 

Fulfillment Progress

The good news is that we have officially completed 81% of Kickstarter fulfillment! We expect nearly all remaining Kickstarter rewards, and the majority of our pre-orders, to be delivered in November. However, many pledges might take longer if they have not provided us with complete information.

In general, pledges can be broken up into 3 groups:

1. Complete pledges: These are from backers who have sent us all their info, including address, prescription, etc. We expect to finish shipping these in November.
2. Re-worked pledges: Pledges which have encountered issues during manufacturing. Perhaps they received a defective unit or their lenses were damaged during production. Whatever the case, we've had to start over on these units, which has led to their pledge taking much longer than expected to finish. We'll aim to finish these in November, but it could take until December (especially if their lenses have to be re-done).
3. Incomplete pledges: Pledges who have still not sent us all the details required to make their pledge. These folks might not have sent us their address or prescription, or haven't specified their frame style, or have not yet paid for upgrades. These folks likely have 1-2 months before getting their pledge since we can't even start to work on their units until they give us the details necessary to do so.

For those in group 3, we'll send reminder emails, but we can't estimate timelines for them until they send us their details.

Production

Production has been running more smoothly lately. The bottleneck continues to be lens production, but our frame production levels are up to sufficient volumes where we can assemble larger volumes when lens batches are delivered. In fact, we've just recently handed off 2,800+ units to our logistics partner!

We're producing with enough volume to book full production lines for ourselves, whereas before we've had to book smaller production lines as we weren't capable of large enough volumes for our factory to justify assigning more staff to our project.

Check out the video below for what a fully staffed (~60 people) production line looks like while Vue is being made!

The team continues assisting production by packaging many rewards by hand! Some days, the office feels like a full-fledged logistics center.

What's next?

As we move toward complete fulfillment, we'll start using these monthly updates to talk about our next steps. The delivery of the V1 Kickstarter rewards is just the beginning. We'll be in touch with backers to discuss app and firmware updates, go over positive and negative feedback from backers, as well as discussing V2 development and timelines. We'll also reflect on what went well and what did not go well throughout the campaign, and how we're making efforts to improve our products going forward.

Timelines

• Kickstarter: November (longer for pledges that had issues or were missing information).
• Pre-orders: Delivery begins in November alongside final Kickstarter batches, and will continue through December.

Support

We cannot conduct support over Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, or Kickstarter messages. You must email [email protected] for support.

Remember the following:

• Check your shipping address at vue.backerkit.com. If it needs changing, email [email protected].
• We are no longer accepting changes to frame styles, colors, or lens types.
• You absolutely must send the email using the email that you originally used to make the pledge. For example, we cannot provide account access if you originally used “@gmail.com” but now you email us from “@yahoo.com”. If you don’t do this, we’ll just ask you to email us using the other email and it will extend the time it takes to assist you!

We receive hundreds more emails than normal immediately after posting updates, so we apologize if it takes longer than expected for us to get back to you!

Until next time!

With love,

the Vue team

September Update: Fulfillment Update
about 7 years ago – Tue, Oct 01, 2019 at 01:48:20 AM

Hey backers!

Welcome to the September Update! We've continued to make progress on shipping rewards, and have begun delivering colors beyond Carbon Fiber for both Classic and Trendy styles! Let's dive in!

Production

Mass production continues, as does our work supporting the manufacturing lines. Our biggest bottleneck right now is the rate of lens delivery. Our lens partner has a limited daily/weekly output, and the number of units we're able to assemble is entirely dependent on how many units they ship to us in each batch. 

That being said, we've been receiving sizable lens shipments and have begun shipping Trendy frames!

We've received batches of sunglass lenses recently as well, and we think the purple tinted lens looks great! 

It's still exciting every time we ship out a batch from our factory. We've shipped to over 100 countries worldwide so far and have really enjoyed hearing from folks around the world who have been wearing their pair of Vue. 

We also have many pledges with multiple pairs of glasses in them. These are typically stored at our office until all the units in the pledge are finished, at which point they are packaged together and shipped to the backer. Our office has been packed with these boxes lately!

Ongoing Issues

The complexity of making tens of thousands of unique lenses has been, and continues to be, our biggest bottleneck. Our lenses are made in batches by the thousands, which is the fastest way to get them made. Unfortunately that means that if there is a slight drift in the dimensions of those lenses, it's harder to catch.

An example of this can be seen from a recent batch we received for Trendy frames where the lenses were too large and would not fit into the frames. 

