Synik Preorder?? Sold Out (2nd attempt)

[PLA10S]

Per TB website, Pre-Orders will open again tomorrow, 8/15 for shipment late November.

[dgentile]

Hey, I'm sorry that you weren't able to get in on the preorder. It totally sucks.

BUT,

I think that as @tebnewyork said, you should give the Tom Bihn crew the benefit of the doubt. You're here, interacting with a loyal fan base for a company that has time and time again won us over. You're interacting with the CEO of said company. You're interacting with the shipping lead of said company. You're being heard by the president and founder of said company. You might as well hear what they have to say.

When you're a small company that's trying to run sustainably, engaging your enthusiasts, provide good work-life balance for employees, and still create products that are at the top of their class, you're not always going to be able to please everybody.

There is a limited production capacity for the amount of bags they are able to make by late October which is less than two months away, maybe 45 days. They still have to balance that with keeping an inventory in stock for the winter holiday season. Tom Bihn offers a lot of different products and most of them are pretty complicated to build. All of those have to be well-stocked on the shelves before Thanksgiving.

The travel and bag aficionado community have mostly centered around the idea that a good travel bag is a clamshell, has organization, is wildly overbuilt, and has a laptop compartment.

For a legendary maker/designer like Tom Bihn to throw their hat into the ring is a big splash in a larger community outside of the typical Tom Bihn enthusiast market. In the excitement leading up to the release you could see the water churning.

It's easy to see (in retrospect) how the Synik release did not go the same as other preorders offered prior. It happens. It doesn't make any sense for Tom Bihn to accept more orders at this time, but I see now on the preorder page that they are working to release more bags for a late November delivery. They are really trying to accommodate this outsized demand.

I have also backed a lot of Kickstarters. I still back a lot of Kickstarters. A lot of them ask for a reasonable production round, $30-50k of merchandise. A good number of them capture some internet fascination, and explode to hundreds of thousands, or millions of dollars. The design team is overjoyed, then quickly overwhelmed. With more money, they can go back to the drawing board and make the product even better! With a larger production order, they can offer more colorways and optional accessories! They invest in better tooling, take an extra round or two or three or four at EVT and DVT. They run out of money. They seek additional funding by launching an IndieGoGo page for preorders. The perfect product is now a compromise. The product team is world-weary and exhausted, long tired of chasing their original product dream. Eventually they finally deliver their commitment to their crowdsourced investors, but a year or two late (I'm still waiting, five years later, for a particular Kickstarter.) Backers aren't happy, because the vision they pitched is nowhere to be seen in the delivered product. The project owners disappear. There's no accountability, a bad product, and no warranty.

Tom Bihn is not one of those companies. Tom Bihn does not make its customers unwitting beta testers. Nik and Mr. Bihn release only fully developed, finished products. Tom Bihn only commits to timelines that they can achieve. And unlike Kickstarters, Tom Bihn has real customer service and a real warranty.

Well thanks for the elaborate reply - I appreciate it... in fact I do appreciate all the replies here so far!

I'm essentially "on the road now", but I guess it won't hurt to sent TB an email later today....


The Kickstarter thing - well kickstarter has it's risks, I've backed a few... luckily had mostly positive expereiences so far (but for one, albeit low priced - at least -item)...
but yes, I've seen the "shit hit the fan" with kickstarter... and it can be quite a risky thing....it's why I prefer to back existing companies or if it's a high risk thing, only with a minimal amount that doesn't hurt me that badly if it goes sour.

[Darcy]

Busy days here at TOM BIHN! Yesterday we received as many orders as we usually ship in an entire week. In addition to the Synik pre-order, our quarterly production crew performance/development conversations were yesterday and today. Today was also our CPR recertification class for production. Chase Reeves stopped by the factory to say hi and Nik gave him and his family a tour. And it was our company meeting/lunch today ( because it’s quick and easy!)

I have a lot of appreciation for this entire thread. We agree it was not very cool that pre-order sold out as quickly as it did. There are definitely things we could have handled differently (and from which we can learn.) One of those things — and we’re trying this for the second pre-order, so we’ll see if it’s a good idea and something we want to keep doing — is to split the release of the pre-order into two different times in an effort to recognize people in different timezones and varying work schedules. We have also announced the specific times of those pre-order releases in advance, which hopefully makes it more convenient for people. (You let us know, though!) And we're looking into the sign-up issues: we don't think this is a widespread problem but it's still a problem.

As posted on the blog and over here, we plan to offer more Syniks for order tomorrow. Here’s how that works:

The first pre-order quantity of bags is basically what we could make by the promised date of late October. The date for the second pre-order bags is late November — one month later than the first pre-order. This gives us four more weeks to make more Syniks at the same time we will be making the bags for our December 2nd debut (a busy time in the factory.)

This decision is likely going to delay the restock of some other bags. It shouldn't be too bad and we’re doing what we can to minimize that, but it’s inevitable.

