Nov 6 Update
over 2 years ago – Mon, Nov 08, 2021 at 02:35:08 AM

Hi everybody,

I hope you are all having a great weekend! 

I have some good news: The new dials have been completed, and the watches have been fully assembled! And guess what?! The greens are actually green this time! 

Hallelujah! 

They are currently in quality control testing, and will soon be in water pressure testing. Any faults will then be rectified, and the watches will then be sent back to me. So we are on a good track to have them here by the end of the month.

This includes the blue watches that were left out of the original shipment. 

Thank you all again for your continued patience. As always, please reach out to me with any and all questions. 

Best wishes,

Nathan

October 19 Update
over 2 years ago – Tue, Oct 19, 2021 at 09:07:30 PM

Hi friends, I hope you are all doing well! 

I apologize for the lack of updates over the last few weeks. It's been a little crazy over here for personal reasons, but there also hasn't been any major updates for the watches being fixed yet. I'll give you all of the information I have a little further down this update.

But first, to all of you that have received watches, I hope you are enjoying them! I absolutely love seeing the photos and hearing from you, so please feel free to reach out to [email protected]! 

There is a handful of international folks still waiting on watches. It's crazy, I know, and I apologize for the delay. There are major major backups in customs all across the globe, and I've learned my lesson about using USPS. If you haven't gotten your order yet, please reach out to me. There's very little I can do, but we can at least get on the same page and make a note of it. There are a few things that have helped people:

- See if you can track it (using the USPS tracking number) through your national post service. The postal service is supposed to reach out to you when the duty/customs fees are ready to be paid, which will then release the package for delivery, but there has been several cases where a customer either never got a call/email, or it was missed. They then checked the website of their national postal service and were able to find the package, pay the fees, and release for delivery. 

- A customer had success calling their post office, who put them through to the customs office and they were able to give them a status update. 

- Finally, patience. I've seen a few packages where the tracking on the USPS site still to this day says that the package is still in Chicago or Cincinnati, but they then get a call from their post office saying that the package is ready to be released for delivery after the fees are paid. Long story short is that I'm learning how terrible USPS is for tracking international packages. Your packages will make it eventually, and if they don't, we will figure out another solution. 

 So what's going on with the other watches?

Glad you asked! The following applies to all of the remaining watches (All of the greens and the last of the Blue/Steels)

All of the watches have made it back to the factory. They got stuck in customs (again) for a couple of weeks, but they are all accounted for now. The factory has started creating the new dials and hands (they can't reuse the hands from the old ones), and they are expecting them to be done by the end of next week (October 31). Once the dials and hands are complete, it is a fairly quick turnaround to replace the old ones with the new and get them back in the cases. This should take a week at most. They will go through a round of quality control (lets budget a week for that, just in case anything comes up), and then they are sent back to me. Last time, it took a little under 2 weeks for the full package to make it to me. I'll then go through again and package all of the watches up and send them out. 

So the ROUGH estimate for when they could be leaving Trafford HQ is around the end of November. It could be sooner if we get lucky with customs and the quality control checks. It could be later if we are unlucky. I will obviously keep you all updated on this.

All USA orders, I will continue to use USPS to ship, as that seems to have gone very quickly and smoothly.

For all international orders, I'm going to eat the costs and use another shipper, most likely UPS. I've had good luck with them, and it should absolutely be much faster than what we've seen with USPS. At the very least, the tracking should be much more reliable. 

THANK YOU all for your patience. This has been a massive learning experience for me, and your messages of encouragement and understanding have really helped me to stay sane through it. 

Please reach out to me with any and all questions!

Best,

Nathan Trafford 

September 21 update
over 2 years ago – Tue, Sep 21, 2021 at 11:52:06 AM

Hey friends,

Just giving a quick update on where things are. 

First off, it's been great to see some of the watches making it to their new homes. Thank you all for the kind words and especially the photos! I love seeing them!

