We've been dinking with the leaf spring design that closes the ring around the finger, and we haven't been satisfied with both the amount of bench- work it takes to put it together and the marginal range of effectiveness. Overall, the efficacy of the design has not been good enough for release.
This build was far easier, the result is the best FLiP! ever, and it is absolutely drop-dead gorgeous; however, we are going to see if we can bury torsion springs in the 'ears' and get away from leaf springs all together. We recently found a new spring vendor (Ron at Spring Works Utah) and he has been incredibly helpful; moreover, he has been educating me in the subleties of spring physics and what can/can't be built- as well as the costs involved. With his help I hope to put the ring joint issue to bed and give Krikawa the green light. The next build is scheduled for May 8th.
With FLiP! in hand and samples of the packaged black Jam Kat rp's we felt confident that we could represent the products with integrity. The story about how Lisa and I ended up in a meeting with the guitar accessories manager at Guitar Center of Tucson is yet another bizarre and beautiful witness to Pick-Smith's destiny- overkill for me, but you can ask me about it if you enjoy such...
We talked to Brannon Mamula for an hour or so. Here are the highlights and lowlights:
- Everything at every Guitar Center comes from their Distribution Center (DC) and there is one buyer for guitar accessories. We are in the process of getting hooked up with this person.
- They have a program and budget for new products which includes add copy in their magazine and sales tests at select locations. If it goes well, they stock all 300 stores and the online sales of Guitar Center, Musicians Friend and Music 123.
- Guitar Center and it's affiliates maintain a 38% market share of musical instruments and accessories. OMG.
- Guitar accessories do not have the dealer restrictions as do other musical products- for example they carry All-Parts products even though they sell on-line and at every guitar retailer. We like this.
- Brannon loves the Jam Kat and wants one. The only time he took it off was to show it to his employees, and they love it too- especially the acoustic player. He also likes girls, and it was WAY smart to have Lisa with me.
- He likes the packaging; however, he suggested we incorporate disposable pop-up containers to hold 6-12 units and showed us examples. The adhesive hook we have is fine for slat-wall display.
- There were no lowlights!
- It feels great to have opened the dialog box with Guitar Center. So you know, my good buddy Douglas Mason, a distribution mentor (and shareholder), has generously offered to assist with Guitar Center contract negotiations; furthermore, he is locating distributors for our industry and I sent him a packaged sample today to break the ice with them. (thanks Doug!)
- We are a couple weeks from having parts, and are gearing up to run 2500 parts and get in the black. We have our seller's permit. Tasja is working on our E-commerce web-site. (thanks Tasja!) The tooling is almost complete, sans polishing and set-up. (thanks Robin Blench of R-5 for his perseverance in a very challenging tool assembly!) Al Fischer is locating a vendor to best accomplish our print and
die-cut needs for the packaging insert. (thanks Al!) We've ordered 3000 custom picks and received a Summer NAMM invite (if we don't have our own booth, which we will) from Pick-World, and should have them by May 4th. (thanks again Tasja!) The picks have the longest lead time. I have a spreadsheet (available, just ask) that shows the costs involved in our first run, many one-time costs, and we do need capital to pull this off. Our Hearth program has raised less than 1/3 of the initial $100K limit; however, we are only $20-30 K short (depending on ad-copy saturation) of being self-reliant and shutting the share offering down. Now is the time! - On the drive back from Tucson I gleaned a very clever design for a guitar-strap mounted JamKat or FLiP! holder that also has a clear polycarbonate cover; moreover, it doubles as a hard case which can be tossed into a guitar case or the back of a Pinto without damaging anything except the Pinto. Currently we include a velvet drawstring pouch within the package insert for storage. I will have a product design and tooling design ready for Robin by the time he finishes the current tooling project. (he said with conviction) The 'strap rack' is mentioned in the business plan but I had not begun the design work. Also, my hockey bud and shareholder Greg Ray (who has had significant interest and constructive input, thanks Greg!) noted that the Jam Kat has an aggressive attack angle. He has not been the first to notice this, including myself. The balance between thumb ease in retrieval, tooling limitations re the hinge, and optimal pick placement netted us the current version. We will begin working on our own custom pick set which will include offset, twisted, and varied length plectrum. Seeing dollar signs? Yeah, the Jam Kat was designed to take standard picks, but...
pura vida!
Pat Swartz
president
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