The only option is to buff the edges of the lenses with a special machine until the dimensions are reduced, or to have our lens factory completely re-do the entire batch of lenses. Unfortunately, neither solution is quick, and inevitably means this particular batch for assembly will be slower. For some backers who expected to receive their reward by now, this might be one of the production issues that is temporarily delaying your delivery. 

Batch Order

Now that we have begun to fulfill both Classic + Trendy rewards, we will be going back through and fulfilling rewards that didn't make it through production the first time around. We've seen many backers note that they have not received their reward despite having either an early backer number or seeing their reward type on the timelines we've posted.

While the timelines provide a rough sense of when most units will ship, they won't apply to everyone. Here are the main reasons your unit might not have shipped yet:

1. Your lens was damaged in production, and has to be re-made.
2. Your specific lens type was low in stock with our lens partner, and we're waiting on new stock to be delivered. 
3. You updated your lens prescription, which bumped you back in the queue.
4. You have multiple pairs, and not all of your pairs have been made.

While we wish we could simply ship in the exact order that every reward was placed, it's not possible. Producing tens of thousands of glasses with multiple styles, colors, and unique lenses is too complex to stay in exact order.

If you have not been notified of shipping yet, hang in there! We appreciate the patience and we will get to you as we continue to work through production. Your notification will arrive via email.

Timelines

We've made good progress, and are now working on Trendy units! Please note that this does not mean we have shipped all Classic units. We'll continue to assemble and ship Classic units as we receive batches of lenses from our lens partner. Due to issues listed in the "Batch Order" section above, our weekly rate of assembly has varied a lot. You'll notice these updates to our timeline below:

We're working hard to fulfill most of the remaining Kickstarter rewards by October! For straggling rewards that haven't shipped (most often because prescription information has still not been submitted), we'll begin shipping those in parallel with our pre-order units. 

Production Lookup Tool

In the past month, we've been overwhelmed with email inquiries. We are a small team, and most of our staff has been nearly full-time at our factories to help move production along, including on weekends. We know everyone is eager to receive their rewards, but with such a small team, emailing us to inquire about your pledge adds hours of work per day for the team. Long-term, we need to grow our support staff so that we can handle this volume, but we're still operating on some strict budgets which has enabled our project to achieve its goals over the years. When backers email us to ask where their unit is, the answer will more often than not be "it isn't ready yet, we'll email you when it is". 

To remedy this, we've been working on an online tool that backers can use to check their production status. We are aiming to launch this tool in the next few weeks. The tool can be used to lookup your exact pledge and its status—meaning you can see whether your lenses have been received at our factory, whether your unit is in production, or whether there is an issue with your pledge that you need to fix. This will help to alleviate the support workload as we'll be able to auto-reply to backers with a link to the dashboard, freeing up hours of time for us to focus on production tasks. 

We urge backers only to email us if there is an urgent issue, like an immediate change of shipping address, or an issue with your reward after delivery, otherwise it adds to our considerable support backlog. We know the wait has been a bummer, and we're working as hard as we can, often times into the early hours of the morning, to keep things moving as fast as we can. We've reassigned some of the team to fully focus on support with the aim of clearing the existing backlog by the end of this week. 

Support

We cannot conduct support over Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, or Kickstarter messages. You must email [email protected] for support.

Remember the following:

• Check your shipping address at vue.backerkit.com. If it needs changing, email [email protected].
• We are no longer accepting changes to frame styles, colors, or lens types.
• You absolutely must send the email using the email that you originally used to make the pledge. For example, we cannot provide account access if you originally used “@gmail.com” but now you email us from “@yahoo.com”. If you don’t do this, we’ll just ask you to email us using the other email and it will extend the time it takes to assist you!

We receive hundreds more emails than normal immediately after posting updates, so we apologize if it takes longer than expected for us to get back to you!

Until next time!

With love,

the Vue team

August Update: Working through colors
about 7 years ago – Sun, Sep 01, 2019 at 01:03:43 AM

Hey backers!

Welcome to another monthly update! We've been continuing to work on production, backer support, software bugs, and logistics management. Let's dive in!

Production

Production has been going smoothly, though we continue to encounter new challenges with every increase in manufacturing volume. Though our target has been 2000 units per week, we've struggled to hit that, and so far have hit about 1500. We also had some scheduling issues with our factories in the previous month so some of our production runs were pushed back while other clients were given priority.

Nevertheless, we've pushed ahead and are still working on ways to automate processes in order to achieve higher volumes. In the last update, we showed a fixture that was used to assess the bone conduction transducers. In August, we installed that fixture within specialized machines (seen below) that help automate and speed up inspections.

