Welcome to another Kokoon update.
Firstly, apologies for the lateness of this update, we had hoped to get it out sooner, but things are incredibly busy here at Kokoon and we wanted to make sure we had all the content, including photos, ready for this update.
We’re excited to announce, the shipping process has started! These last few weeks have been extremely intense for the team both in the UK and in China, but we’re very happy to say we’re there.
It has been a long and hard road to get to this point, and we’d like to thank you all for your support and patience leading up to this huge moment, we couldn’t have done it without you.
We’ve had some initial logistics delays and a few challenges in the factory, which we’ll go into later, but the next manufacturing run is on track and we will be accelerating through deliveries in the coming weeks.
As we fulfil pledges, we will be contacting all our customers individually by email to notify you of your imminent shipments. In these emails, we will also be asking that you confirm your address in case it has changed since you filled in your survey. Emails are going out now, so please keep an eye out for yours in the coming weeks. We also go into further detail around our shipping schedule below.
Having reviewed the results from MP1 and reviewing the line in full now that it is running, we will begin our second production run, MP2, later this month.
Photos
We’ve had requests for a while for some higher quality photos of the units, and now that we have MP1 in hand, we’ve managed to quickly get a few together, included below.
These are just the start, now that we have final product we are working on a lot of new content to show off the product, but we wanted to include a first look in this update.
The black headphone
The grey headphone
Black headphone with box
Grey headphone with box
Another angle
And another
The inner ear-cup and sensors
MP1 production
With MP1 complete, and beginning to ship first units, we’ve created a short video to give some insight into what the process at the factory looks like. This was filmed during the production of the grey headphones, and with a much better camera than our last video. Whilst it doesn’t capture every step (not even close!) you’ll get a good idea of what goes into assembling a Kokoon headphone.
MP1 results
The completion of MP1 was a hugely exciting moment for us. The journey to this point has taken so long due to the complexity of what we’re doing and our commitment to ensuring that we deliver a high quality, reliable product.
Our testing and inspection processes, therefore, are rigorous, and MP1 was not without its challenges. Overall the manufacturing line performed very well, but we found a small amount of ‘inspection failures.’ This is not uncommon in the first manufacturing run of a new product.
When we completed our pre-shipment inspection of 50 units, we found that 6 of 50 exhibited one of two failure types. This failure rate was unacceptable and as a result we took the decision to have every single MP1 unit subject to further inspection. This added some delay into our shipping schedule, but ensures that we are only sending out high quality units to you.
The first failure type was some units with a “side arm loose screw”
The “gap” in the side arm you can see above should not be present
The second failure type was the fabric covering of the headband not being perfectly secured, as you can see in the image below.
Loose fabric
Both failure types are relatively “easy fixes.” We’ve made immediate modifications to our production line and inspection processes to prevent these issues occurring in MP2, and as mentioned, have had every single MP1 unit inspected to ensure that they meet our standards before shipping.
Shipping Schedule
With MP1 complete, we are proceeding with MP2 with confidence. As we have previously mentioned in earlier updates, the size of manufacturing runs needs to be increased systematically to ensure quality is maintained at scale.
MP1 did have some challenges, as outlined above. With a product of this complexity, it is quite normal to see issues arise as we manufacture at scale, and so, this will be closely monitored, with each batch’s quality controls and line processes being refined after each run, to continually improve yield.
Fortunately, we were happy enough with the results of MP1 that we are proceeding with an MP2 run, which will be much larger than MP1. As we continue to improve our assembly and test procedures, we’re expecting each run to get progressively larger with iteration and refinement of the line and quality controls between each run.
As we’ve such a large volume of orders to fulfil, this will mean it will still be some while before all orders can be shipped, but we are hoping to have every order fulfilled by Christmas.
We are, where possible, going to be trying to ship by order number, however in order that we can provide high touch support to first units and ensure logistics is reliably operating, shipping will also be taking territory into account. Initial shipments will be going to the UK and USA as we work on solutions for other countries.
As mentioned, we will be in contact with you directly as soon as we are preparing your unit for shipment, so please look out for those emails.
Mobile app update
App development has been coming along well, as we have continued to work on our UI and incorporated feedback from our customers who have been testing the headphones.
We’re expecting our next app update to be released at the end of next week, with the changes shown in our last update.
The next app release will still be a beta release of the final app, as we continue to train and improve our algorithms, improving functionality. As customers begin receiving their headphones, and begin using them, we will be able to step up our refinement of the algorithms, with improvements to functionality beginning to come more quickly.
We’ll continue to keep everyone updated on the improvements we make, as we incorporate customer data, and as we release new functionality. Please bear with us as we continue our work on refining these areas.
That’s all for now, we hope you enjoyed reading. Please look out for shipping emails over the next few weeks.
As always, we love hearing from you either through email or through our social media channels Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
Best wishes,
The Kokoon Team
