Register |
Login
Shop for male chastity devices and other training tools through
this link to support us.
New stuff:
| << return to blog entries
2011-02-10 03:56:09 (15409 views) Good morning dreamlover land!
It's another day. And what do you do? Open your newspaper only to read about murders, killings, bombings and rapes? Or, do you fire up mozilla and get ready for your daily cup of DreamLover and all the juicy Male Management surprises?
For those who need their fix, we got something for you (don't we always).
"Just assembled" cabling from our plastic CEO (click to enlarge). This guy is the only Chinese vendors who'll arrange parts geometrically to take a picture. Good find.
Here's our latest hand-assembled supplemental batch, all tested. We had a zero component waste rate this time, though the time expenditure is massive with so many components.
And lastly... our bags/foam packaging finally reached the united kingdom in one piece! We just video skyped with this really cool CEO guy (friendly, professional, funny) at our warehouse in the UK, he said he looked our website up right away when he received the manuals. He's *very* anxious to send these off and get rid of all of the units before his wife spots them and becomes too interested!
 
 
Alright... so much to cover and so little time.
ANXIETIES RELATED TO BANK REMITTANCES
For those of you who are concerned about this transaction, and since we're starting to have stuff on the shelves, get this: if anyone lives in western Michigan or the region of Leicestershire in central England and wishes to drive to our warehouses to check out our stock we will inform our guys that we're having an inspection, and let you check out that they've got product on the shelves, on the condition that you film what you see and post it on youtube for everyone to see. Deal? We'll let you open the box and verify the contents. We realize most of you don't live there, but if you want to elect an envoy, that's fine too.
There's also an interesting service we've found called escrow.com - provided they have nothing against this product in particular, we agree to a 24 hour review period before funds are released to us. You pay to them using whatever method they support. Saves you the international transfer fee, but the service has a price so adding this layer will evidently cost more. The fees are on their page. Europeans can use them too but there seem to be further charges. If you find a cheaper reliable alternative or a European counterpart let us know.
And we're still shopping for card processors and making some progress but all rests - other than approval of course - on timing, how fast we could get to access the money, fees, any minimum monthly volumes and so forth.
CREDIBILITY FACTOIDS
Related to our credibility, we realize we've given you little background about ourselves and that's because just like you we value our privacy, but we've put together a few factoids that should be of interest in assessing who you're dealing with in this transaction.
1. We are an electronic hardware manufacturer and there's a lot that goes with that. The so called "barrier to entry" is fairly high. Almost 3 years full time for R&D, manufacturing, financial, legal, incorporation, corporate bank account, lab tests for two different jurisdictions. 1 home sold. 1 year in mainland China. Tens of suppliers to manage, making our batteries, connecting the wires to the batteries, making (and remaking) our overlays in Taiwan, lawyers, shipping agents, steel injection molds, rubber molds, consultants, warehouses in both the US and UK, people assembling our cabling, doing our board assembly, component lead times, and so on. We've got a lot invested in this. We're not Sony but we're also not an ebay reseller or part time affiliate that's going to stick you with a broken printer. We've got a lot to lose if we make big mistakes.
2. This may sound racist but it's not meant to at all especially given our gratitude to the good people we've met like our plastic guy who's totally saved the day a number of times and we deeply respect... but we know what people think when they hear China so... if you landed here recently, we're not from China. Hence our impossible rants while we were over there trying to set up our manufacturing. Miss Kim is from South Korea and has a background in finance and trading not to mention one of the world's highest ranking World of Warcraft and Everyone's Golf: Out of Bounds character, yours truly is evidently a thoroughly deranged westerner who's held a CTO position in Silicon Valley and several VC firms in Asia before figuring out those stock options were a fraud after all. You are most definitely NOT buying from an Alibaba vendor! The people who work with us: the radio modules (important part, since they should never create false positives) are designed, built and lab-tested in the west. The plastic guy is the supplier for the most famous prototyping and injection molding middleman on google. Big name, they go to the same guy we go to. Their rep looked at our arousal inducer and said with a funny look on his face: how did you do that? As if seeing a monolith for the first time. The lithium ion battery manufacturer (sensitive part) is part of the TCL group the biggest electronics company in China sponsor of the Asian Games, their version of the olympics. The plastic guy knows their CEO who's a Bill Gates type figure there which is why they even talk to us. A senior manager has to put the batteries together by hand because of the small quantities which is why they keep complaining - we've got sheets full of voltage and current measurements and discharge times - one cell at a time - signed by him. Our testing labs, well the first one was unprofessional with us because we out-negotiated them on the fees and they hated us, the LVD one was a lot better, they're not wizards but but you'd find them mentioned on declarations of conformity and compliance documents on common brands for wireless routers, TV screens you may have in your home from Samsung or LG. Who else have we got that's cool... that's about it the rest are complete idiots :) No, ok, didn't really mean that, we still appreciate their help with our low quantities, but the point is, you've got some valid people backing this operation aside from ourselves.
3. Unless you're one of those who still pretend to believe that it is all a hoax, that we faked the fish and possibly even the warehouse, you have to admit we've got our deterrents against screwing up our pilot run, in the form of the thousands of people whose demand we cannot yet fulfill, who represent our future viability in a small market, and who will most definitely be watching us. We've got to sell a LOT of these things to break even. We don't know for sure that we can. That's part of the thrill. But we don't think we can screw our pilot run users with impunity and we wouldn't want to do it even if we could - we love you!