This has the potential to be a huge time saver for us, as previously some of these checks were done by having trained audio technicians listen to each pair, which took considerably longer to perform.

When you typically buy a product that already exists on the market, the reality is that all of those products go through similar production challenges like this. The difference, of course, is that you buy such products after they have finished production and are in stock and ready to sell. The unique part of Kickstarter is that backers get to see all the behind-the-scenes details of what it takes to actually take something from start to finish. Though we are focused on our product, keep in mind that everything you see in the real world goes through years of work just like this before you get it into your hands!

Reliability Testing

We're also performing ongoing reliability tests for things like product packaging. We want to reduce the number of issues that happen during transit that might result in a backer getting a broken unit. We perform a variety of tests which help evaluate how sturdy our packaging is. Below you will see packages undergoing cycles of high-frequency vibrations meant to simulate the type of conditions they are subjected to during international shipping. 

Packages change hands, vehicles, conveyor belts, and more throughout their journey, and often might be dropped a few times. But this work is important to limit the damage or defects that might be caused during transit! Coupled with running production, it can be a lot to manage! We're excited to see many thousands of units delivered to backers around the world, but still want to make sure we're doing our best to get quality units out there.

Lens Production

The biggest barrier to shipping faster has been lenses. If we had originally offered Vue with either no lenses or non-prescription lenses, production would be a breeze. It would mean every frame coming down the production line gets the same lens, and there is no need to double-check anything.

The addition of prescription lenses has complicated things in ways that were difficult to foresee. It's not insurmountable, but it has been an extraordinary amount of work to manage. Below you will see an internal diagram we use when fulfilling lenses, where we mapped out all of the different steps we have to go through before the lens is installed into a frame.

On the far left is the moment a backer submits their prescription. On the far right is when a backer receives their reward. Each box in the diagram represents a step that requires some sort of inspection either manually or via software. Because we offered so many types of lenses with unique prescriptions, across tens of thousands of frames, the required steps to make any given frame is often different and extraordinarily complex.

We've actually had to create an entirely customized production management tool via software just to manage everything, as other available tools on the market were not well suited to handle our complexity.

Shipping

Shipping continues! The vast majority of units ship direct from our factory. They are handed off to our courier directly, separated out by region, scheduled with international couriers, and then sent to the customs office for export.

However, a lot of units require individual care. Sometimes, backers email us at the last second and update their address or their prescription. Other backers might have multiple pairs, and we need to hold a finished pair while their second pair is finished. Whatever the circumstances, units like this are usually held at our office until the issue is resolved.

Below you can see a recent stack of shipments from backers that we've been handling individually at our office.

Once we hear back from the backer, or have resolved whatever issue took place, we can send them off to our courier for export. The logistics for this project have been an unreal amount of work—that's the challenge of shipping globally to over 100 countries, each with their own domestic couriers and import requirements.

We're working to both expand our team and put in place systems that can help track all of this, as we still encounter many situations that require a considerable amount of manual work, which slows things down.

Help Center

We wanted to take a moment to highlight some guides that might help resolve any difficulties backers encounter with their rewards. You can see these at our Help Center, but we'll also highlight a few of the main ones folks ask about:

1.  The double-tap. To put the glasses into pairing mode, you need to hold the touch panel for 8 seconds, wait for the voice prompt to say "double-tap to enter pairing mode", then double-tap the panel. To see what the double-tap looks like, see the link to the guide, complete with a handy YouTube tutorial!
2.  Pairing tutorial. There are specific steps to get the glasses into pairing mode. We've recorded these steps in a video so backers can have a guide when performing it themselves.
3.  Charging the glasses. Some backers are having trouble charging, so we want to emphasize that there's a crucial step which is to press down on the left side of the glasses frames so the glasses get fully seated into the case. We've created a simple guide with 4 steps that walk backers through charging. You can also see the video below! 

We encourage everyone to go through these guides when they get their reward, as these are helpful tutorials that help backers see how each step works on a real pair of glasses!

Timelines

We haven't been able to stay exactly on track but we continue to make progress with fulfillment. We are now working on Classic — Ink Black units, and will then move onto Brown and White.

As we move through fulfillment, you might find that we move onto another color without having shipped yours. This will happen in each batch depending on whether or not we have received your lenses. For example, though we are currently running Ink Black units, we still have Carbon Fiber units that we have not finished. Once we receive the lenses, we'll make Carbon Fiber units again, and ship them. 

The good news is that Classic — Carbon Fiber units was our biggest batch by several thousand units. Now that we have wrapped it up (save for the ones whose lenses we are still waiting to receive!), we should be able to move through subsequent styles quicker. Stay tuned!