Greens and blues. The watches are now back at the factory. The new dials are currently being worked on. I am pushing them to finish the blues quickly since there are much less of them. I don't have an exact timeline on these, but I will keep you posted as I know things.

The last batch little batch of watches that I was waiting on (a handful of Reds) came in yesterday and I turned those around and shipped them out to those backers right away. You should have received an email with tracking info, and I also reached out to you individually. 

Final note: Shipping. United States backers seem to be getting their watches pretty quickly. This makes sense since there are no customs hoops to jump through. For everybody international, the shipping progress seems to be really slow. Slower than I anticipated. Apparently with COVID, the customs processing is really strained. I'm unfortunately stuck with this because the shipping was purchased in bulk through backerkit. I'm going to see if there's anything I can do for the remaining folks waiting on green watches, but for now I just have to ask for patience from everybody. Please please be sure to keep an eye on your tracking information. I think it's a little off because it's trying to track movement in other countries, but it may have some information that helps. It's possible that your package ends up being held at a local post office waiting for customs clearance, or for you to pay the duty/VAT fees. I don't think that anybody in England has received the watches yet, so that should give you an idea of how stuck the postage is over there right now. Please reach out if you have any concerns and I can see if I can see anything different.

NOTE: If you're in England, you should be able to track your package and pay the import fee here: https://www.royalmail.com       Just enter your tracking number (the same one as USPS). If it doesn't show up, that means the package hasn't made it through the customs yet.

Thanks so much for everybody's patience! I hope that the wait is worth it! 

Best,

Nathan

Quick September 13 update
over 2 years ago – Wed, Sep 15, 2021 at 10:19:48 AM

I'm sure you guys are all tired of hearing me talk, so I'll keep this short! 

I've gotten out all of the watches that I can. Be sure to check your inbox for an email from Backerkit. It will include your tracking information. Check your spam folder too! You can also always reach out to me on here and I can check for you. If you ordered multiple watches and are affected by one of the delays, I shipped out whatever watches I could (unless you requested to wait and ship the full order).

Here's what I have left:

Red/blacks: There is a package of red watches that got delayed at the factory for some reason, and they are currently on the way here. I got out the vast majority of them, but I still have 8 people that will have to wait just a little bit longer. I'll be reaching out to you folks individually in just a minute, but I'm hoping they arrive here within the week (though the last package was stuck in customs for an extra week). I'll turn those around right away and get them out to you.

Blue/steels: As noted with the last update, the factory messed up and didn't send enough blue/steels. I've reached out to each of you who will unfortunately have to wait a little longer to receive these watches. I am really really sorry about this and am pushing the factory to turn these around quickly.

Greens: Thank you everybody that responded to my requests about which color green you would prefer. If I did not hear from you, I assumed that you want to wait for the corrected green. The watches are now on the way back to the factory to be remade. I will keep you updated on the progress as best as I can. 

For everybody else... Enjoy your watches!!! I hope that you read the accompanying stories, as they are the inspiration for the watches themselves. Everything is being shipped via USPS, so everybody in the USA should receive the watches very soon (some already have!). Everybody that is outside of the USA will have to wait for them to go through those fun customs hoops, and being processed for release from America. Some countries I'm sure will take longer than others, but fingers crossed it doesn't take too long! 

Last thing, for those out there that are not watch nerds such as myself, I've put together a few quick videos that show how to change the various straps that come with the watch. They are at the end of this update. 

As always, I really really appreciate everybody's patience with this! 

Best wishes,

Nathan

September 10 update
over 2 years ago – Sat, Sep 11, 2021 at 12:28:59 AM

Hey folks, this will be a pretty long email, so I'm going to break it up into sections for those that don't want to read everything.

1. Green Update

2. Shipping Update

3. Blue/Steel Blunder

4. Happy Update

1. Green Update

Thank you to everybody that responded regarding if they wanted to keep the dark green version or wait for the lighter green version. I REALLY appreciate the patience and understanding from everybody. The greens are headed back to the factory today to start the process of being turned into the initial, lighter green color. I will keep you posted on this throughout the process. 

