From Zero to Kickstarter in Twelve Days

I'll be honest. I'm not sure we can pull it off. But we're going for it anyways. We're going to try to put together an entire Kickstarter campaign in 12 days. 

We have some exciting updates to The Single Edge that we've been working on for the past six months. The designs are complete, and the plans are in place. But the upfront investment is pretty high. Before we talk about that, let's talk about the fun part - what's on the revision list.

We've basically taken every single customer request and feedback from you, and rolled them into one big update. On the surface, you wouldn't actually notice much has changed, but under the hood, a lot of changes are taking place. Let's talk about the big ones:

Back in Black

Our number one customer request by a long shot has been to produce a black version of the razor. Well, ask and ye shall receive:

The Single Edge

That's right, the Single Edge 2.0 will be available in both Jet Black and Matte Black. But this ain't no sissy spray painted black. We're using a military grade finish called Physical Vapor Deposition (PVD) that is typically used on luxury watches. It's created by bombarding the surface of the razor with titanium ions.

This process not only imparts a smooth, deep black surface - it hardens and strengthens the underlying stainless steel, creating a new surface that is exceptionally scratch resistant. We can't wait for you to see it in person.

The Single Edge Jet Black

Upgraded Manufacturing - Metal Injection Molding

Our current process for manufacturing the Single edge is Investment Casting plus post CNC machining. It has worked extremely well for us, but has a seriously unacceptable yield. 

In plain English, this means that in each manufacturing run of the Single Edge, there is an unacceptably high number of parts that are rejected because they don't meet our quality standards. As we've talked about many times in the past, the tolerances on our razor are extremely high, so if a part is even a fraction of a millimeter off, it renders our razor almost useless.

Thus, our new process: Metal Injection Molding.

If you keep up with the stainless razor scene (yes, there is one), you know that this process is a relatively new and promising one. It's an exciting technology that has extremely high quality and tolerances - but a very high upfront investment cost. 

More on this later, but it's safe to say that we're really excited about this upgrade - and we know you will be too.

More Efficient Shave Settings

Let's get this out there - I have sensitive skin. When I designed the Single Edge, I designed it with this bias. In addition, a primary design driver for the razor was the desire to make it "accessible" for first time safety razor users. In other words, I wanted it to be extremely user friendly and easy to use for guys that are new to shaving with a single blade. And I truly believe we accomplished that.

However, a lot of the requests we've received from our most loyal customers is to crank it up a notch! Some of you wanted a more aggressive setting for the razor. Well, we've decided against offering an additional setting for the razor, but I have come up with a good compromise.

We've made some minor design changes to the shaving qualities of the razor to increase the aggressiveness while still making it easy for first timers. This is commonly referred to as a razor's "efficiency." I think you'll be very pleased.

A Lot of Small Improvements

We've listened to your other suggestions, and we're rolling those in too! We have a few more tricks up our sleeves, like smaller blade stops, improved blade loading, and more!

Adding it all Up

Until last night, we weren't sure how (or when) we were going to roll out these changes. The investment to produce the tooling and place minimum orders for the new razor is substantial - and we have no clue how to fund the investment. But we know that these are improvements we need to make.

So that's where you, our loyal backers, customers, and supporters come in. We need your help to launch the new version of the Single Edge. There's no way we can do it without you. 

So we decided to go for it. We need to launch a campaign, and we need to launch it fast! So we're targeting May 16th as a launch date - just twelve short days from today. And we haven't even started. We have a video to film, photos to shoot, and an entire campaign to write. It took us almost two months last time, and we're going to cram it in less than 2 weeks this time.

So follow along on Instagram or Facebook, stay tuned to our weekly emails, and above all, spread the word! We'll send you an email the day we launch, with easy ways to share the campaign.

We'd also love to hear your feedback! Anything we left out? Ideas for additional improvements? Send us an email or drop us a comment below - because as always, we love hearing from you.

 

Until Next Week,

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