What we’ve been up to the last 3 weeks…
Since we last checked in 3 weeks ago, we’ve been working diligently to make sure that all parts of the Sling Back work well together, our main variable being the spring. Our co-workers at Q-Asia were able to get a spring from our factory that we slipped into one of our prototypes. We received it and tested it tw0 weeks ago, but we could tell right away that our initial spec’s were just too weak. While we could get Sling Back to wind up, it wasn’t pulling the cords in with the ease that we wanted out of the final product.
Since then we’ve been experimenting in the shop, ripping apart cord retractors on the market and cannibalizing their parts and spring so we could place a larger spring into our Bertha printouts. While using these prototypes we realized that when the user is winding Sling Back up, he/she has no way of knowing when to stop. This led to a lot of broken Bertha printouts, and it also led to us working on a feedback mechanism. In the new iteration of the spring mechanism, once the spring is wound to its end, it pops around a quarter of the way, so you can clearly feel that you’ve wound to the end.
Other noteworthy happenings include ditching the Large version of Sling Back (pictured in the last blog post), and experimenting with an X-tra Small size for headphone wires. While we’re only moving forward with the Small and Medium versions for now, we see the Large and X-tra Small versions as potential line extensions for the future. We also began working on new renderings to present to interested retail partners.
What we expect to happen in the next 3 weeks…
While we were unable to use the initial spring Q-Asia sent us, they have been busy working with the factory and our engineers to resolve that issue. On Tuesday, sourcing extraordinaire Nikki Laffel will be traveling over to China with our Bertha print outs of the new mechanism and housing. She’ll be working very closely with our team and the factory to make sure we get the right mechanics for the spring. Our hope is that the spring issue is resolved by the end of the week, and we can kick off tooling right away.
Keep a look out on the site as we also plan to launch updated renderings for the Sling Back later this week. Here’s a sneak peek:
5 Comments
Jim Young | 10/18/2010 5:46 PM
That’s got the Beats by Dre logo on it. Or is that just a “prototype” number? Working with Monster, is that the big news?
Tiago Almeida | 10/18/2010 5:48 PM
it’s the quirky logo
a little “q” 
Jim Young | 10/18/2010 5:50 PM
Oh shoot you’re right, had it on my small screen. Dang, that looks awful close!!
ethan | 10/18/2010 6:07 PM
Sling back looks 1,000,000,000X sexier this small. Hugs and kisses.