4. The lucky ladies and gentlemen who will participate in our pilot run will be ordering directly from a manufacturer, us. We'll be particularly accountable and offer one to one support. We're proud of what we've made and our name is on the line big time (our name does count for something already, more than 60% of our traffic comes from people specifically googling "dreamlover labs"). That doesn't change, no matter how you send us the funds.
ON PROCESSORS
Now to clarify about our difficulties with the processors, we're new at this but from what we've been told, when card processors say that they turn down some merchants due to risk, they are not referring to "risk of the merchant delivering crap" or "risk of the merchant not sending the package". Sure, there may be some fools out there who think they can run a business selling mediocre goods, but what the processors are really concerned about is that users will put fraudulent charges through. Turns out adult sites (and gambling, and pharmacies, and so forth) do not command the same degree of respect from their audiences (regrettably, since visiting them is a recognition that they provide a service valuable to the end user) and so people feel it's OK to commit card fraud. That's why adult processing costs more than twice as much for physical goods and up to 5 times as much for digital content. These processors aren't asking us where we ship from, where the warehouses are located, and so forth. They're not saying hey you guys are shady we won't take you. No, they look at the product and say Nah, that's not the audience we want to process for. They specifically said it's the product. Now the bank on the other hand... we've got a corporate account with HSBC. They wanted to know EVERYTHING, our business partners names, our suppliers' phone numbers, the business plan in anal detail, we almost had to introduce our moms! Let's just say we've had an "enhanced pat down" by those guys. We've been checked out.
PILOT RUN TARGET
Another disclaimer which becomes more urgent as we approach the launch date - we also take risk in this sale. This first run is not for people who discovered us recently and are wondering if the product is for them and want to check it out but be able to reverse the charge after they're done playing with it. It's not for people who want to try installing the product on some unsupported devices and return it if they can't get it to work. We're not officially in "mass" production, we're not advertising, we're too vulnerable to take risks with casual sales for now (though we'll definitely appreciate those too afterwards because just like already bootstrapped businesses in the aggregate it will help us sell more). The first run is for those who've been following for a while, who know what the product does, what it doesn't do, and are sure about owning it, and if any issues arise, working with us until they are resolved. We'll have another comprehensive feature overview video before launch and the manual will be available for download just so that if there's any doubt as to whether this is for you or not, it will become apparent before money is exchanged.
What we need now is a clean block of cash to immediately put back into components, into getting more of our arousal inducer motors, or we risk encountering months of delays after our first run (talk about a ruined orgasm!)
PILOT RUN PREPARATIONS CONTINUE...
For pilot run customers we guarantee a maximum level of after service and customer care. First buyers will get extensive direct support from us the inventors, assistance trying to install the DL2000 on whatever chastity devices they may have in addition to the CBx000 (though please, be owners of CBx000 and willing to use the DL2000 in conjunction with these devices if your beloved metal cage can't be used), the possibility to suggest modifications to our firmware, free hardware updates in case we improve something crucial in the short term (such as electrodes and what not), and more.
You should also know that anything that could possibly go wrong with this device has been the subject of scrutiny for a long time, due to the fact we've been more worried than you about problems after the sale which would result in shipping and logistics nightmares.
We spent more than a month coding the firmware upgrade features on all the components including a double USB driver for firmware download, this way if any bug is discovered post-sale, we can fix it without hassles.
We've confronted all possible failure modes. What if people use the arousal inducer too much and the battery runs out quicker than they expected? Made a battery calculator. What if water goes in through the cable by capillary action? Added dual layer heat shrink tubing bit. Checked screws against rust just in case. Monitored the new RF chips for over a year, there was not one false positive (activation from spurious interference). Not one missed packet (missed reception while within range).
We also plan to make an extensive "known issues" list and make people read it before they can order. Small stuff, mostly points of warning... for instance due to the miniaturization you have to be very careful when mounting the small pieces. Don't drop the PCB when opening the enclosure on the receiver, or it might break. The battery pack is somewhat fragile due to the connector's size. The rubber O-ring must fit in real nicely in order to ensure waterproofing... this is all on the manual. We could have made these things more user friendly but it would have meant adding a battery compartment, and 1cm in thickness and more plastic and rubber parts. Mostly we've created something we'd want to use ourselves, we prefer being a bit careful with the parts and having a miniaturized product you can put on and forget about.
There really isn't much else, except perhaps too many features and remote control buttons (that's why we have the simplified mode on by default).
There will be another comprehensive feature outline video before launch, we're now preparing for it... (just in case you were wondering what the seemingly gratuitous Miss Kim pictures were for).
Comments
Post new comment
 |
When will we get a firm price? (Base unit+remote+DL2000, and extra remotes, DL's., manuals)
Even a ballpark estimate would help some people decide.
I personally think that there is a market for the manual separately as fantasy fodder for folk that might later choose to get one.
And selling manuals would be a good way to get the kinks out of the financial end and identify glitches on small risk items before firing up with the product for real.
We were planning to give out the manual as a free download, are you saying you want to purchase a paper version??? We have pretty much counted parts, one manual, one enclosure, one receiver and so forth so we don't think we'll be selling just manuals or extra remotes for some time... just adds lots of complexity, additional stock numbers with the warehouse and we'd be stuck with receivers without remotes until the next production run...
I'm just saying that I think that there is a market for the paper copy for some people's "one handed reading".