Completely Screwed Up Shipping Situation Delays 1,300 HydraDocks
over 8 years ago – Wed, Feb 03, 2016 at 12:28:23 PM

DHL delivered HydraDocks to our office this morning, but only a total of 210 pieces. The shipping notice from our factory last week showed 7 pallets of freight (1,680 products). Today, we were delivered 7 cases of HydraDocks (210 products). That means we have 210 HydraDocks here, not the 1,500 (plus 180 extra pieces) that were supposed to be here. Our factory has closed for the Chinese New Year. So, nothing can be done about the situation for 2 weeks.

There is no imaginable explanation for this situation that any of us here can think of.

So, we are going to ship out what we have.

We are going to start with the first $99 Early Bird rewards from Kickstarter and ship out 200 pieces in the order those first pledges were made. In addition, we made arrangements with one of our associates in Shenzhen to ship 22 Hong Kong destination orders today or tomorrow directly from there to Hong Kong.

So, a total of 222 HydraDocks will go out today and tomorrow, with the remaining backers not getting their HydraDocks until after the Chinese New Year break — at least 2 and a half weeks from now.

Instead of 7 pallets with 1,680 products arriving this morning, we received 7 cases with 210 products this morning. We have absolutely no idea how this happened, had no idea it was about to happen, and are both confused and furious that it has happened.

Each HydraDock is in a corrugated kraft retail box, with 30 of these boxes to a case. We expected 8 cases (240 HydraDocks) to a pallet, for a total of 1,680 pieces in this shipment of 7 pallets. We over-ordered to have extra stock for warranty, sales channel and review samples, and replacement inventory for our initial 1,500 piece lot of pre-orders and Kickstarter rewards.

We have no explanation for this situation — not even any guesses that make any sense at all. After everything we did to push and push and get the products here ahead of the Chinese New Year holiday break — this happens. It was handled in a rush on the China side, with the last minute movements to get the products back from the Hong Kong site to the factory and picked up by DHL. We never received a proper bill of lading, only an email with the package count (“7”) and tracking number. The DHL tracking doesn’t show package weights, so there was no indication that these were small boxes and not large pallets.

So, that is the situation. The 200 earliest backers, and the 22 Hong Kong destination rewards/pre-orders will be shipped this afternoon and tomorrow, with those recipients getting a tracking email. Everybody else is stuck until probably the 19th to 22nd.

We are sorry, guys. And as always, we sincerely thank all of you for your patience and support!

The KickShark Team

Shipping Update Update - Pics
over 8 years ago – Mon, Feb 01, 2016 at 10:50:35 PM

Hi Everybody!

We are waiting to see if the inventory with DHL is delivered this afternoon or tomorrow morning. When it gets here, we will have most of our local team come in, set up folding tables in our photo studio, and start an assembly line style of shipping operation — labels being printed at one end, and products to ship coming off the other end — being stacked for post office, DHL or UPS, depending on destination.

We have never done this before. :-) So, we are not making any promises as to whether it will take 2 days or 4 days to get all 1,400+ shipments out the door. We will go as quickly as we can without errors. This was all planned to be handled by a very skilled fulfillment center in Hong Kong… not by our office team here. But, we will be doing it. :-)

As each shipment is checked off as shipped in our ShipStation software, it will send a tracking email to the recipient.

And… that is the situation here. We are going to try and have fun with it, instead of being stressed.

So, watch your email for tracking info starting tomorrow or Wednesday.

Finally, we seem to be at the last step of a very long, frustrating process. Thanks for hanging in there with us!

Pics from the factory below...

The KickShark Team

Shipping Update
over 8 years ago – Fri, Jan 29, 2016 at 03:10:40 PM

Te latest on the odd situation from a couple of days ago...

It turns out that the fulfillment company in Hong Kong decided to stop accepting inbound shipments for fulfillment ahead of the CNY holiday, but had let both deliveries of our products be unloaded and set aside. We have no idea how or why that could happen. But it did.

Our Shenzhen factory sent a truck to recover the products today. And, they will ship all of them to us in Nashville on Monday by DHL. We will hand pack and ship the rewards/pre-orders ourselves from here the moment they arrive nest week.

Yes, we (and we're sure, some of you) are frustrated and angry at the seemingly endless series of delays with this project. All we know to do is to keep relentlessly pushing forward, one step at a time, until we get the HydraDocks out to you guys.

Thanks, as always!

The KickShark Team

The Confusion Of Chinese New Year
over 8 years ago – Thu, Jan 28, 2016 at 02:23:37 PM

Hi Everybody,

It’s fun to post updates with glowing good news. And, it’s necessary to post updates when things go bad. But, it is frustrating when an update needs posted simply because of the strangeness that sometimes happens in getting a new product to market — like now.