2. Shipping Update

Shipping has begun! It's been a whirlwind week of checking the watches, putting them all in the correct boxes, along with all of the extra bits that everybody ordered. Then the process of purchasing and printing the shipping labels, getting them in the shipping boxes and ready to go to the post office. It's quite the process, but I've loved getting my hands on every watch and individually packing each one of them for you all. It's a weird feeling, like I'm sending off my babies to new parents! This is what it has looked like in my house for the past week:

I dropped off about 50 orders at the post office this morning, and those backers should have received a shipping email from BackerKit. Check your spam folder! 

I have been getting through the orders that were unaffected by the Greens issue first (and the blue/silver issue that we'll talk about in a second). I should be done with those today and hoping to make it to the post office again before they close at 5pm. Everybody that ordered multiple watches that included a green, I need to sit down and adjust each shipping package individually so that I can send out the other watches in your order that are ready to go. That takes a little time to figure out and repack each one, but I'm hoping to get that done and package all of those up this weekend to drop off at the post office on Monday morning. 

I forgot to mention this in the last update, but there is a fast follow delivery coming here of a handful of watches (about 15) that were running just a little behind the main group of watches. These are mostly red watches, so there will be a handful of folks that will take maybe another week or so until they arrive here. I should be able to process those and turn them around pretty quickly. 

3. Blue/Steel Blunder

Do a Kickstarter, they said. It'll be fun, they said!    sigh. 

This is not great news, pretty much equal to the green news we had earlier in the week, just on a much smaller scale. I'll just get to it because there's no way to sugar coat it. The factory did not make enough of the blue/steel version of the watches. To be specific, they mixed up the count between the black/steel and blue/steel versions. So I received 40 black/steel watches and only 20 blue/steel watches. It was supposed to be the opposite. I had about 30 blue/steel orders, so I am short for 10 people. Not great. Very bad. This was a really hard conversation to have with the manufacturer, especially after the error with the greens. I get it that mistakes happen, and I suppose this is part of the risk with Kickstarters and seeing behind the production curtain, but it is really not a great look to have 2 very avoidable mistakes like this happen. 

I will say to those that may be concerned, I found the quality of the watches that did arrive to be excellent. I am very happy with them. 

So here's what I'm doing: I've already shipped off the 20 black/steel watches back to the manufacturer to swap the dials out for blue. The worst news of all of this is that it will take about the same amount of time as the greens to make this change. I'm pushing them to get it done faster since there are way less of them than the greens. I will report back here when I find out more about that. 

Who's getting watches? I've prioritized orders that purchased multiple watches. Not that anything about this situation is really fair, but this seemed like the most fair thing to do. That only left me with about 3 left for the single purchasers, and I am literally going to pick 3 random folks. I'm going to turn the boxes over (i have post it notes with names on each box), and get my wife to pick 3 boxes at random. If you ordered blue/steel and get a tracking number in the next few days, then you're one of the lucky ones. To the other 10 folks, I will be reaching out individually to you with the news.

It's really lame, and I wish I had a better solution for you all. I've made my frustrations well known to my manufacturer, and when this is all done we will be having a very serious conversation about what happened and what we can do to make this not happen again. But at the end of the day, I am the owner of this company, and am responsible for every blunder that happens, so I will hold my hands up and take the blame for it. I am truly sorry about this delay.

4. A Happy Update

I am incredibly lucky to have a ton of very supportive people in my life that have given me the courage and self-belief to take on this crazy thing at all. At the top of that list is my amazing wife, Christina, and today is her birthday. I'm sorry our house is a giant mess of boxes and I'm a huge ball of stress during your birthday week, but I thank you for being the amazing person that you are. I literally could not have done any of this without you. 

Okay, as always thank you all for bearing with me on this wild ride. I appreciate all of you so much and I'm SO excited to start seeing these watches out in the wild! Back to packing boxes now!!

Have a great weekend everybody,

Nathan Trafford