The pre-production batch (PPB) is a factor. The top quantity of bags available for pre-order *doesn’t* include the quantity of PPB bags that we have in-stock in the warehouse. Here’s why: with pre-orders, we don’t limit the number of a certain size or the colors that can be ordered. You can order any size and color you’d like. But with the PPB batch, there is a minimum quantity of each color that we must order for fabric cutting reasons and then we imperfect humans must guess which colors will be most popular. We know our guess might be wrong, so adding the quantity of PPB bags we have in-stock could lead to a far more frustrating scenario: imagine that in our PPB was 50 Black/Cloud bags and 50 Black/Northwest Sky bags, and Black/Northwest Sky was popular but Black/Cloud wasn’t, but we had added all 100 of those bags in the top pre-order quantity number on the website. People could have purchased those 100 bags and it’s probable that only a few of them were the less popular Black/Cloud; we’d then find ourselves having to make more than the top quantity we determined we could make by the promised late October date.

So: out of the pre-order Syniks ordered on Tuesday, a number of them can be fulfilled with PPB bags that weren’t counted in Tuesday’s top quantity. That alone frees up some production room.

Had pre-order not neared selling out until today mid-day, we think we would have been able to adjust numbers based on our reports of what colors had sold so far vs. what PPB bags we had on hand and then we would’ve been able to prevent it from selling out as quickly.

[yugo]

The TLDR of Darcy's post is: We kick too much ass and made a product that too many people are excited about. We'll try to do better for you international folk. Learning experience. Never give up, never surrender.

[tebnewyork]

The pre-production batch (PPB) is a factor. The top quantity of bags available for pre-order *doesn’t* include the quantity of PPB bags that we have in-stock in the warehouse. Here’s why: with pre-orders, we don’t limit the number of a certain size or the colors that can be ordered. You can order any size and color you’d like. But with the PPB batch, there is a minimum quantity of each color that we must order for fabric cutting reasons and then we imperfect humans must guess which colors will be most popular. We know our guess might be wrong, so adding the quantity of PPB bags we have in-stock could lead to a far more frustrating scenario: imagine that in our PPB was 50 Black/Cloud bags and 50 Black/Northwest Sky bags, and Black/Northwest Sky was popular but Black/Cloud wasn’t, but we had added all 100 of those bags in the top pre-order quantity number on the website. People could have purchased those 100 bags and it’s probable that only a few of them were the less popular Black/Cloud; we’d then find ourselves having to make more than the top quantity we determined we could make by the promised late October date.

Darcy, will the pre-production batch ship before the end of October or be held for the full production run?

[shoplarry]

Darcy, will the pre-production batch ship before the end of October or be held for the full production run?

When will people be notified if their order will be fulfilled by a PPB?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[ButtUglyJeff]

https://blog.tombihn.com/synik2preor...Q6cvcIFQt_TsiA

Looks like they'll have 2 different times to have a shot, seems a reasonable solution to a problem...

[Darcy]

The TLDR of Darcy's post is: We kick too much ass and made a product that too many people are excited about. We'll try to do better for you international folk. Learning experience. Never give up, never surrender.

Hmm, maybe Nik can write a program that will auto-TLDR all of my posts...

Darcy, will the pre-production batch ship before the end of October or be held for the full production run?

Orders that will be fulfilled by the pre-production batch will ship sometime August 21st - 28th. More on that below....

When will people be notified if their order will be fulfilled by a PPB?

Yes, you'll be notified if @Countron randomly chooses your order to be fulfilled by a PPB. We email folks who are to receive PPB bags a couple of days before we ship them just to make sure it's okay to ship the order early and ask if there are any address changes and stuff like that. You won't receive an email from us if your order hasn't been chosen by @Countron.

We need to wait for pre-order to either sell out or close on 08/20 in order for @Countron to randomly choose orders to be fulfilled by PPB bags. So, depending on what happens next, those PPB bags could ship either August 21st/22nd or August 28th/29th.

[tress29]

you'll be notified if @Countron randomly chooses your order to be fulfilled by a PPB.

That's what happened with my son's Dawn ZTSSB, he was pretty happy to get it early.

Speaking of my son, he won't give back my Original/Wasabi SE! He was kind enough to point out that there's an Original/UV Side effect in production "when" I'm ready to replace it! But I guess he needs to have his bags all together before he goes to France. His grandma bought him a really big suitcase, because he'll need to check a bag of clothes for the school year. The bag itself is so tall that the handle is too short for his Pilot...

[tebnewyork]

OK the @Countron is fair but I'd think order number is even fairer. First order in first order out.

[bchaplin]

No, choosing randomly is fairer. Those who can order first tend to be the privileged few with flexible work situations. Not everyone has that luxury.

[ayazgood]

This gives us four more weeks to make more Syniks at the same time we will be making the bags for our December 2nd debut (a busy time in the factory.)

Is this a subtle hint at the other new bag rumored to be in the works, or did I miss some other announcement?

[G42]

Is this a subtle hint at the other new bag rumored to be in the works, or did I miss some other announcement?

TB usually does something new in time for the holidays.

[Darcy]

Is this a subtle hint at the other new bag rumored to be in the works, or did I miss some other announcement?

TB usually does something new in time for the holidays.

@G42 is has it right. We've debuted new designs the Monday after Thanksgiving for the last several years, so it's basically a tradition now for us. It's worth noting that the Dec 2nd debut is not a pre-order -- the bags are all in-stock and ready to ship that day. That's because there isn't enough time for us to go through the pre-order process and still deliver those items before the end of December. Pages for the new designs will probably go up around November 19th / ordering will open on December 2nd. We won't be offering any hints... all will be revealed in late November!

[ButtUglyJeff]

This year that could be the 47th run of the Synik...