Short version: 

We cannot tell you if orders are shipping today or tomorrow, or not. They should be. They might be. But, we simply do not know.

Longer version:

What we do know is that the 1500 piece HydraDock production run was happening this past Monday and Tuesday. Monday’s products were to be trucked the 3 hour ride to our Hong Kong fulfillment center from our Shenzhen factory. Then Tuesday’s products would be sent the next day. So, by Wednesday afternoon all 1500 pieces should have been at our HK shipping center.

The first batch was to be shipped out yesterday, with the second batch shipped out today. That was the plan everybody had in place.

This was all carefully put together to avoid problems with Chinese New Year — the annual 3 week crazy thing that shuts down the China manufacturing economy while workers scramble by bus and train inland to their home towns. Officially, that happens from Feb. 7 to 15. But, in reality, factories begin scaling back, and people begin leaving a week or more earlier — now.

So, we got the plan put together to get HydraDocks shipped out of Hong Kong before the craziness started, and to meet our promised shipping date.

And, the last email we have had from either our factory or fulfillment center was from Monday confirming that production was underway as planned. To which we replied asking for some photos of the production line at work.

Since then (Tuesday) we have not gotten an email reply from either the factory or from the shipping center. We deal with two English speaking reps at the factory, with neither of them returning calls. Our Chinese speaking team member has called the factory, and been told that those people (the ones we deal with) are not available — whatever that means.

The English speaking contact we deal with at the fulfillment house in Kong Kong is also not answering emails. And, a call there gets a voice mailbox.

So, is everything on track, and FedEx/UPS/DHL tracking numbers will begin popping up any moment? Or, is something off track? Will the products — all or part of them — get shipped before the CNY break? Or, will everything be stuck until after the CNY break?

We do not know, and apparently have no way to get answers. If somebody there is nice enough to email and give us information from the factory or warehouse, we will be right back here and post another update.

This is really frustrating to all of us here, as we know it is to all of you. We know this kind of thing is part of the whole crowdfunding adventure — where you guys get pulled into the behind the scenes drama of manufacturing that customers should never see. But, it’s still terrible.

So, in conclusion, this is one of those updates that people tell us we should post that basically says that we do not know what to post — that we don’t know what’s happening. But, we know that today is a major shipping date commitment, and we do not know if anything has shipped or not. Given the lack of any “your order has shipped” emails, it seems pretty clear nothing has been sent out from HK.

We will stay on this. We have a local agent we are going to send to the factory tomorrow morning (Friday, Shenzhen time) to check on things in person. And, we’ll share what we find out.

As always, thanks so much for you patience and support!

The KickShark Team

On track for HydraDock Shipment. New Roadie pocket hub available!
over 8 years ago – Sat, Jan 23, 2016 at 07:50:20 PM

Hi everybody! First, our factory says that they are on track to have the 1,500 piece HydraDock pilot run completed and delivered to our Hong Kong fulfillment house by the 28th or 29th. And, the fulfillment house says they will begin packing and shipping orders as soon as the products are dropped on their loading dock. Finally! :-)

HydraDock Roadie Available

We wanted to let you know that, as we discussed here a few weeks ago, we wanted to launch our upcoming little pocket hub product (which we've named the Roadie) as soon as possible. And, since we have a final approved production sample, we are doing that now.

The Roadie has a subset of the HydraDock's ports: an HDCP compliant HDMI port (up to 4K resolution), a gigabit Ethernet port, and a pair of USB 3.1 5Gb per second ports with 900mA of power. There is a female USB-C port on one end, and a male cable on the other end for connecting to a MacBook. It works with the MacBook AC adapter and charges the MacBook. Or, it works without the AC adapter, just plugged into the MacBook and running off the MacBook's USB-C port.

We aren't running the Roadie on Kickstarter, but are doing a self-hosted pre-order campaign on our own HydraDock web site.

The online price in March will be $99. However, the first 1,000 pre-orders get an Early Bird price of just $69, saving $30 — and including US shipping. (sorry, but non-US requires a small additional charge).

Unlike the HydraDock, which hit some serious issues along the way, the Roadie is a completed project, with final samples done and approved, and the production plastics tooling already being made. So, the February 29th shipping date for that product is safe.

We wanted to give you guys first shot at the $69 Early Bird deal, so are posting this here ahead of other announcements.

Thank You!

So — HydraDock is shipping next week. The new Roadie is coming soon. We have a few more cool USB-C gadgets coming throughout the year. And, we can only thank all of our amazing backers here for making all of this possible.

You guys rock!

The KickShark Team