Manufacturing

We continue manufacturing the current batch without hiccups or surprises. Supply chains have stabilized and everything is working smoothly at the factory. The estimated shipping date for the batches remains February.

As you might have noticed, the first machines we sold were substantially underpriced. The starting price of Kniterate knitting machines on Kickstarter was under $5,000. Starting in January 2021, we will increase it to at least $13,499. This means part of our backlog is being supplied at a loss. Underpricing is a common startup mistake (and an expensive one!) but we want to be clear: we are fully committed to manufacturing and shipping each one of the units you pre-ordered.

Development

We’ve made good progress on this front and the new design is almost finished. We will be ordering most of its parts before the year ends and are hoping to put the new prototype together towards the end of January. If everything goes well, we could start the next batch of machines with this new design.

We are very excited about this new development as we’ve been able to reduce the part count of the machine. This facilitates the sourcing process, reduces time spent in quality control of components, and, best of all, it improves the assembly time of the machine.

Once this new design passes all the checks and we get the assembly line ready, we expect to increase the production of machines dramatically. This will allow us to fulfill more orders than ever during 2021.

We want to use this opportunity to apologize again for the continuous delays we’ve been through over the last years. We are very excited about this new design and the number of machines we will be able to ship next year.

Customer support and community upgraded

To celebrate this new year with a fresh start, we are sharing with you our new support site and forum, which we have moved to a professional platform to best serve you. Now that the content will be indexed you will be able to find the information more efficiently thanks to its powerful search engine.

We’ve added most of the machine and software user manual information but some information is still being migrated. Please let us know if there is information you would like to see there sooner rather than later, to help us set up content priorities.

As for the new forum, you have to create a new account to participate. We are planning to integrate all of your Kniterate accounts into one. Having said that, it will take us some time and happen next year. Unfortunately, we haven’t been able to migrate our old forum to the new one, but we will keep it for your reference.

Software

We’ve been quite silent on this front but haven’t stopped working on it. Good progress has been made and the scene graph mechanics are done. We are now working on the GUI elements and hoping to be able to share with you the first version early next year.

In this forum post (backers only), we are sharing a sneak peek of the mockups. The revamped design will have a similar look and will provide many new functionalities.

EcoKnitwear use case

Last but not least, we wanted to share the story of one of our customers, who has been using the machine extensively over the last months, transforming how their business works. They have been getting new clients and monetizing the machine from the get-go.

After all the difficulties we’ve been through over the last years, it is immensely fulfilling to read a story like this. Our gratitude goes to Tim and Robert for their kind words and to all of you for trusting us over this long and windy journey, with incredible patience and support.

Thank you 💖
The Kniterate Team

REMINDER! The Kniterate machine is changing its price next year to at least $/€/£13,499, and CA$17,249 in January 2021. You are still in time to get yours at the current $/€/£9,999 and CA$12,999. Only during this month of December!

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