Support

Due to the high volume of support inquiries we receive, we can only conduct support via [email protected]. We cannot conduct support via comments or private messages. Backers must email us to get assistance with any questions.

Remember the following:

• Check your shipping address at vue.backerkit.com. If it needs changing, email [email protected].
• We are no longer accepting changes to frame styles, colors, or lens types.
• You absolutely must send the email using the email that you originally used to make the pledge. For example, we cannot provide account access if you originally used “@gmail.com” but now you email us from “@yahoo.com”. If you don’t do this, we’ll just ask you to email us using the other email and it will extend the time it takes to assist you!

We receive hundreds more emails than normal immediately after posting updates, so we apologize if it takes longer than expected for us to get back to you!

Until next time!

With love,

the Vue team

July Update: Production continues
about 7 years ago – Thu, Aug 01, 2019 at 02:49:26 AM

Hey backers!

We've made it through another busy month of production and fulfillment! It's been a considerable amount of work balancing manufacturing, logistics, and software updates, but we're learning a lot and are continuing to progress toward total fulfillment of all your rewards. Let's dive in!

Production

Production continues to hum along. Our manufacturing processes are quite stable at this point, so most of our work has been focused on figuring out ways to continue to increase the overall volume of each manufacturing run.

We have shipped thousands of units and still have thousands left to go, but we're making steady progress on delivery.

With the increasing volume, our logistics partner has been as busy as ever shipping these out! See them at work below. 

As far as production improvements go, we've been installing more fixtures that help further simplify and automate the inspection process, which will help improve the quality of the units going out and reduce the chance of any backer receiving defective units. Below you can see a recent fixture we've developed, which closely analyzes each bone conduction transducer via software after final assembly.

We've also worked on a new fixture to help install small components more precisely since they are difficult to manage by hand, which has been one source of the bottleneck during production. See the latest prototype of that fixture below.

We've really enjoyed the work of making a more robust production line. Not only does it ensure that we can ship better quality units, but it also is exciting to watch the glasses go from a collection of disparate components to a precisely assembled pair of Vue!

Logistics

Throughout July we hit a few snags when shipping out the units. Because each pair of Vue is unique, we aren't able to do anything in bulk like a typical warehouse fulfilling orders. Instead, every package must be handled individually, which increases the time it takes for units to go from final packaging to actually getting shipped with a courier. 

It took a few weeks for us to figure out the most efficient way to handle transferring and tracking each pair of Vue between our factory and our logistics partner, which lead to a few weeks between units leaving our factory and ultimately making it into the hands of international couriers. For future shipments, we should have this resolved!

Timelines

Though production is stable, scaling up to our target of 2000 units per week has been a bit of a challenge. To make that many units, processes are sped up, which inevitably stresses the production process. If a particular assembly step was stable at 1000 units per week, it may start to reach its quality limits when we try 2000 units per week. When this happens, it usually means we need to adjust the process, often by installing better and more controlled equipment to handle higher volumes. When we started to scale above 1000 units/week, we saw a decrease in yield, so we knew we had to make changes before going higher. 

Because of this bottleneck, we're about two weeks behind in our fulfillment schedule. The adjusted schedule is as seen below.

Sequence of events

Here is what you can expect if you are waiting for your unit to ship:

• When we receive your lenses from our lens partner, we'll email you to double-check your shipping address.
• Your unit will then go through production, get packaged, and be handed off to our logistics partner.
• Once our logistics partner schedules shipment, we'll email you the corresponding tracking number.

We appreciate everyone's patience and continued support throughout this project!

Support

We're in the process of switching our domain from enjoyvue.com to vueglasses.com. We've already switched over our email domains, so please note the change.

Reach us at [email protected] with any questions, and remember the following before emailing:

• The quickest way for us to help is by emailing [email protected].
• Check your shipping address at vue.backerkit.com. If it needs changing, email [email protected].
• We are no longer accepting changes to frame styles, colors, or lens types.
• You absolutely must send the email using the email that you originally used to make the pledge. For example, we cannot provide account access if you originally used “@gmail.com” but now you email us from “@yahoo.com”. If you don’t do this, we’ll just ask you to email us using the other email and it will extend the time it takes to assist you!

We receive hundreds more emails than normal immediately after posting updates, so we apologize if it takes longer than expected for us to get back to you!

Until next time!

With love,

the Vue team

June Update: Production capacity increases
over 7 years ago – Mon, Jul 01, 2019 at 02:14:48 AM

Hey Backers!

Another month of production runs and batch shipments has flown by! We hit a lot of big milestones this month that we're feeling really good about, and that will translate into a more efficient production process moving forward! Let's dive in!

Production

As we mentioned in previous updates, we've now largely transitioned into focusing on increasing production volume. This work has been going quite well, and we've managed to effectively double our production volume week over week. We just shipped a new batch on Friday, and will be sending out tracking numbers for those units early this week. So far, we've delivered rewards to over 40 countries around the world!

Our production activities are going to look pretty familiar from here on out, save for any new fixtures we might develop as we continue scaling production. What we're focused on is figuring out ways to automate or simplify production processes so that we can steadily increase the number of units we can make during each run. Otherwise, you can expect to see more sights like the video below, where assembled glasses are making their way down the production line toward packaging. 

It's become a familiar sight to us at this point, but it's still really exciting to see boxes getting packaged up with rewards! As production volume increases, we've been pretty amazed with how much space hundreds and hundreds of units takes up!

We'll keep sharing images from the production line as production continues to hum along!

Share your photos!

Just got your Vue in the mail? Snap a photo of yourself and share it using #wearvue and #vueglasses. We'll look for the hashtags and reshare them on social media! Check out a recent backer donning his pair of Vue!

Looking forward to seeing more of you in your new pairs soon!

Troubleshooting

Have questions about the app, the glasses, or its accessories? Head on over to our help center to read through some of our guides.

Website Relaunch

In addition to our work on production, we're also preparing for the transition that will take place after fulfilling all our rewards. This includes, among other things, launching a new version of our website where customers will be able to directly purchase a pair of Vue.

We've still got a lot of work ahead of us, but we're excited for that next stage on this journey! The Kickstarter campaign is just the beginning, and with all our backers' help, we'll have many more versions of Vue to come!

Manufacturing Order

We wanted to spend a bit of time talking about our manufacturing order. We recognize that this process has been a bit unclear, and we apologize for that. The truth is, the logistics of coordinating production for thousands upon thousands of unique lenses has been extremely challenging.

Although we provide our lens partner with lists of lenses in the order that pledges were made, ultimately they pick and choose which lenses to manufacture according to their own manufacturing processes. Instead of following our order, they organize their production into batches of lenses that are similar to each other. Doing it this way is faster, more efficient, and more cost-effective. For example, they'll manufacture plano lenses first, then prescriptions without astigmatisms, then prescriptions with higher values, then progressive lenses, etc.

For this reason, each batch that we make is not in perfect order. For example, as we have been doing production runs for Carbon Fiber units, we take whatever lenses which have been delivered to us and assemble those into the frames that are being made. When we receive multiple batches of lens deliveries, we organize them by backer number as best as we are able. 

But ultimately, the units that make up any given batch might not match the expected backer order—it all depends on what lenses get made and delivered to us first. 

Timelines

Moving forward, we'll be working off the below schedule. Backers should refer to this general outline to get a sense of when they can expect their reward. If you email us to ask when your unit is being made, it's unlikely we'll have an answer unless your lens has been delivered to us from our lens partner—most often our answer is going to be that you should refer to the general schedule.

For backers with multiple frame styles in their pledge, your rewards will ship once all of the units in your pledge are made. In the meantime, we'd recommend that all backers ensure that their shipping information is updated. To do this, please read below:

1. Visit vue.backerkit.com to look up your shipping address. If the address is outdated, email [email protected]. If it is correct, then there is no action needed on your part.
2. If you are moving sometime in the near future, but the schedule we've given is too general for you to know which address to use, then email [email protected].

We know everyone is anxious to receive their pair, especially after the delays! We're doing our best to continue increasing production capacity so we can get these rewards out quickly. We appreciate your continued enthusiasm and support and will continue to work diligently to ship rewards.

Support

We're in the process of switching our domain from enjoyvue.com to vueglasses.com. We've already switched over our email domains, so please note the change.

Reach us at [email protected] with any questions, and remember the following before emailing:

• The quickest way for us to help is by emailing [email protected].
• Check your shipping address at vue.backerkit.com. If it needs changing, email [email protected].
• We are still accepting prescription changes at [email protected].
• We are no longer accepting changes to frame styles, colors, or lens types.
• You absolutely must send the email using the email that you originally used to make the pledge. For example, we cannot provide account access if you originally used “@gmail.com” but now you email us from “@yahoo.com”. If you don’t do this, we’ll just ask you to email us using the other email and it will extend the time it takes to assist you!

We receive hundreds more emails than normal immediately after posting updates, so we apologize if it takes longer than expected for us to get back to you!

Until next time!

With love,

the Vue team